Max in the Land of Lies

This novel, the sequel to Max in the House of Spies, picks up where the first book left off. Max Bretzfeld, a brilliant Jewish boy, escaped Nazi Germany for England, where British intelligence trained him as a child spy. He was parachuted back into Germany strapped to Major Johnny Jameson, a British commando who died on impact. The story resumes in the fall of 1940, when Germany is winning the war.

Max sets out for Berlin accompanied by Stein and Berg, a dybbuk (a spirit from Jewish folklore) and a kobold (a creature from German folklore) who perch on his shoulders. Only Max can see or hear them. He carries two missions: Mission One, assigned by his spymaster and adopted uncle, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, is to infiltrate the Funkhaus, Nazi Germany's central radio and propaganda hub. Mission Two, which Ewen forbade, is to find his missing parents. Max promised not to search for them. He lied.

Max reaches Berlin at two a.m. and talks his way past two Grüne Polizei (Green Police), ordinary officers in green uniforms, by inventing a story about fleeing his abusive father. At his family's old building on Oranienstrasse, the ground-floor watch repair shop now bears a stranger's name. The Persickes' daughter, Liesel Persicke, answers the buzzer and threatens to call the Gestapo, but Pastor Andreas Maas, a pacifist clergyman upstairs, takes Max in. Andreas warns that Liesel's mother is a Gestapo informant, then tells Max what happened to his parents. Max's father, Jacob, was forced to work at a munitions factory, where his poor eyesight caused constant mistakes. Max's mother, Miriam, attacked SS soldiers who confiscated the family's radio. Jacob went to work one day and never returned. Miriam searched every police station until she, too, vanished.

The next day, Max checks a dead letter box, a hidden message drop arranged by British intelligence, and his mission officially begins. That evening, he listens to Hans Fritzsche, the lead news broadcaster for the Ministry of Propaganda. Pastor Andreas describes the appeal of Nazism: After the humiliation of World War I and economic devastation, the Nazis promised restored greatness. He asks whether Germans can be blamed for choosing lies over starvation.

Max visits Pfeiffer's Radios, a shop Fritzsche frequents, and impresses shopkeeper Herr Pfeiffer by fixing a radio with a paper clip. Days later, Freddie Fritzsche, Hans Fritzsche's lonely, thirteen-year-old son, enters the shop. Max acts disinterested, a calculated strategy to win Freddie's eagerness for approval. He maneuvers an invitation to the Fritzsche home, where he nearly exposes himself by mentioning "Jazz Cracks," a show airing only on the English Europasender station. He saves himself by tuning Freddie's radio to "Germany Calling," a Nazi propaganda program. Hans Fritzsche invites Max to return anytime.

Max also visits the Berlin Jewish Housing Authority and encounters Doctor Gustav Adolf Scheel, a commander in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Hitler's personal spy service. Max claims the Bretzfelds owe his boss money, but Scheel records Max's false name and Pfeiffer's address. Soon after, Lieutenant Colonel Alexis von Roenne of the Abwehr, the German army's intelligence agency, visits Pastor Andreas's apartment. Von Roenne explains how he traced Max from the dead paratrooper's double harness to the building using police reports and a Gestapo tip from Liesel. He departs with a quiet promise to return.

Hans Fritzsche arranges for Max to join Freddie's Hitler Youth group, the Nazi regime's youth organization, on a camping trip. When a boy taunts Max as a "Jew boy," Max beats him with a rock. The troop leader praises Max as an exemplar of Nazi strength, and Max shouts "Heil Hitler!" while insisting to Stein and Berg he is "just pretending." On the drive home, Freddie privately admits the other boys are "awful," and the two begin to bond.

Impressed, Hans Fritzsche brings Max to the Funkhaus. Max meets propaganda officials who casually admit that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a foundational antisemitic text, is a total forgery. Goebbels gives Max a tour. When Max fixes a persistent transmitter problem, Goebbels gives him a permanent job. In a private meeting, Goebbels explains that early humans defeated Neanderthals through unifying stories of "us versus them," and the Funkhaus does the same. Max silently translates: The Funkhaus is a factory whose product is Big Lies.

Von Roenne takes Max to his locked office and reveals that he hates the Nazis and will do everything to make Germany lose the war. Max confesses his true reason for returning: to find his parents. Von Roenne agrees to help, asking that Max never reveal his secret. While briefly alone, Max discovers a file identifying Uncle Ivor, Ewen's brother, as a Soviet spy.

Scheel takes Max to lunch and reveals that the Bretzfelds were deported to a concentration camp. Max vomits on the sidewalk after Scheel departs. Von Roenne then arranges a visit to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp north of Berlin. Max's mother is skeletal, her head shaved, wearing striped prisoner's clothes. She tells Max the SS showed her Jacob's body in a mass grave and handed her a shovel. Over three days, she describes the camp's horrors: starvation, executions, and experiments on children. Stein and Berg transfer from Max's shoulders to Miriam's, promising to stay with her through the war's end. She tells Max: "I didn't give birth to you so you would protect me. I gave birth to you so you would live."

Goebbels invites Max to a luncheon with Adolf Hitler, who announces his plan to invade Russia in spring 1941. Max considers assassination but realizes killing Hitler would make him a martyr. He conceives the antidote to Big Lies: small truths, private and undeniable. Back in Berlin, Freddie reveals he has noticed Max looks right-then-left when crossing streets, the English habit, and has deduced Max lived in England. He tells Max: "Between Germany and you, I choose you."

When Liesel discovers Max's secret communications and threatens to alert the Gestapo, Max races to the Funkhaus with the Grand Finale package from London, a record of a Winston Churchill speech. He triggers a false air-raid alarm, barricades himself in a studio, and discards Churchill's speech as hypocritical. Instead, he broadcasts his own message to 70 million Germans, telling the story of a "heroic German mother" whose husband was killed and who was forced to bury him in a mass grave, then revealing she is Jewish. He concludes: "A lie told often is still a lie. We are all brothers and sisters of one race, the human race."

Scheel pounds on the studio door. Max unlocks the dead bolt, kicks Scheel when he bursts in, fights past soldiers, and escapes into the Berlin sewers. He reaches the Irish Diplomatic Mission and is smuggled out of Germany. At a checkpoint, von Roenne opens Max's hiding compartment, whispers "Almost there, Max," and lets him pass.

At Camp 020, a military interrogation facility in England, Max recounts his mission and reports Hitler's invasion plan. Ewen then reveals the Funkhaus infiltration was never the real objective. The true purpose, Operation Kinderspion (Operation Child Spy), was to obtain an eyewitness account of the concentration camps. Ewen had tried for over a year to convince Churchill and Roosevelt that the Nazis were systematically murdering prisoners, but no one believed him without an eyewitness. He forbade Max from seeking his parents because he knew Max would disobey.

At the Montagu home, Uncle Ivor greets Max on the steps, weeping. Max embraces him, choosing not to reveal Ivor's Soviet ties. He thinks, "Between the truth and this, I choose this." Ewen wraps his arms around them both, and they stand together in the falling snow.