Liepmann, Heinz Murder - Made in Germany: A True Story of Present-Day Germany

Originally published in Amsterdam in 1933(where the author was living in exile) under the title Das Vaterland: Ein Tatsachen Roman aus dem heutigen Deutschland; first published in English in 1934. This is one of a series of 1930s works of fiction listed in this bibliography; though these works predate World War 2, they clearly point towards the coming conflagration.

This unsettling, indeed horrifying, German maritime novel dates to the early days of Nazi rule. Murder - Made in Germany follows the officers and crew of the German steam trawler KULM when they return to their home port of Hamburg after a three month long voyage. The KULM had left Hamburg the day after Christmas, 1932 and returned on Mar. 28, 1933. The vessel carried no wireless, so news of the Nazi complete takeover of power in Germany did not reach them until the ship were nearly docked. Liepmann’s plot line is rudimentary: he simply follows the men, individually, as they attempt to come to grips with the brutal Nazi rule during their shore leave. Nearly all run afoul of the new totalitarian regime; some suffer nothing “worse” than a beating at the hands of local brown shirts, while others are jailed in town and/or sent to the brutal Wittmoor concentration camp located on an island in the Elbe River. The novel concludes with one character’s escape from Germany hidden in the hold of an American cargo ship. As for the rest of Liepmann’s tragic characters, one can only assume that nearly all subsequently perished in Nazi Germany. The Times Literary Supplement of Feb. 22, 1934 noted: “The book is not a detached piece of fiction, but neither is it a special pleading hastily disguised as fiction. Herr Liepmann has a story – a revolting and horrifying story – to tell, and he tells it with terse power and without comment.”