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SorellaLaBefana

(435 posts)
Sat Oct 18, 2025, 09:10 AM Saturday

"Crooked Cross" Forgotten, Prophetic novel written in 1933 before the author knew where Nazism was going

A few days ago I asked an American acquaintance – as one does these days – where he sees “it”, by which I meant the political situation, heading. He took a breath. “In my opinion, the US is in a very similar position to Germany in 1933-4,” he said. “And we have to ask, could 1936, 1937, 1938 have been avoided? That’s the point we are at. You can try to say fascism couldn’t happen in the US. But I think the jury’s out.”

His words seemed especially resonant to me because I had just finished reading a remarkable novel precisely to do with Germany in 1933-4, a book written in the former year and published in the latter. Forgotten for decades, Sally Carson’s Bavaria-set Crooked Cross was republished in April by Persephone Books, which specialises in reviving neglected works. Since then, it has been a surprise hit, a word-of-mouth jaw-dropper, passed from hand to hand.

Crooked Cross begins in December 1932, and ends at midsummer the following year. The setting is the little, fictional Bavarian town of Kranach, a picture-postcard place in the foothills of the Alps. Its focus is the Kluger family – a modest, middle-class clan of kindly, loving parents and three grown-up children, Helmy, Lexa and Erich – who are gathering to celebrate Christmas with their cousins and Lexa’s fiance, Moritz. Everything is warm and delightful and full of promise: the tree with its glass baubles and candles, the tissue-wrapped presents, the carols, the roasted goose. Everything is gorgeously decorated, “even” – one reads with a shudder that is deepened by a 21st-century knowledge of where “it” was all headed – “Helmy’s picture of Hitler which stood on the piano”...

One of the remarkable things about this book is its immediacy. It was written in the moment, and published quickly. The six-month period that it covers was one of momentous political change: Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis gained an effective majority in the Reichstag, Dachau was opened, and Jews were barred from public-service jobs. At the start of the novel, the characters greet each other with a cheery Grüss Gott; by the end, Herr Kluger is heil Hitler-ing acquaintances in the street and the local church bells have been altered so that they chime with the notes of the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel song. Also by the end of this short six months, the loving, close circle of the Kluger family has fallen apart. The attentive reader will have noted, even within the first few pages, for example, that Lexa’s fiance Moritz Weissman, a good Roman Catholic emerging from Christmas mass, also happens to have a Jewish surname.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/18/crooked-cross-hitler-1933-novel-sally-carson


I just bought this book—although, may be living it.
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