A WWII Spy Novel That Reinvigorates the Genre for a New Audience

When its comes to modern stories involving spies and espionage during World War II, there are a few annoyances that audiences have no choice but to expect and accept: a diverse, ahistorical cast of characters; amoral, superficial protagonists who are superlatively competent and devoid of any human attachments; paper-thin antagonists who are irredeemably evil; and a colorless, generic setting expunged of cultural differences, conflicting ideologies, or any authentic details.

Overall, these tropes have come to render the whole genre inauthentic, boring and predictable. Who wants to watch or read another story about a guy (or strong woman) fighting rogue Nazis in some anonymous town in Europe?

What makes this all especially tragic is that it never had to be this way. There was, and still is, a treasure trove of storylines to pull from World War II. The Allies consisted of more than just Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Captain America, and the Axis consisted of more than one-dimensional, occult-obsessed Nazis hell-bent on world domination. Both sides encompassed a wide range of cultures and individuals with competing priorities, and both sides were made up of real people with their own virtues and flaws. Maybe it’s possible to portray people on both sides with some degree of humanity while not forgetting who was ultimately right and who was ultimately wrong. Maybe a writer could somehow combine narrative complexity with moral clarity.

Perhaps noting this dire situation and surveying today’s bleak, uninspired, and effeminate literary landscape, H.W. Crocker III, a well-known conservative Catholic historian, novelist, and publisher, has just done so with Kruger’s Korps, a World War II spy thriller that aims to make the genre and literary fiction in general great again. The book features manly men, womanly women, exotic locations, complicated schemes and double-crossings, daring exploits, and plenty of humor. In a word, it’s fun.

Yet Kruger’s Korps is not mere pulp fiction that resorts to spectacle and male fantasy—for those interested in such fare, they should browse some of the titles at Passage Press. Crocker distinguishes himself by maintaining a level of seriousness and believability by crafting characters who rise to the occasion and demonstrate sound judgment and solid virtue. Even if their intense situations easily transcend the quotidian challenges of most readers, the characters are nevertheless relatable and fallible. Although some details, particularly toward the end of the novel, begin to drift toward the fantastic, Crocker adds them more for flare and intrigue than as essential aspects of the plot.

As for the plot itself, Crocker is careful to keep everything grounded and focused. It centers on the protagonist, Rolf Kruger, a strapping young German-American spy whose first mission is to infiltrate a German military unit in North Africa led by Lieutenant Hans Steiner with the aim of thwarting their supposed mission to incite a global jihad among the Arab population in the region. Much of the book takes place in the African desert, as Kruger gradually learns the nature of Steiner’s mission and encounters other strangers who have mysteriously ended up in the desert.

Far from a simple, flimsy foil to Kruger, Steiner turns out to be the most charismatic character of the novel: he is a resourceful, gallant, and confident soldier who becomes something of a mentor for Rolf. He acts out of loyalty to his home and people rather than a slavish devotion to the Nazi regime. Because of this, he and Rolf talk far more about the Hapsburgs and faith than Hitler and fascism. 

This sympathetic portrait of Steiner along with some of the other German characters might bother readers conditioned to see the entire Axis as murderous monsters. But Crocker’s choice here makes them, and their war with the Allies, much more interesting and complex. He suggests that many Germans hated Hitler and thought the Nazis were degenerates, yet still, for perhaps defensible reasons, fought on their side. Yes, they made the mistake of fatally compromising with what proved to be a genocidal ideology, but this does not automatically make them unthinking psychopaths.

Moreover, the usual focus on the Nazis obscures the comparable, though not worse, evils of the Communist regimes that arose at this time, particularly in the Soviet Union and East Asia. This is not lost on Crocker, who explores the emerging problem posed by Communist agents during World War II. Although it is not a central point of the book, the issue is certainly raised, and it opens up the question of who the real enemy was for Western Civilization.

Beyond the main adventure of Kruger’s evolving mission, Crocker considers the role of Christianity in the main character’s motivations. A faithful Catholic charged with fighting the enemy, Rolf is forced to grow up quickly, learning that violence is a necessary consequence of war and achieving a greater peace. For the most part, his and the other characters’ Christian faith inspires continual acts of virtue and gentlemanly behavior. As such, they look down on the atheists and non-Christians who are mired in crass materialism, utopian progressivism, or backwards barbarism. Thus, even when they are imprisoned or threatened with death, they proudly hold the moral high ground.

Without being preachy and overbearing, in its characters, plot, and themes the novel is clearly conservative and refreshingly anti-woke. Crocker invokes the lingo and slurs of the time, avoids cynical deconstruction and historical revisionism, narrates the story directly and clearly, and reaffirms the values that make America a force for good in the world. In this sense, he models how to tell compelling stories from a conservative perspective by focusing on the story, highlighting acts of bravery, making characters likable, and cracking jokes to keep the tone light.

With all that said, perhaps one minor shortcoming of the book is Crocker’s ruthless efficiency and narrative discipline. The whole novel is incredibly tight and compact, packing in extensive character development, action, dialogue, and world-building in a little more than 200 pages. Such economy of language is a great asset in nonfiction—Crocker exercises this concision to great effect in his excellent history Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, which I reviewed here—but it makes a story a little harder to follow, often forcing readers to backtrack to that one line of description devoted to a character two chapters ago. It also needlessly flattens the settings and robs some of the dialogue of depth and nuance.

The great advantage, of course, of keeping the narrative lean and mean is in cutting out any potentially dull moments or tedious moralizing. It also leaves plenty of room for additional adventures in the future. With almost zero personal baggage, a pure heart, and an extensive skill set, Rolf Kruger seems perfectly positioned to embark on more missions. Based on his comments in a recent interview, Crocker clearly enjoyed writing this book and likely has ideas for more novels starring Rolf. Hopefully, Kruger’s Korps is the first of many installments. The spy genre and contemporary literature in general could use a little more excitement and good old fashioned masculine virtue.