A thriller that takes a while to take off

In contrast to more recent wars, including America’s current entanglement, the carnage of World War II is depicted in books, songs and movies as a Manichaean struggle between titanic forces. Issues of principle and ideology dwarfed those of territory and hegemony. It was a war fought with existential passion, a justified war -- at least on the Allied side -- if ever there was one. A crucible where human behavior sank to grossest depravity and soared to heights of heroism and sacrifice. Not least, a war dominated by four charismatic leaders, each sworn to achieve victory and each prepared to pay the terrible, ever-mounting cost. Four men of almost superhuman vigor and confidence: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and Hitler.

But suppose at least part of this picture is dead wrong, thanks to a crafty airbrushing of the historical truth? Suppose that the Top Four, in particular, were not always the uncompromising commanders in chief they appeared to be then and now? Imagine instead that under the protective surface of a skein of intelligence networks and public misinformation, deals, double-deals and double-crosses were going down.

Realpolitik reigning then as evermore? A scandalous yet plausible scenario. This is the provocative hypothesis at the core of veteran novelist Philip Kerr’s new thriller, “Hitler’s Peace.� Its audacity and iconoclasm constitute the book’s greatest strength.

In 1943, after Germany’s crushing defeat at Stalingrad, the Allies faced the prospect of tremendous additional losses sure to result from a planned Western offensive -- the move that would be required to deliver the death-blow to Berlin. In Kerr’s version of events, by that autumn, on the eve of their summit in Tehran, the Allies were such in name only, with Roosevelt and Stalin each prepared to slice ground from under the other two by forging a separate peace with Hitler. Meanwhile the Fuhrer, having survived more than 30 assassination attempts, thought himself Germany’s anointed Messiah, justified in all things (including selling out everything his soldiers had died for) to preserve some version of the Reich and his power within it.

As the plot builds to a climax at Tehran, Kerr illustrates these possibilities in a door-stopper of a thriller whose 448 pages could nicely kill a plane ride from Washington to Moscow. The historical dice are well-shaken. But just when did the term “thriller� start to become a one-word oxymoron? Long-winded, stiffly expository conversations between men in suits, a new character introduced on nearly every other page and awkward shifts in point of view don’t exactly make a reader reach for heart medication. Nor do clanking similes and jokes (“It was love at first sight,� one character remarks. “But that’s because I was too cheap to buy glasses.�) Nor do the perils of a terminally self-satisfied protagonist, Princeton professor Willard Mayer, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a taste for sweet martinis.

A thirtysomething prodigy in philosophy (go figure!) and seductology (ditto!), Mayer takes a wartime assignment on Roosevelt’s intelligence staff. As the genre demands, he is half Jewish and of German descent, which makes his multiple free associations with Catholicism -- a Nazi dining hall “might have passed for a common room in a Roman Catholic seminary� -- well, weird. There’s more of the messy, gripping human condition in Mayer’s German counterpart, but brilliant young Gen. Schellenberg fades well before the end.

Far-out anachronisms provide their own sort of thrill. In the ‘40s, would, or could, Roosevelt and Churchill have peppered their private speech with the F-word? Would Hitler have gorged on corn on the cob in ‘43, when corn was being raised in Europe only for animal feed?

That said, author Kerr glows as an impersonator. Kim Philby, Chip Bohlen, Harry Hopkins, Himmler, Von Ribbentrop and others of the era have lively walk-ons. Roosevelt shows a repulsive side. Hitler, syphilitic or not, comes off as less rotten than Stalin. Churchill, “smoking a seven-inch Romeo y Julieta,� lurks in the wings, perhaps plotting to foil the deal-makers’ plots. And once arrived in Tehran, in its final fifth, “Hitler’s Peace� hits full stride. The magical rhythm of fiction, of seamless story-telling, takes over. But why did it take so long?

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Kai Maristed is the author of the novels “Broken Ground,� “Out After Dark� and “Fall.�