The Versailles Legacy
(Work in Progress)
Read the First Chapter
Books
(In order of historic sequence)
‘The Officer’s Code’ follows the career and conscience of Eric Foster, a.k.a. Erich von Schellendorf, an English boy who chooses the wrong way.
In 1912, failing at Cambridge in pre-law, Eric Foster rebels against his father’s rigid plans for his future as a barrister with the family’s London law firm. In his search to control his own destiny he falls in love with the daughter of a minor German baron. To prove his worth to Brigitte’s aristocratic family, he exploits old family connections of his German mother to buy a commission in an elite Prussian cavalry regiment. By joining the most respected, most powerful stratum of Imperial German society, he opens the way to marry his beloved only months before the outbreak of World War One, the war to end all wars.
In the German elections of 1930 an extreme right-wing party wins 107 seats in the Reichstag, and a new party leader steps into the national headlines.
Lieutenant-Colonel Erich von Schellendorf is too preoccupied to notice.
~ As a quartermaster he secretly works to rearm the German army, contrary to the Versailles Treaty.
~ As a cavalry officer he is preparing the national equitation team for the next Olympic Games.
~ As an ex-patriot Englishman he is being blackmailed by British Military Intelligence.
But… most important …
~ His greatest desire is to free his beloved Britt from a deep psychological depression, left over from the Great War, which prevents her from living with him as his wife.
A war story, a spy story, a double love story, and a compelling ride through World War II, seen from the "other side".
In Berlin in January 1939, Major-General Erich von Schellendorf meets Celia Ashton at the British Ambassador's annual New Year's Levee, and steps into a casual affaire. By August, on the eve of Hitler's inevitable war, they are dangerously in love.
Caught on the brink of war…
~ between his German wife who will not live with him and the Englishwoman who loves him…
~ between his English roots and his life in Germany…
~ between his love of the Army and his hatred for Hitler… Erich finds himself cornered by the appalling reality of Nazi control over the country, and by the realization that out of uniform he has no individual identity. Compelled to pursue his own troubled conscience, he maintains a delicate balance of honour through the most destructive war in history.
Hitler’s war is over. Lieutenant-General Erich von Schellendorf of the German General Staff is a prisoner of war. Exhausted by the collapse of every aspect of his life, deeply disturbed that he could not moderate the utter destruction of Germany, his only compensation is that he has managed to survive the most destructive war in history.
But now that the guns have stopped…
~ British Military Intelligence want his inside knowledge of the Nazi war.
~ German political conspirators want him to help secretly plan the new German army.
~ The Americans want him as a presumptive war criminal. In going forward he must ultimately answer his own conscience, and face his personal ghosts.