Winter is a 1987 novel by Len Deighton, which follows the lives of a German family from 1899 to 1945. At the same time the novel provides an historical background to several of the characters in Deighton's nine novels about the British intelligence agent Bernard Samson, who grew up in Berlin after World War II.
It is a time of turmoil. A time when the horrors of war engulf and extinguish the Germany that is. Harald Winter had two sons at this time: Peter and Pauli Winter, two very different brothers, whose lives—whose destinies—are forever bound to the madness that lies ahead.
From their sheltered childhood through their violent coming of age in the Great War... from the chaos of 1920's Berlin to the spreading power of Hitler... they are wrenched apart by conflicting ideals and ambitions. Blood brothers, now mortal enemies, they are trapped in a holocaust that threatens to tear them - and the world - to pieces.
Since the entire story unfolds as a flashback from the time of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after the Nazis' defeat, the readers know that both would make a career as lawyers, but in widely divergent directions: one would enter the Nazi Party and think up various "legal" ways to legitimise their crimes, while the other brother would be a staunch anti-Nazi, go into exile and come back to Germany after the war as a member of the American war crimes prosecution. But the reader cannot be sure, until deep in the book's plot, which is which.
For readers of Len Deighton's three trilogies about the MI6 operative Bernard Samson (Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match; Spy Hook, Spy Line, and Spy Sinker; and Faith, Hope and Charity), this is the story that started it all. The novel provides the historical background to the several of the characters in the nine novels. It does this by introducing the reader to a minor character at least in this novel - who is a British intelligence agent in the notional "deeper cover" of a German laborer. The character, we learn, is Brian Samson, Bernard's father. It is also made clear that Brian loathed the Nazis and, by association, all Germans.
The book contains an atmospheric description of a Zeppelin raid on London.
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