Colonel Lewis Morgan

The novel’s protagonist, Colonel Lewis Morgan, is a middle-class British officer. He was a awarded a medal in 1945 for his excellent service in the war and is considered by many to be a hero. When the novel opens in 1946, we find him in British-occupied Hamburg, in charge of the de-Nazification and reconstruction program. As governor, he is responsible for rooting out lingering Nazi sympathies and rebuilding the war-torn city of Hamburg. He sees aiding the German civilians who were reduced to poverty, homelessness, and starvation after the Allied air raids as key to his role as governor. It is this latter portion of his mission that he focuses on, to the frustration and incredulity of his colleagues and wife, who cannot fathom his sympathy for a people so recently the enemy.

What makes Lewis unique is that he views the thousands of Germans who were...