Hart's War

Rating:
Summary: One of his best novels
Review: Thomas Hart is a World War II navigator held as a prisoner of war in a German camp who prior to being in battle he was a law student at Harvard University. One day one of the prisoners is brutally killed by persons unknown. The accused is Lincoln Scott, a Tuskegee airman, who was a victim to the murdered man's taunts. Hart is given the duty of defending Scott in a military tribunal held inside the prison. This case is going to be very important to Hart since it is going to affect everyone involved at the camp.

Katzenbach does an excellent job with characterizations. You get to know every prisoner involved and get to know a little about his life story. The courtroom drama was well executed and I liked the way everything turns out at the end. You can appreciate how hard Katzenbach researched his material for this novel. He made the P.O.W. camps interesting and I got to learn a lot about the Tuskegee airmen. These were African-American pilots who were trained to fly and protect bombers. These men did not get the credit they deserved and they got a bum rap. I am glad that know they are being honored and getting the recognition they so rightfully deserve. This book should be considered one of Katzenbach's best novels. I hope he writes more historical thrillers in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Skip the movie, read the book.
Review: Sometimes movie producers just buy a title. Yeah. I know. It's hard to believe. Or Hart to believe.

So in this case the John Katzenbach story of a UCMJ Military trial for murder in a German prison camp suffers, not so much from the writing, which is excellent, but rather from the movie, which wasn't.

This is a psychological thriller painted on the canvas of the atrocities in a NAZI prison camp. Tommy Hart, recently of a law school venue, finds himself defending a Black Pilot for murder.

The unrestrained sense of racism of the troops against First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, ironically set in the heart of the Aryan nation, WWII Germany, is a tragic point and counterpoint.

In many respects it is an action courtroom thriller. But Katzenbach's success is that he shows the reader it isn't. It's more than that.

This is a great read for anyone interested in WWII. Like some of James Brady's novels of the Korean War, it weaves facts with the storyline rather seamlessly.

A good read. Certainly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Far fetched
Review: There are almost too many clichés in this book to make it believable, but it seems that the author received most of his material from his father who was a WWII veteran. I would like to know how much of the Hart's War is true form a WWII prisoner point of view. The bumbling Germans remind me at times of Hogan's Heroes, hiding radios in coffee cans and repeatedly shouting, "There has never been an escape from Luftwaffe 13". However, it is very interesting to learn of the day to day lives of WWII prisoners in a German camp, so the book is not a complete waste.

Rating:
Summary: Legal Thriller With A POW Twist
Review: Hart's War tells about a particular experience in Tommy Hart's life as a prisoner in a German Prisoner of War camp. He is enlisted by the American Senior Officer in the camp to act as defending attorney for Lincoln Scott even though his qualifications consist of an incomplete law degree to his name. Scott is a fellow prisoner who has been charged with murdering another prisoner, he's an outsider in the camp and is the only black man.

The race issue is a major theme within the book, and Hart and Scott realise that the Germans aren't their only enemies during the trial, with the prisoners threatening to take matters into their own hands.

The fact that the trial takes place within a Prisoner of War camp adds an intriguing dimension to this book. The added complexities involved with living as a prisoner of war while trying to defend a man accused of murder makes this an extremely thought provoking story. Yet as the trial gets underway Hart becomes convinced that there is much more to the case than meets the eye. Evidence is tampered with, the Germans show an extraordinary amount of interest in proceedings and even the American Commanding Officers seem to have their own agendas. Meanwhile, the future continues to look bleak for Lincoln Scott.

I found this to be a gripping book that had me constantly dwelling on what life must have been like for the men who suffered through their captivity during the war. The scenes within the escape tunnel were so vivid that I was actually experiencing mild feelings of claustrophobia just reading about it.

A good courtroom drama combined with a thorough description of life in a POW camp adds up to a very compelling book.

Rating:
Summary: A supremely satisfying story of many facets
Review: At first look, the basic plot of HART'S WAR is nothing extraordinary. A black man is framed by a racist populace for the murder of an ostensibly popular white man. And, of course, a novice lawyer, with zero experience in capital murder cases, is assigned as defense counsel for the trial. Ho-hum. The premise is so threadbare that I normally wouldn't have read beyond the jacket. But, hang on a minute ...

In this multi-faceted thriller by John Katzenbach, the place is Stalag Luft 13, a Luftwaffe prison camp for allied flyers shot down in WWII. The accused, Lincoln Scott, is a fictional black pilot of the real-life, famed 332nd Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen), who was downed while heroically defending a crippled B-17 bomber. He's the only Negro prisoner in the camp, and a aloof loner by choice because, you understand, he distrusts whites. The victim, Trader Vic, is a respected bomber pilot from Mississippi that had become the stalag's expert trader in forbidden goods. Lt. Tommy Hart, the navigator of a downed B-25, stands for the defense. Tommy, who left law school to join the Army Air Corps, has essentially finished his law studies while as a POW by reading every legal text he can lay his hands on. The Senior American Officer, Col. MacNamara, and the camp commandant, Luftwaffe Oberst Von Reiter, only want to get Scott's court-martial wrapped up quickly without undue embarrassment to either the Americans or the Germans.

This novel unfolds on many levels. It is, of course, a courtroom drama. But it's also a war drama, a detective drama, a prison drama, and an escape drama. Young Hart is clearly the reluctant, white-hatted good guy, but the moral and ethical issues revealed as he squares off against the rest of the camp remain elusively gray. Who, for instance, is the most evil, black-hatted bad guy? Even the battle-maimed and bitter camp adjutant, Hauptmann Visser, is a man possessing a certain honor, and doing his duty as he perceives it. And, when the identity and motive of the real killer are uncovered, would you, the reader, condemn and convict? This is a question that Tommy himself must ultimately answer as his personality is hammered to maturity in the forge of "growing up".

I liked this book very much, finishing it over a 4-day business trip to DC. I especially liked the irony presented by the 84 hats, an "in-your-face" consequence thrust into Tommy's consciousness, the unforeseen result of a decision he, essentially a non-violent person, had to make to survive.

Rating:
Summary: Far fetched
Review: There are almost too many clichés in this book to make it believable, but it seems that the author received most of his material from his father who was a WWII veteran. I would like to know how much of the Hart's War is true form a WWII prisoner point of view. The bumbling Germans remind me at times of Hogan's Heroes, hiding radios in coffee cans and repeatedly shouting, "There has never been an escape from Luftwaffe 13". However, it is very interesting to learn of the day to day lives of WWII prisoners in a German camp, so the book is not a complete waste.

Rating:
Summary: Hart's War Story Told.
Review: The piece of work deserves the five star rating I have given it. John Katzenbach has rally excelled with this story of struggle, might and cruelty of Allied POW camps in Nazi occupied Europe.

Racial descrimination is the catalyst for this novel. A young AfroAmerican, Lt Lincoln Scoot, has been set up to take the fall for the murder of a well known but disliked Army seargent, a racist bigot, so as to divert attention away from a plan for a mass escape.

An equally young 2nd Lt Tommy Hart (who in civil life studied law at Havard)is sent on a wild goose chase with the help of a Canadian lawyer in the same situation to free the accused.

They soon discover that the trail is a complete set up by the highest ranked Allied officer so as to shake off suspicion by their captors, a moderate commandant and a sadistic 2nd in charge.

You can take a short cut and watch the movie or read the more fuller version with all the bits the movie left out.

Rating:
Summary: Good twist on a murder mystery
Review: One would have to ask oneself upon reading this if it is primarily a POW story which features a murder, or a murder mystery that happens to take place in a POW camp. In this case, I'll take it as primarily a POW story with a twist, and it is that twist that makes it good reading.

First of all, any POW story set in World War II would have to have something different to it. This type of story was done as completely as it possibly could have been with "The Great Escape" many years ago. We know that in a WWII camp there are going to be escape committees, tunnels, and various people providing various roles to complete the project. We also know that while it is the Germans' job to prevent escape, Allied ingenuity is going to somehow give it the old college try.

So having a murder take place among the POWs, probably committed by another POW makes it interesting. For while it would be the Germans that do any firing squads, it is up to the prison population to take care of the trial. One of the most interesting parts of the book are when Germans themselves are called as witnesses, and their observations on American justice are examined.

Added to this interest is the race card. It was true that black airmen fought in WWII amid a lot of bigotry. As it was pointed out, many in charge were so skeptical that it could be done (in those times), that those that passed the training became a crack unit of soldiers. But this being over 50 years ago, there were more then that would not believe this possible, and that adds to the hatred when the person accused of the murder happens to be a black airman.

This is overall a good read, although when all the facts are finally presented, I'm not sure what happened can even be called a murder, given the circumstances of war.

Rating:
Summary: The Movie and Book are Quite Complementary!
Review: First of all, the book Hart's War, written by John Katzenbach, son of Nicholas Katzenbach, the Attorney General in the Johnson Administration, differs in many ways from the resulting movie. Each stands on its own, and my review of the movie stands.

The book is intriguing and will provide information which will enrich viewing the movie. Details differ in many ways from the screenplay, which in this writer's view, is a good thing. Some characters in the film are amalgamations of persons in the book, but the book is enriched with details that might pass one by in the audio-visual drama. For example, the phrase "goon up" is only heard off-camera, except when spoken by Kommandant Visser, and his pronunciation sounds like "guten Abend" (I believe he is a Romanian actor, and a great cast for the characters of Visser and von Reiter in the book). Another example, the term "kriegie" which POWs use for one another passes by very quickly in the movie, yet is a designation full of layers of meaning (based on the German word "Krieg").

It is not necessary to detail the plot--it is a murder mystery like the movie, but the tempo is quite different and the book itself is a masterpiece of historical fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but kinda slow
Review: After Just Cause, this book seems to be the only readable book J.K. had written. But it went too slow. When I read it, I was kinda POW too and got phobia. Anyway, the movie has adopted and reduced a lot of the roles in this book, but still fine. The only drawback is that boring Bruce Willis. Don't know why this guy got 20 million dollars only with his poker's face, rigid posture and nothing else ever came of him in every movie he PLAYED.