 First UK edition | |
| Author | Upton Sinclair |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lanny Budd |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press (US) T. W. Laurie (UK) |
Publication date | 1945 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 703 pp |
| OCLC | 743037 |
| Preceded by | The Presidential Agent |
| Followed by | A World to Win |
Dragon Harvest is the sixth novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1945, [1] the story covers the period from 1939 to 1940.
Early 1939. Lanny Budd, dilettante art dealer and secret FDR agent, is home on the Riviera. Monck arrives on his way to rejoin the German underground. Barcelona has fallen and Madrid cannot hold. Partying among Cape society, has-been Winston Churchill rails against the Nazis and admits he was wrong on Spain; no one listens, except Lanny. Beauty receives a wealthy Baltimore family and their eligible daughter Lizbeth. Wall Street financiers now control Budd Gunmakers; Robbie is now selling Budd-Ehrling warplanes. Goring has bought some planes, but cheated on his deal; Robbie and Lanny, in Paris, navigate the minefield of French high politics, where rightists oppose arming as they want accord with Hitler.
In Berlin, Goring promises to investigate alleged patent and licensing violations. Lanny thinks about Laurel Creston, an antifascist American writer living in Berlin whom he met at an opening; Creston says Lanny is a political "troglodyte," but she suspects something about the handsome American. Robbie, seeking payback, sets Lanny to steal a model of Goring's new supercharger. Monck manages to pose as the unsuspecting Laurel's chauffeur; they drive a stolen supercharger device out of Naziland. Nazi troops occupy Prague. To Rick's disgust, Chamberlain stands down. Earl "Ceddy" Wickthorpe, husband of Lanny's ex-wife Irma and stepfather to Lanny's daughter, is starting to suspect Hitler; he agrees with Lanny that Hitler's cessions of certain Czech land to Hungary show accommodation to Stalin. The UK upper class still prefers Hitler over Stalin; Lanny advises FDR “that is the key to the understanding of all political events in Europe.”
FDR chafes under the U.S. Neutrality Acts. Lanny meets with Nazi sympathizers and art customers in Detroit including Henry Ford and Father Coughlin. Lizbeth and family buy an interest in Budd-Ehrling. Lizbeth is kind, beautiful and rich, but Lanny seeks a marriage of minds. Robbie and Lanny are summoned to D.C. by Professor Alston, who pretends he hasn't seen Lanny for twenty years. He tells Robbie all new warplanes must now be sold to the U.S. military, to be paid via the WPA, nominally a work-welfare agency. Robbie asks Lanny to explain to Goring, whose business Robbie may seek in the future. In Berlin, Monck warns of a Nazi-Stalin pact, and says Laurel is too openly anti-Nazi. Laurel calls, on the run from the Berlin Gestapo. Lanny drives her to the Berghof in Bavaria, where she poses as a psychic to the superstitious Nazis. She pulls it off and may actually have psychic ability. At a private seance, Hitler sexually assaults her. Lanny whisks her to safety in Switzerland, then meets the irresolute Daladier in Paris. In London, Chamberlain accepts the need to back Poland, but the democratic countries cannot nearly match Hitler's spending for arms. The Left is shocked by Stalin's pact. Rick wants to help the UK pro-war effort, but socialist writers are not trusted.
One million German soldiers invade Poland. FDR asks for intel on French and English reactions. American support for neutrality, long unshakeable, is now in turmoil; in England, Ceddy and Irma cease open support for Hitler. Irma asks why England is turning against the upper class; Lanny feigns bewilderment. Churchill is back in Admiralty. Rick's son Alfy is flying Spitfires. Ceddy confides that British intelligence has heard of a plan against Norway; suddenly Norway is occupied. Denmark is also taken, another easy Nazi victory. Churchill's star rises amidst division in England and France. Lanny sees folly; Rick sees poisonous capitalism. Monck says the invasion of France is imminent. Raoul arrives from the Pyrenees; 100,000 anti-Franco soldiers are being held in French concentration camps, but pro-Nazi ministers in the French cabinet block any action. Finally the dreaded blitzkrieg hits France: airfields are bombed, "merchant" ships docked in port spew Nazi troops who are directed by local spies; paratroopers land at key points. German tanks cut the French and British forces in two. Lanny's informally-adopted stepson Denis arrives from Sedan, wounded. He says his officers stood down to allow German "liberation" from France's own leftists. In Paris, Laval confides he will assist Petain with a new pro-German government. The French fascists encourage England to join in capitulation, but new Prime Minister Churchill puts the country on war alert as one million French and British troops retreat to the North Sea. Rick and Lanny sail in a convoy of hundreds of vessels of every description to Dunkirk, to rescue wading soldiers off the beach.
After six exhausting days and nights of rescue, Lanny climbs onto a makeshift pier and heads ashore, hoping to contact German soldiers. His plan is to reach Kurt, and Hitler, to learn Nazi intentions on invading England. He finds an abandoned apartment in Dunkirk, cleans up and puts on fresh clothes. Showing no fear and in crisp German, he heils advancing soldiers and manages to make his way to Kurt and Hitler, who says he will invade as soon as France is taken. Lanny reaches Paris ahead of the advancing armies as De Gaulle and Churchill in London endorse a union of the two countries in the hope of preventing a French capitulation, which fails. France is entirely defeated in a few weeks. At the Tomb of Napoleon, Lanny watches Hitler in deep contemplation and wonders when the world will be free of dictators.
Hermann Wilhelm Göring was a German politician, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.
Adolf Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, committed suicide via gunshot on 30 April 1945 in the Führerbunker in Berlin after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin, which led to the end of World War II in Europe. Eva Braun, his wife of one day, also committed suicide, taking cyanide. In accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery garden, where they were doused in petrol and burned. The news of Hitler's death was announced on German radio the next day, 1 May.
Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl was a German-American businessman and close friend of Adolf Hitler. He eventually fell out of favour with Hitler and defected from Nazi Germany to the United States. He later worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt and was once engaged to the author Djuna Barnes.
The Race to Berlin was a competition between Soviet Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev to be the first to enter Berlin during the final months of World War II in Europe.
World's End is the first novel of Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1940, after World War II had begun in Europe the previous year, the story covers the period from 1913 to 1919, before and after World War I.
Dragon's Teeth is a 1942 novel by Upton Sinclair that won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1943. Set in the period 1929 to 1934, it covers the Nazi takeover of Germany during the 1930s.
Wide is the Gate is the fourth novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1943, the story covers the period from 1934 to 1937.
Presidential Agent is the fifth novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1944, the story covers the period from 1937 to 1938.
This is a timeline of the events that stretched over the period of late World War II, its conclusion and legal aftermath, from January 1945 to 1991.
The following events occurred in May 1945:
Falsifiers of History was a book published by the Soviet Information Bureau, edited and partially re-written by Joseph Stalin, in response to documents made public in January 1948 regarding German–Soviet relations before and after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
After the Munich Agreement, the Soviet Union pursued a rapprochement with Nazi Germany. On 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany which included a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet "spheres of influence", anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, starting World War II. The Soviets invaded eastern Poland on 17 September. Following the Winter War with Finland, the Soviets were ceded territories by Finland. This was followed by annexations of the Baltic states and parts of Romania.
Operation Long Jump was an alleged German plan to simultaneously assassinate Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the "Big Three" Allied leaders, at the 1943 Tehran Conference during World War II. The operation in Iran was to be led by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny of the Waffen SS. A group of agents from the Soviet Union, led by Soviet spy Gevork Vartanian, uncovered the plot before its inception and the mission was never launched. The assassination plan and its disruption have been popularized by the Russian media with appearances in films and novels.
Hugo Johannes Blaschke was a German dental surgeon notable for being Adolf Hitler's personal dentist from 1933 to April 1945 and for being the chief dentist on the staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.
A World to Win is the seventh novel in Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series. First published in 1946, the story covers the period from 1940 to 1942.
The Fall of Berlin is a 1950 Soviet war and propaganda film, in two parts separated in the manner of a serial. It was produced by Mosfilm Studio and directed by Mikheil Chiaureli, with a script written by Pyotr Pavlenko and a musical score composed by Dmitri Shostakovich. Portraying the history of the Second World War with a focus on a highly positive depiction of the role Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin played in the events, it is considered one of the most important manifestations of Stalin's cult of personality, and a noted example of Soviet realism. After De-Stalinization, the film was banned in the Eastern Bloc for several decades.
Grigory Aleksandrovich Tokaev also known as Grigory Tokaty; was a Soviet rocket scientist and politician. Eventually turned anti-communist, he defected to the United Kingdom and became a long-standing critic of Stalin's USSR.
The diplomatic history of World War II includes the major foreign policies and interactions inside the opposing coalitions, the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers, between 1939 and 1945.
The following events occurred in August 1939:
The foreign policy of the United States was controlled personally by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first and second and third and fourth terms as the president of the United States from 1933 to 1945. He depended heavily on Henry Morgenthau Jr., Sumner Welles, and Harry Hopkins. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Cordell Hull handled routine matters. Roosevelt was an internationalist, while powerful members of Congress favored more isolationist solutions in order to keep the U.S. out of European wars. There was considerable tension before the Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 converted the isolationists or made them irrelevant. The US began aid to the Soviet Union after Germany invaded it in June 1941. After the US declared war in December 1941, key decisions were made at the highest level by Roosevelt, Britain's Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, along with their top aides. After 1938 Washington's policy was to help China in its war against Japan, including cutting off money and oil to Japan. While isolationism was powerful regarding Europe, American public and elite opinion strongly opposed Japan.
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