September 1943: after the armistice between Italy and the Allies, Hitler needs Mussolini's availability to govern the country on behalf of the Nazis. But the Duce is being held prisoner in a secret place. To find and free the dictator, the Führer relies on Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian who has enthusiastically joined the SS. In the same days, a massacre of Italian officers takes place on the Greek island of Kos, from which second lieutenant Eleuterio Rea miraculously emerges alive. The young man begins working as an undercover agent for the Allies, in close collaboration with Ada, a partisan moved by an indomitable desire for revenge.
The fate of the two young men intersects with that of Skorzeny, now famous for the liberation of Mussolini, in a series of secret operations decisive for the fate of the world war. After the conflict, Skorzeny manages to escape conviction for war crimes and to carve out a valuable role for the Americans in an anti-Soviet function, developing a network of contacts between the secret services of several countries and, in parallel, weaving the threads of a vast conspiracy. Eleuterio and Ada set out on his trail, unleashing a hunt that will lead them to be sucked into the maelstrom of tensions and intrigues of the Cold War, before the final showdown with the Nazi agent.
With the novel " The Nazi Who Lived Twice " (Newton Compton, 2022, pp. 352, also e-book) Andrea Frediani takes us on the trail of Otto Skorzeny , defined by his enemies as "the most dangerous man in Europe" .
We asked Frediani why he decided to tell the story of such a controversial and ambiguous man:
“Rather, one wonders why no one ever told it in novel form! Apart from Skorzeny, I mean, who wrote his autobiography in 1970 entitled, not surprisingly, "Living dangerously". Without any admiration, of course, for a man who continued to represent a point of reference for a regime until his death. ruthless and for the dreams of revenge of the Nazis disappointed by the defeat, it must be recognized that his existence was among the richest and most interesting of the 20th century.How can you not tell the story of an Austrian SS man who fought on the Russian front, freed Mussolini, disguised Germans as Americans by infiltrating their lines during the battle of the Ardennes, was tried for war crimes, escaped from prison, was in Argentina as Peron's bodyguard and perhaps Evita's lover, was a trafficker arms dealer, landowner in Ireland, trainer of terrorists in Egypt, perhaps collaborator with the CIA, assassin of Nazi scientists on the Egyptian payroll for the Mossad?”
What were the sources that inspired you for the novel?
«For the first part of his life, the one that reaches up to the end of the Second World War, mainly the aforementioned autobiography, which naturally must be tempered with other more official sources, given Skorzeny's well-known tendency to sing his own praises. Many of his exploits are part of the chronicle of the conflict, while for the post-war period and for his role in the Cold War, in the evolution of populist, military and right-wing regimes in Latin America, as well as for his controversial collaboration with the Mossad, the sources they are much more confused, and can be traced in various documents declassified only recently, in memoirs of former secret agents and in journalistic articles».
I know that you are particularly attached to this book: for what reasons? Do you want to tell us?
«There was a couple of other stories I wanted to tell, and rather than writing three separate books I decided to merge them into one volume, which tells the story of three protagonists. In addition to Skorzeny, I wanted to talk about a girl who plays a friend of mine who ended up as a child in an institution run by nuns with educational methods we would be horrified by today. But above all, I wanted to tell the story of my father's uncle, Eleuterio Rea, a young artillery lieutenant who was the victim of one of the satellite massacres of that of Kefalonia the day after 8 September, precisely on the island of Kos, where over a hundreds of Italian officers were executed after the surrender. His body is one of the few that have never been found, so I assumed that, one way or another, he had survived and become a secret agent."
What was it like to tell a story in which you are somehow emotionally and personally involved?
“Actually, I often include personal experiences in my novels. In this case, I did it in a clear way, even going so far as to include, at the end, a cameo of myself – as a child -, a bit like Hitchcock used to do in his films. I never met my great-uncle, of course, but in fiction I made it happen, and it was exciting."
Why is there still so much interest in the events of fascism, Nazism and the Second World War?
«I have written mainly on Roman and medieval history, and I have a degree in medieval history. But I could easily have graduated in contemporary history, and I graduated from classical high school with a term paper on Nazism. If I have written so much about the remote past it is because of editorial requests. Only in recent years have I insisted to the publisher to also write novels set during the Second World War, above all to enter the debates which, today, are more lively than ever on the historical value of Nazism and fascism. Many are heard and read, especially now that the Internet gives everyone a voice: recent history is dealt with by non-experts in an instrumental and ideological way, so it seems right to me that those who have the tools to present an objective and realistic picture of events enter the field".