A prophetic novel from 1933 surprisingly gets a second life and offers valuable lessons / “Once it takes root, extremism gives young people a group of people to hate”

The novel, which takes place during the rise of Nazism, shows both how extremism takes root and the moral strength needed to resist it.

“In which direction is the political situation asking?”, asks the editor-in-chief of the culture section of The Guardian, Charlotte Higgins, in a dialogue with a well-known American. “The US is in a very similar situation to that of Germany in 1933-1934. And we have to ask ourselves: could 1936, 1937, 1938 have been avoided? That is the situation we are in. You can try to say that fascism could not arise in the US. But I think it is still unknown,” he replies.

His answer evokes for the journalist a novel written in 1933 and released in 1934, but which was republished just in April of this year: “Crooked Cross” by Sally Carson. It is a novel “with an extraordinarily prescient account of the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany” and which, since its re-release, has been surprisingly successful, she writes in an opinion piece published in The Guardian.

The action of the novel begins in December 1932 and takes place in Bavaria. The focus is on a middle-class family consisting of gentle and loving parents and three grown-up children. They celebrate Christmas with other relatives, and “everything is warm and lovely and full of promise: the tree with glass globes and candles, the paper-wrapped presents, the carols, the roast goose,” writes Charlotte Higgins, who reports that that fairy-tale atmosphere is interrupted for readers by a thrill—”Helmy's photograph of Hitler sitting on the piano.”

The Guardian journalist says that one of the remarkable aspects of this book is its immediacy. It was written on the spur of the moment and published quickly. The six-month period it covers was one of major political change: Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis gained an effective majority in the Reichstag, the Dachau camp was opened, and Jews were barred from public office.

At the beginning of the novel, the characters greet each other with a cheery “Grüss Gott” (“God bless you”). At the end, one of the characters greets his acquaintances in the street with “Heil Hitler”, and the local church bells have been altered to play the tune of the Nazi anthem, Horst Wessel's Song. Also, at the end of this short six-month period, the loving and close-knit family circle that is at the center of the novel's action has fallen apart.

“Reading this novel, with the perspective that Carson herself did not have, is a remarkable, sometimes painful experience. For us in 2025, everything she describes is heading towards an inexorable conclusion: the war, the Holocaust. For her, these were nightmares not yet imagined”, writes the journalist The Guardian.

Despite the fact that he had no idea where Hitlerism would end up, the novel has an unwavering moral core, and what is happening in Germany to the Jews and the communists is simply horrible, according to the worldview presented in the novel. Carson wrote – as early as 1933 – about the grim stories emerging from Dachau: “People were disappearing suddenly, without trial, without explanation”, and “prisoners were half-starved, harassed, treated inhumanly”.

Not all foreigners wrote this way about Hitler's Germany at the time, and Crooked Cross doesn't get any closer to Hitler than the photograph on the piano. All political events take place at a distance, in the background, and are understood only through the lens of their effects on the family on which the action focuses.

In some ways it's a conventional, middle-level novel with a somewhat serious tone, but its focus on ordinary people makes it insightful about Nazism, its spread and appeal, writes Charlotte Higgins.

According to the journalist, the novel written in 1933 shows us how extremism, once it takes root, offers young people a purpose, an occupation, a story, hope and clearly defined roles. It also gives them a group of people to hate, blame, punish, and pretty quickly beat and kill.

“The resonances with today are impossible to ignore. If only we all had Carson's insight and moral clarity,” concludes the journalist.

In Romania, the novel republished in 2025 is only available in English and can be ordered from the Cărturești bookstore.