An Obsolete Honor
by Helena P. Schrader
iUniverse

book review by Rupert Hinton

This story of Nazi Germany in World War II describes "a disease that eats away at the moral fiber of the individual. The longer one is in contact, the weaker one's own sense of humanity becomes." As the story unfolds, soldiers and civilians alike find that they cannot overlook Nazi activities and must choose a side: accommodate evil or resist it. Schrader reveals both the temptation to place expediency before a moral imperative and the difficulty of making a moral choice. She does it, brilliantly, without intruding. The history speaks, not the author.
 
Philip von Felburg, officer and gentleman, tries to stay out of the moral conflict: "You can't demand that the generals be good servants of the civilian government and then complain because they don't putsch against the democratically elected government." However, Philip cannot stand idly by. He is torn, balancing his personal honor against the need to stop a dangerous madman who is driving the army to ruin, which reveals his core dilemma: "Should I break an oath I despise to become a person I despise?" With the help of Alexandra, his wife, he realizes that the scope of the struggle is far greater and more universal than one man's honor, and so he joins the Valkyrie plot.
 
Some details of Valkyrie may be unknown to readers, although its failure won't be. This is not a book written to surprise; it is a book written to explain. "All we can do is to keep telling the story and hope that now and then someone does understand."

This review is written at a time when this country debates its own foreign policy and the uses of torture. Did it keep the country safe? Did it keep it safe enough? Although a consensus may never be reached, a book like Ms Schrader's is apposite. History sometimes provides answers, and it always provides a sense of context and comparison. Schrader helps unearth that history.

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