“Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds”: A Review of Hannah’s War by Jan Eliasberg

 

 (New York, Boston, London: Back Bay Books; Little, Brown, 2020). ISBN: 978-0-316-53744-5.

As one looks back on the many watershed moments in U.S. history—the result of decisions made by a small group of White men that cost at times millions of lives around the globe—the country’s role in World War II and its aftermath are perhaps the most hotly debated (with Vietnam an equally strong contender) because of the late-war actions of dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Operation Paperclip/the start of the Cold War. America and Russia bringing Nazi scientists—many of whom would not have faired well at Nuremberg—into the fold of the fledging military–industrial complex that Eisenhower and Kennedy tried so hard to forestall set a tone for immoral action on the global stage, the repercussions of which are still being felt.

Science, and scientists, are at the heart of Hannah’s War, which is A-list historical fiction centering on a Jewish Austrian scientist named Hannah Weiss, an analog for real-life scientist and discoverer of nuclear fission, Dr. Lise Meitner. Because she was female and Jewish, Meitner was omitted from the Nobel Prize given to her male, Gentile partner.

Weiss is working at Los Alamos under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, having escaped Germany in the early days of the rise of the Third Reich after doing the bulk of her foundational work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. “Jew Physics,” as termed by the Nazis, who saw it as illegitimate, led to an exodus from and then purging of the Institute, to the (thankful) detriment of the Reich’s science, especially when it came to the A-bomb, which they were (again thankfully) unable to develop.

In what we might call the Prologue or Teaser in this carefully crafted three-act novel (more on that soon) we meet Hannah Weiss as she is being transported to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas—as the test date for the A-bomb approaches—by a hardnosed Army investigator named Jack Delaney.

Who might just have fallen in love with her.

If this sounds like the logline or Pixar pitch for a big-budget Hollywood thriller, it’s no accident. Eliasberg, although this is her first novel, is a veteran TV, stage, and film director, whose credits include some of my all-time favorite shows: Miami Vice, Crime Story, Ghost Whisperer (my wife is a psychic medium), Supernatural, and Criminal Minds. She also directed the Rutger Hauer, Paul Giamatti, Natasha Richardson film Past Midnight. She is a graduate of Yale Drama.

Eliasberg is not just a master of historical research incorporation and plot structure: she is a talented writer. Although we are cautioned as writers against using serial adjectives, Eliasberg crafts beautiful sentences that fly in the face of this warning, especially early on when setting the scene: “The sun burned a hole in the haze; blistering sand sizzled against the electric-blue sky in a crackle of pure white.”

Having written four historical fiction novels (with two on the way end of this year) and having been a director, screenwriter, and playwright specializing in true stories, I readily see the immense research Eliasberg incorporated into the novel (the descriptions of Los Alamos and the surrounding desert are breathtaking) and the exquisite structure of the story itself, which employs flashbacks as only a veteran writer can write them, with fluidity and the perfect release of information at the perfect time to illuminate the present problem. 

Another hard to master and fraught with danger device Eliasberg uses to great effect is the switching of voices. Hannah has chapters where she speaks in first person, while the rest of the novel is third person omniscient. These are strategically placed, serving to strengthen an opening quote by Dr. Meitner on the moral obligations of scientists—the novel’s core theme.

Eliasberg also uses communiqués to deliver information efficiently without bogging down the page-turning pace. They also add authenticity to Jack Delaney’s story.

Being that Hannah’s War is a thriller, I’m being careful not to give the best of the plot away, although I have to say there are secrets aplenty—micro and macro, as any historical fiction piece based on a very well-known, well-explored event must have. Eliasberg uses few actual people from history, although her descriptions of Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves are spot on. One could easily see James Cromwell and Rod Steiger inhabiting the characters Eliasberg has crafted. Your choices for actors might be different, but I bet they’ll be just as easy to see.

Oppenheimer, who had lovers and friends who were members of the Communist Party USA, regretted bringing the bomb to life and the quote I used to title this review is from the Bhagavad Gita, which he spoke immediately after the Trinity test at Jornada del Muerto (“Route of the Dead Man”) on July 16, 1945.

The spy thriller aspect of Hannah’s War is also straight from history. Not all scientists believed that development of the A-bomb was moral, and they were met with suspicion. There are lingering debates to this day about potential Russian spies at Los Alamos at this time. In an instance of synchronicity, I was editing an academic paper on this subject as I was reading the book.

In summation, Hannah’s War has numerous layers for the fan of historical fiction thrillers: the role of love and human need in the midst of war (a central feature in most historical fiction pieces, especially for TV); the rise and fall of the Nazis; the controversy over whether it was necessary to use the bomb against Japan (not only were Hiroshima and Nagasaki left alone prior to the A-bomb drop, the demonstration of American nuclear prowess in weaponry was for the benefit of Russia, not the already broken and on the verge of surrendering Japanese); the fact that America, contrary to the narrative crafted in many history books, knew about the concentration camps and could have bombed the railroad tracks leading to them and didn’t and, additionally—as related in this book—turned away at least one ship full of Jewish refugees during the war, many of whom were sent back to Germany to meet an unjust fate.

So, don’t expect to be comfortable in a camp chair on America’s supposed moral high ground, an illusory position often used as the prevailing party line on the U.S. role in World War II. All of the main and secondary characters in Hannah’s War are complex—fictitious and real. Eliasberg does not allow you to be a passive reader for a second. Was developing the bomb right? Where does morality supersede nationalism? When did America morally cross the line? What were the anti-Semitic politics at work in America and in America’s attitude toward Jews in Germany and elsewhere that have been all but buried? The list goes on.

I mentioned the communiqués. One that ends the novel (called, in structural terms, the Tag) signaled to me a possible sequel.

I truly hope I’m right.