In February 1943 Germany is reeling from the defeat at the
Battle of Stalingrad. Gunther narrowly escapes death during a
bombing raid on Berlin by the
Royal Air Force. He is now employed by the
Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, investigating
war crimes committed by Allied Forces against Germany. He is sent to
Smolensk, occupied by Germany as part of
Operation Barbarossa, where reports of unexplained corpses have been found in
Katyn Forest. Although the ground is
frozen and therefore cannot be dug, he quickly deduces that there has been a massacre of officers of the
Polish Army by the
Soviet NKVD in 1940. Returning to Berlin Gunther is ordered by the
Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to head back to Smolensk and spearhead operations to excavate the burials as soon as the ground has thawed enough to allow it. Goebbels anticipates a major propaganda coup that can drive a wedge between the Allies. In the meantime, Gunther encounters both
aristocratic Prussian Junker plot to assassinate
Hitler, and a series of unexplained murders of German soldiers in Smolensk. ==References==