Literature / A Small Town in Germany

A Small Town in Germany, first published in 1968, is the fifth novel by John le Carré.

Set in and around the British Embassy in Bonn, capital of West Germany, the story centres on the disappearance of Leo Harting, Second Secretary at the Embassy. Technically, Leo's only temporary staff, but he's had his temporary contract renewed annually for twenty years. And yet Leo's never been vetted or approved by London. Now, however, he's vanished - and so have forty-three of the embassy's confidential files.

Alan Turner is sent to Bonn by the Security Department to untangle the mystery, track down Harting and retrieve the files. But there are riots in the streets, with a new right-wing populist seeking power, and delicate diplomatic negotiations underway about the EEC and Britain's place in Europe. Turner quickly discovers that the Embassy is far more interested in sweeping Harting's activities under the carpet than in actually finding the missing man.

Unlike le Carré's previous novels, A Small Town in Germany doesn't directly feature the Circus, George Smiley or any of the characters from previous books. There is one passing reference to a familiar name, but other than that there's nothing to connect the story to the other novels.

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A Small Town in Germany provides examples of the following tropes:

• Book Burning: Near the start of the novel, there are reports of the Movement storming the British Library in Hanover and forcing the librarian to throw her books on the fire. At the end of the story, Turner witnesses another round of book burning at a Movement rally.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Fräulein Eich is mentioned as a librarian at the British Library in Hanover, who dies of her injuries after being assaulted by a mob of Karfeld's far-right supporters. Initially, this just seems to be a way to illustrate the political tension and anger on the streets as the Movement grows in power. Then, near the end of the book, it's revealed that she was actually Leo Harting's old lover Margaret Aichmann, who had since changed her name, and was killed after helping Leo try to assassinate Karfeld.
• Classified Information: All forty-three of the files Leo stole are considered classified. Turner's investigation is complicated by the fact that one of them was the Embassy's only 'Green' file, the most secret document they had - and the Embassy won't tell Turner what it was, only that it was categorised as "Conversations Formal and Informal".
• Continuity Nod: Unlike previous John le Carré spy novels, George Smiley never appears and there are no direct references to the Circus. However, one comment mentions Steed-Asprey taking a new role in Lima. Call for the Dead introduced Steed-Asprey as Smiley's mentor and recruiter.
• The Determinator:
  • Alan Turner is described this way by Lumley, and his subsequent actions live up to it. Meadowes's references to what happened in Warsaw suggest he had a similar uncompromising approach there. Despite the uncooperative embassy and the others trying to stop him, he is absolutely determined to find Leo and unravel the mystery, and remains undeterred until the very end.
    Lumley: You'll find him and Shawn won't. Not that I admire you for that. You'd pull down the whole forest, you would, to find an acorn. What drives you? What are you looking for? Some bloody absolute.
  • Leo Harting himself is an uncompromising example, eventually sliding towards Well-Intentioned Extremist territory. Everything he does is because he will not let Karfeld escape justice. Even if that means stealing the Chancery's files and secretly using their resources to find proof. Even if it means repeated attempts to assassinate Karfeld once the statute of limitations expires.
• Downer Ending: Leo's lured out and killed by Siebkron's men. Karfeld's Nazi past may never be exposed (and, even if it is, he's now protected from prosecution) and the Movement is still thriving. Siebkron is still secure in his ministry job, shielding his ally Karfeld. And the British government has accepted that they may need to make a deal with Karfeld and has started secret meetings with him. Turner retrieves almost all of the stolen files, but that's the only positive thing about the ending.
• Honest John's Dealership: One of the ways Leo embeds himself into the chancery is by selling remarkably cheap goods - such as electric hairdryers - to the staff and their families.
• Honey Trap:
  • Myra Meadowes, daughter of diplomat Arthur Meadowes, was seduced by a Polish student when Meadowes was based in Warsaw. Meadowes acknowledges that "they put him up to it" and the man was a communist agent, but thinks he was sincere when he offered to marry Myra. Turner's involvement ensured there was no such marriage.
  • Leo Harting seduced both Jenny Pargiter and Hazel Bradfield to help him retain and improve his access to the Chancery. Turner speculates that some of what Leo felt for Hazel was genuine, but it's left unclear.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Karfeld's Nazi past is never exposed, he's past the deadline for prosecution, and Leo's attempts to assassinate him fail. At the end of the book, The Movement is still growing in popularity and Karfeld's political career is thriving.
  • Ludwig Siebkron has successfully shielded his ally Karfeld from those hunting him. He still has his position at the Ministry of the Interior, despite sending his men to attack Turner and arranging Leo's death.
• The Mole: Leo Harting spent twenty years making himself indispensable to the Bonn chancery, doing all sorts of extra jobs, playing the organ in the chapel and obtaining gifts and cheap items for his colleagues. And as he was temporary staff in a very junior position - with his annual contract renewed every year but never made permanent - London barely knew he existed and he never went through security vetting. Then he vanished with forty-three confidential files. He's not actually a communist mole, though - instead, he's a Nazi Hunter who's been trying to bring down Karfeld before the statute of limitations lets him go free. He loses all faith in the embassy and vanishes when he discovers that Bradfield, the head of chancery, has been secretly meeting with Karfeld.
• Nazi Hunter: Turner and others initially assume that Leo Harting is The Mole, a communist agent who's now fled back to the East. Everything he's done and everything he's stolen is actually to help him bring down Karfeld, a Nazi scientist who evaded prosecution when Leo, Aichmann and Praschko were 'headhunters' investigating war crimes for the British.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The Movement, the populist political movement led by Karfeld, is a far-right nationalist campaign with uncomfortable echoes of Nazism, and their presence on the streets adds to the tension and complications around Leo's disappearance. Their marches often become riots and, from the very start of the book, there are references to people being assaulted or killed by the Movement's more violent fringes. Karfeld himself is quick to say that Nazi antisemitism was wrong, but then claims it was no worse than Cromwell's treatment of the Irish or the USA's treatment of Black and Native American people.
• Tested on Humans: During World War II Karfeld, as Doctor Klaus, supervised lethal poison gas experiments at the Hapstorf chemical research station. The test subjects were prisoners with Jewish ancestry. Despite their best efforts, Leo and his colleagues could never conclusively link Karfeld to the crimes - until, years later, he wrote his doctorate thesis on the effects of certain poison gasses on the human body.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Turner gets to hear one of Karfeld's grand speeches at a Movement rally near the end of the story. It starts by condemning the Nazis' treatment of the Jews, and talking about how Germany's current situation is only reasonable, given the war. But that's immediately subverted as Karfeld mocks and exaggerates things, suggesting the Nazis were no worse than Britain and America's own racists - and emphasising that Germany's punishment is because it lost, because Germany was weak, not because it was wrong. It's all delivered in a calm, dry, reasonable manner.
• Spy Fiction: It's closer to a detective novel than a spy story in some ways, with Turner interviewing Chancery staff and hunting for clues. But at its core, it's still a spy novel. Harting is suspected to be The Mole and has absconded with confidential files, and Turner is still a British government agent visiting under a cover, hiding his real role from the German government.
• Taken Off the Case: Bradfield arranges for Turner to be sent back to England when his investigation starts attracting too much attention. Turner doesn't catch his flight, though, and stays with the investigation.
• Title Drop: Peter de Lisle uses the title phrase late in the book, when talking about the nature of Bonn.
  Peter de Lisle: The trouble with dates is that they create compartments in time. Thirty-nine to forty-five. Forty-five to fifty. Bonn isn't pre-war, or war, or even post-war. It's just a small town in Germany.

• Two Aliases, One Character: Fräulein Eich, the Hanover librarian killed by a mob of Karfeld's supporters at the start of the book, was previously Margaret Aichmann, Harting's co-worker and lover, who Turner tries to track down through much of the story.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Leo Harting is prepared to do whatever's necessary to expose Karfeld's Nazi past and bring him down. He lies, steals and seduces at the Embassy to get more information. He misrepresents his enquiries to German ministries as official Embassy business, then intercepts their replies. And when the statute of limitations means that Karfeld will escape justice, he decides to assassinate him instead.

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