I have always been fascinated and simultaneously repelled by Heydrich and his ilk. Having read several biographies of the monster, I bought this one. I have always been fascinated and simultaneously repelled by Heydrich and his ilk. Having read several biographies of the monster, I bought this one.
The antithesis of a straight narrative biography, I discovered it to be quite appealing and interesting, not just in his reflections on Heydrich, but the literature, culture, and historical milieu surrounding the man. The conceit is an unnamed novelist obsessed with researching Heydrich in hopes of writing about his murder as a thriller. He decides instead to provide a running commentary on what he finds rather than invent scenes and dialogue.
"Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich", ("Hhhm is literally translated as "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".) My background in German would idiomatically translate it differently: "Heydrich was Himmler's brain." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." Assassinated by some British trained Czech agents, German vengeance was swift and terrible. A town was chosen at random (seemingly, but who knows) and its inhabitants killed and the town completely leveled.
There are trenchant comments and quotes throughout: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art....Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a façade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder:
As the SD extends its web, Heydrich will discover that he has an unusual gift for bureaucracy, the most important quality for the management of a good spy network. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! In every color. On every subject. Heydrich gets a taste for it very quickly. Information, manipulation, blackmail, and spying become his drugs.
One interesting tidbit I did not know was that Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. He had hopes of downing an enemy plane, but once, even after becoming head of the SD, he flew his Messerschmidt 109 with a group of German fighters over the eastern front. Sighting a Yak, he assumed it would be an easy kill and swooped down only to discover that while the Yak was slower, it was extremely maneuverable and the Yak pilot led him directly over a Russian anti-aircraft battery. He was shot down and there were many nervous Germans hoping he was either dead or would make his way back to their lines. He knew too much. When he did return two days later, he had earned an Iron Cross, but Hitler forbade him from ever flying any combat missions again.
Heydrich was assassinated (it took him a few days to die, of sepsis, not the actual attempt) just a day before he was to leave for Germany to be reassigned France. Whether the assassination accomplished anything other than his death and the deaths of thousands of people in retribution, is for ethicists to ponder. ...more
Second volume in the Accursed Kings series. You can read the description to gain an idea of the plot. Fun stuff. A medieval House of Cards. On to voluSecond volume in the Accursed Kings series. You can read the description to gain an idea of the plot. Fun stuff. A medieval House of Cards. On to volume 3....more
And you thought House of Cards was full of nasty intrigue. The Accursed Kings series is probably Druon's most popular work and I was surprised how mucAnd you thought House of Cards was full of nasty intrigue. The Accursed Kings series is probably Druon's most popular work and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Perhaps my expectations were low. I like historical fiction with a strong basis of accurate historical information and a grounding in detailed cultural and quotidian activities of people. The Iron King, first in the series, held my interest.
The series consists of seven novels that concern the French Kings of the 14th century. It begins with the burning at the stake of the remaining Templars by Philip the Fair. As if his reign wasn't already beset with enough scandal and intrigue, with his dying breath, the Grand Master of the Templars visits a curse on Philip and those associated with his reign including the Pope to the thirteenth generation. Nogaret, the King's counselor is the first to die suffocating from poisoned candles, followed by Clement and then Philip himself of a cerebral hemorrhage. In the meantime, the equerry lovers of Philip's sons' wives (Louis of Navarre will soon succeed Philip as King of France) are entrapped by Isabelle, Philipp's daughter and Queen of England. The two are horribly executed by the King who then dies while on a hunt. The wives are sent off in exile to play a prominent role in the next book. It's all good fun.
Now on to The Strangled Queen, second in the series....more
I was reading a biography of Julius Caesar after having watched some episodes of “Rome,� a rather bawdy but interesting version of the rise of Octavi I was reading a biography of Julius Caesar after having watched some episodes of “Rome,� a rather bawdy but interesting version of the rise of Octavian in which Cicero plays a prominent, if cheesey role, so I knowing Harris through some other books, I grabbed this one.
Told through the eyes and memory of his servant, Tiro, supposedly the inventor of shorthand, the mechanism for perfect recording of the actual speeches, Cicero’s place in the history of oratory (Demosthenes taught that content was less important than delivery) and role in the growing conflict between the “plebes� and aristocracy (“the fish rots from the head down) is secured. A real person, Marcus Tullius Tiro, was Cicero’s slave then freedman, who wrote about Cicero, since lost, and collected many of Cicero’s works.
“Imperium� is a Latin word (not that I remember it from my high school Latin) which can be roughly translated as “power to command,� that refers to the power of the state over the individual, but also implies the power gained from wealth and ownership of “stuff,� i.e., the aristocracy.
There are some startling images of historical veracity. For example, Crassus, bringing his army back to Rome, crucified 6000 prisoners, slaves, along more than 300 miles of the Appian way, spacing he crosses about 17 to the mile, as a warning to any future Spartacus who might wish to revolt against the imperium. (From the Third Servile War - )
Harris shows an intimate knowledge of Rome and its history managing to portray all of it through the legal battle between Cicero and the great legal mind of Hortensius (who defends the role of rhetoric in Cicero’s Hortensius) the famous advocate in a trial in which Cicero defends a friend from Gaius Verres, a disreputable and thoroughly corrupt Senator (all historical figures.). Corruption, as we would understand it, was rampant and institutionalized. Votes were for sale; in fact, there were bribery merchants and it took a great deal of money to gain and remain in power, “voters never forgave a cheapskate.�
What I found quite remarkable is how Harris’s Roman Senate and political world so mirrors our own.
This is not a book for those who like flesh-slashing, cut-them-up action stories. Rather, it’s an intricate legal novel of startling historical veracity (as far as I can research) that really held my interest. There are some wonderful turns of phrase. While making a comment about hagiography, Tiro says simply it is the “distorting light of the future on the shadows of the past.�
According to the author’s note at the end of the book, there was a Wehrmacht plot to assassinate Hitler in 1938. That event serves as the foundation fAccording to the author’s note at the end of the book, there was a Wehrmacht plot to assassinate Hitler in 1938. That event serves as the foundation for this novel. I hesitate to called it alternate history for reasons that will become obvious at the end.
The protagonist, Conrad is an idealist and a zealot. We first meet him during the Spanish Civil War where he and two other comrades have just shot three members of the Spanish brigade who were about to rape some nuns. The Catholic Church had always symbolized Nationalist repression. Unfortunately, they were recognized later by a fourth man whom Conrad had only nicked and later shoots both David and Harry in the back during a charge against the Fascists.
So right away several moral dichotomies are presented: did the members of the Spanish Brigade deserve to die to prevent the rape? Did Conrad and his friends deserve to die for killing their allies? Did their actions alter historical events?
Scene shift to several years later. Conrad is now heavily involved as go-between in a plot orchestrated by Admiral Canaris and some higher level German generals and the British government. All fear Hitler's foray into Czechoslovakia but for different reasons. You have to suspend some normal rational thinking as Conrad, speaking fluent German, seems to easily move in the higher levels of British government and, with his aristocratic German friend Theo, German generalship.
I prefer Ridpath’s Fire and Ice series of novels, but the book did hold my interest. ...more
Downing begins his second novel in the John Russell series with a girl being sent by her Jewish farm family to Berlin where they expect things to be bDowning begins his second novel in the John Russell series with a girl being sent by her Jewish farm family to Berlin where they expect things to be better. She arrives at the Berlin Siliesian Station (now known as Berlin Ostbahnhof, it was a main station in East Berlin) expecting to be picked up by her uncle, but instead is met by someone in his stead. She disappears.
John Russell is on his way back from the United States where he has been visiting with his son, Paul, and obtaining an American passport (it’s complicated, but explained in Zoo Station, the first volume - they should be read in order). While on the return voyage he receives a telegram informing him that his girlfriend, Effie, has been arrested by the Gestapo. Russell realizes it’s because they want something from him.
John’s ex-brother-in-law, Tom, whom he trusts implicitly, reveals the niece of one of his Jewish employees has disappeared and her uncle had been killed by storm-trooper thugs shortly before she was due to arrive. Russell, having written a story about private detectives a year before promises to find one who might be able to look for the girl. The detective is shut down by the police so Russell embarks on his own search.
And so begins another in this excellent series, part spy novel, part mystery. Downing’s choice of a journalist as the protagonist is an excellent vehicle for portraying the events the events surrounding Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia and the provocations leading up to the invasion of Poland. Russell observes all these events “from the ground� so-to-speak which gives them an intricacy and immediacy not often present in a history book, which by its very nature, has to take a broader view. Yet at the same time, Downing provides that as well through the interactions of Russell with the Gestapo and the British foreign office.
Downing must have done an immense amount of research to get the details of ordinary life down so well. (Remember Pathe newsreels?) An excellent series....more
David Downing has written a series of novels about an English journalist in Berlin during WW II. In Zoo Station, the first of the series, John RussellDavid Downing has written a series of novels about an English journalist in Berlin during WW II. In Zoo Station, the first of the series, John Russell, is in Danzig when he’s approached by a Soviet NKVD agent offering him a lot of money for a series of articles that portrayed Naziism in a positive light. Russell is an Englishman, a former Communist, who fought in WW I, having married (now estranged) a German woman. His son, Paul, born in Germany, is a member of the Hitler Youth.
Russell suspects the Russians might be laying the groundwork for a future non-aggression pact. Then the Nazis approve, having their own motivation. Both sides want him to report whatever he might learn about the other side’s interests. So Russell is walking a tight-rope as the Russians demand more (no surprise), but Russell uses that for his own ends.
Some reviewers have complained there is no action and that the book is just a litany of Nazi evils with too much journal-like writing. I disagree. What Downing has done is to present the horrifying atmosphere and story of a people gradually being subjugated (often quite willingly) by a group of thugs. At what point are we willing to resist and what motives lead us to participate or push back. There’s the story of the mother who discovers her retarded daughter has been pegged for euthanasia by the state as part of their ethnic-cleansing and the father who reports his Down-Syndrome children precisely because he wants the child to disappear. The recurring theme is the failure of ordinary people to resist.
What makes this series (at least this first book that I’ve read in the series) interesting, as with Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther books, is the sense of place, the paranoia and fear of living in a repressive regime, and the difficulties faced by relatively ordinary people during that time of crisis. I’m reading Traitor’s Gate by Michael Ridpath, which has similar themes.
It’s 1941 and Bernie is back in Berlin from his work with the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the intelligence arm of the SS (the Kripo, Kriminalpolizei, or GIt’s 1941 and Bernie is back in Berlin from his work with the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), the intelligence arm of the SS (the Kripo, Kriminalpolizei, or German equivalent to CID, were under the SD.). Having been exposed there the the truly awful ethnic cleansing and retribution of the “special action� squads who were killing rather indiscriminately, he’s considering suicide. Always skeptical of Naziism, he’s dragged into an investigation of a railway worker who had been murdered and then left on the tracks to be dismembered by a train. It gets complicated when he saves a bar-girl from what he thinks is a rape, only to discover she’s linked to Czech terrorists being sought by the Gestapo. There may be a connection as well to the man on the tracks.
But then things get worse when General Heydrich demands his presence in Prague to act as his quasi-bodyguard. (Reinhard Heydrich, also known as the “Butcher of Prague� was probably one of the least sympathetic characters to come out of Nazi Germany.) When one of Heydrich’s adjutants is murdered in a locked room, Bernie gets permission from Heydrich to be as impertinent as necessary in order to solve the crime. Here the writing sparkles with wit as Bernie gets to mouth off and intimidate all the SS generals. To complicate things even further, Bernie learns everyone except the adjutants and himself, has been invited to the Prague Castle because they are under suspicion as being a traitor running a radio link with the British.
I listened to this as an audiobook. Very well read (except for some German mispronunciations -- I do wish they would get readers who are at least quasi-fluent in foreign language words that appear in the books they read ), but I found one peculiarity. Throughout the book, which was not translated, but written in English, Hitler is referred to as “the Leader,� a literal translation of “Der Führer.� I think we’ve all become so accustomed to the German title that using “leader� somehow grates. Especially when other words, like Kripo, Kirche, Herr, Kommissar, Wehrmacht, and others are left in German.
Very entertaining. I’ve read many of the Bernie Gunther series and like them all, although the Berlin trilogy, the first three, a.k.a. Berlin Noir, are perhaps the best of the bunch. This is listed as #8.
If you have never seen Becket, the movie, with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, you must. It's based on this play by Jean Anouilh that I had never reIf you have never seen Becket, the movie, with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, you must. It's based on this play by Jean Anouilh that I had never read. I ran across the LA Theaterworks production on Audible and gave it a try. Wonderful production and play. My only complaint is that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the voices to determine who was speaking. If you can, get a copy of the printed play to read along with the audio.
I won't bother with any kind of plot summary. Everyone knows (or should know) the story of Henry II and his stormy relationship with Thomas Becket. It has ethnic and religious conflict; dispute that remain unsettled to this day.
Another great movie related to Henry II is Lion in Winter, also with Peter O'Toole. Get both of them. You will not be disappointed....more
This classic starts off with a bang. Henry Faber has two identities. The one in London is a quiet man who keeps to himself on the top floor of a houseThis classic starts off with a bang. Henry Faber has two identities. The one in London is a quiet man who keeps to himself on the top floor of a house being sublet by a widow. She takes a fancy to him one evening and with her duplicate key happens to walk in on him just as he's getting the transmitter out to send messages back to the Abwehr. He has to kill her.
Faber (Called Die Nadel for his use of the stiletto) is an elite German spy, inserted into England before the war and now embarked on the most important task of his career, trying to determine the most likely landing point of the Allied invasion.
Follett shifts viewpoints between Faber and the British counter-intelligence team (the trick they used to determine Faber’s identity was quite clever,) and Hitler’s general staff The book is all about deception: Faber’s, the turning of German agents into double agents, and the Ghost Army.
Pillars of the Earth was amazingly good, this one not quite so, but well worth the time....more
It's 1721, the great South Sea Bubble has collapsed**, and a mapmaker, heavily in debt, is persuaded by his debtor that he must travel to Holland and It's 1721, the great South Sea Bubble has collapsed**, and a mapmaker, heavily in debt, is persuaded by his debtor that he must travel to Holland and deliver a package. Turns out it contains a green book listing all those government officials who had been bribed to help investors make money from the bubble.
The Goddard books I have read all have some sort of multi-continent chase in them and this one is a whopper. It takes place in England, Holland, Switzerland, Germany and Italy as several groups pursue the rogues who stole the "green" book, which itself had been purloined. Shades of Louise de la Valliere and deception abounds on all sides with poor Spandrel caught in the middle. The Captain was my favorite character.
My only gripe with the book is that I had no sense of place. Here was a marvelous opportunity to present the results of research into traveling conditions, housing, how people lived, etc., in the early eighteenth century. Instead the focus seems solely on the characters and the chase. This may also be one of those books in which the audiobook narrator enhances the reading. Very well read.
**The story of the South Seas bubble is fascinating and well-recounted in this wikipedia article . How little times have changed....more
This is the first in a series about Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight, who is now working as a finder, the Tracker he is called; someone who discoversThis is the first in a series about Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight, who is now working as a finder, the Tracker he is called; someone who discovers culprits or things people have lost. Living in rather abject poverty, he remains scrupulously honest, insisting that his self-appointed servant, Jack, return purses he has picked. Crispin had unfortunately allied himself with the Lancastrians when Richard II became king and his conduct being considered treasonous lost everything except his life, thanks to the intervention of his Duke.
Guest is hired by a local merchant to follow his wife and discover whether she has been unfaithful. Guest does so and witnesses her adultery. Before he can make his report, his employer is murdered in a locked and sealed room. Not having had a chance to collect his fee, Crispin is then approached by the man's widow who wants to engage him to find a relic, a cloth with the image of Jesus. When in its presence, people cannot lie.
The plot inevitably thickens and soon involves threats to control England's economic future, a battle for control of the cloth the intersection of assorted other sub-plots.
I'll read more in the series, but I knocked off a couple of the infamous stars, as I felt the plot lines remained indistinct as did the rather confusing battle scene on the bridge at the end of the novel. Nevertheless, I liked the gritty realism of 1384 and the book is certainly as good as many other historical mysteries out there. ...more
Readers under the age of fifty-five can move on. Vietnam holds an intractable power over those of us, mostly males, who were of draftable age from ar Readers under the age of fifty-five can move on. Vietnam holds an intractable power over those of us, mostly males, who were of draftable age from around �65 to �71 or so. But it affected many of our parents, too, and may have had effects on policy decisions many years later by people who were able to avoid the quagmire.
An excellent, if terribly depressing, novel about Vietnam. Matterhorn is the code name of a hill a company of Marines is asked to defend and establish a base. The hills in the area are named for Swiss mountains. Marlantes’s protagonist, Mellas, is an ambitious fresh lieutenant. We’re never quite clear of how Mellas got there, and his motives are confused. He’s angling for the position of company commander, but he’s also increasingly dismayed by the incompetence of his superiors (something that really pissed off some Amazon reviewers who mostly were some of those.)
Some rather horrible scenes, one where the group has just set up an ambush in the middle of the night when the man out front is mauled and killed by a tiger. In another scene, a marine gets a leech up his urethra, which would be funny except it’s horribly painful and life-threatening.
Apparently, the book was originally 1,600 pages long, finally cut to about 600 and the book takes the reader along to a deployment in Vietnam forced to accompany the troops as they , in Sisyphean fashion, slog along taking the hill, losing it, retaking it, rebuilding previous positions, in what inevitably becomes a futile effort to get anywhere.
“No, the jungle wasn’t evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares. It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away.�
Reviews on Amazon all compliment the author for the book’s extreme realism.
There were the inevitable negative reviews complaining the book is anti-Vietnam (what was he supposed to do, make a John Wayne movie?), the officers were portrayed as buffoons (only in part), horribly written (utter nonsense), used the “f� word too much (I mean really, these are Marines in horrible conditions,) wrong portrayal of the fighter jocks (like Marlantes is only allowed have a positive view despite his experiences,) the bomb-bay door on an F-4 was wrongly described, etc., etc. There is an assumption on the part of several that if Marlantes experience in Vietnam didn’t mirror theirs exactly, it must be rubbish. Having read many Vietnam memoirs, each has a distinct perspective that reflects their own experience. Marlantes, btw, earned a Navy Cross, no slouchy thing. His hero is also not the most selfless, but you get the distinct feeling that the upper echelons were more interested in glory for themselves at the expense of their troops who were maneuvered as bait, so they could kill more VC. Casualties counts were manipulated to look smaller than they really were. A company's losses could be made to look less devastating by describing the action as a battalion level operation.
Marlantes unflinchingly describes the racial tensions that were becoming increasingly pronounced by 1969 when he was there. "You cannot imagine how racist the army was in the 60s," he says. "Out in the field, we were held together by fear, but once the troops were back at base the old divisions, black and white, would come back."
Mellas, who has much in common with Marlantes: an Ivy League graduate from rural Oregon who adheres to the values of his childhood rather than the smart, east coast radicalism of his Princeton roommates. Mellas volunteers for the Marine Corps and, wet behind the ears, takes command of a platoon in the north-west corner of South Vietnam during the rainy season of 1969, just as Marlantes did. "All second lieutenants in history are the same," he says. "I was just a young white kid from Oregon commanding these working-class kids from the ghetto."
Triage aboard the hospital ship and on the ground was the inverse of what we would expect. Those most severely wounded were put aside to later. The idea was to first fix up those who could return to the field and then attend to those who would never be able to. This created a dissonance in the hospital staff who realized their job was to simply fix a killing machine so it could go on killing rather than necessarily save lives, although they certainly did lots of that.
He was demobilized in 1970 after being wounded during battle. When he returned he was challenged by some protesters, who accused him of being a killer. Six weeks before he had indeed been killing as many as he could. "The Vietnam war was a defining experience in the US," he says. "It made this incredible divide, even within families. The Democrats were anti-war and the Republicans supported our troops. It shaped a generation, at least, and conditioned our response to things like Iraq and Afghanistan."
Marlantes has some interesting things to say about the reticence of veterans to talk of their experience at
This is a wonderful book. It has the evil banker, the corrupt sheriff, the camaraderie of outcasts, a manic killer, and a nice little love story and tThis is a wonderful book. It has the evil banker, the corrupt sheriff, the camaraderie of outcasts, a manic killer, and a nice little love story and the vast plains of North Dakota and Montana. I love historical novels that portray an era with lots of detail. That this book was also a mystery was just an added bonus.
I have always loved going to annual thresher shows here in the Midwest, watching men (rarely women) lovingly fire up huge boilers on old tractors that would be used to power monster threshing machines. A substantial amount of manual labor was still required to collect the cut wheat from the reapers, haul it to the thresher, fork it on to the belts, bag up the grain, and then burn the huge piles of straw chaff.
Burning became part of an economic problem as farmers, during the boom years, abandoned livestock and other crops for King Wheat. As they planted fence row to fence row they had little use for wheat’s by-products and this led to fields cleared of stubble or any kind of ground cover. (I recommend the The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan for a sobering account of effects of this detrimental process.)
Charlie runs away from his alcoholic father’s farm where he has been maltreated. He becomes a “bindlestiff,� one of the men who followed the thresher machines with his belongings in a “bindle� or backpack which included a bedroll and whatever other meager belongings the migrant worker might have. On his way to locate the threshers (usually just by walking toward the smoke from straw fires in the distance), he passes a strange sight, an odd looking man pitching straw from a pile on to the ground. Thinking nothing of it, he continues on. The reader knows he has witnessed the burial of Mabel, another of a serial killer’s victims.
During a spectacular contest that pitted “a Garr-Scott 18-50 double-simple steam engine pulling a six-bottom John Deere plow against a Reeves undermounted complex 15-45 (said to be highly underrated) pulling an eight-bottom plow of Reeves manufacture, made for the specific tractor,� --I love that kind of detail-- Mabel’s body is disinterred (the new plows cut deeper than the older ones.) The coincidence of Charlie running away and Mabel’s death are too much for Tom Hollander, the local sheriff, who sets out to find him by following the thresher crews as they move across the plains of Wyoming and Montana. Charlie is taken in by Avery, an itinerant machinist who leads a group called the Ark, which follows the crews fixing machines and providing sanctuary for social outcasts. Charlie discovers he has a true talent for braising, fixing, and running the huge machines.
Meanwhile, the Windmill Man, meanders throughout the area,indiscriminately killing and assuming identities, a veritable psychopath, assuming he is is doing God’s work. ”The search and the season wore on. People worked, made money, ate bountiful meals, nursed aching muscles, made babies, incurred horrible injuries, went to church, loved the land sowed, reaped, and harvested. And here and there, one at a time, a few people disappeared.�
I loved passages like the following that displayed an intimate knowledge (or lots of research) into the idiosyncrasies of individual brands of machines that make me long for the thresher shows every year where old men will talk lovingly of these huge monster smoke-belching machines. �The Gaar is know for getting very last kernel out of the wheat. That’s why they have the rooster for their label You know, no dropped kernels left for the hungry bird? But that also means it’s sort of like a cow. Every now and then, you have to stop and just let it chew.�
An excellent combination of history, sociology, and mystery. I received this book as an advanced reader copy. That it was was free affected my opinion not a whit....more
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