A Man Without Breath

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.

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