NSA - National Security Agency

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novel
title NSA - National Security Agency
Original title NSA - National Security Agency
country Germany
author Andreas Eschbach
illustrator Cover design: Johannes Wiebel , punchdesign, Munich
publishing company Bastei Lübbe
First publication 28th September 2018

NSA - National Security Office is a novel by Andreas Eschbach from 2018.

action

The novel takes place in an alternative world in which the analytical machine invented by Charles Babbage was further developed into an electrically operated computer at the end of the 19th century. This was followed by the establishment of the National Security Office (NSA for short), which monitors and stores all data traffic in the so-called "world network" , even during the imperial era . Its headquarters and main setting of the novel are in Weimar .

After the seizure of power of Hitler in 1933 that recognize Nazis the possibilities that could bring them the given total control of the world network, at first not.

The main characters in the novel are Helene Bodenkamp and Eugen Lettke . Bodenkamp is one of the best programmers (a classic woman's job in the novel) of her time. During her work at the NSA, she regularly has a remorse because she is helping to expose opponents of the Third Reich. She is regularly criticized by her family, especially her mother, for not wanting to get married or have children.

Lettke is the purebred Aryan son of a world war hero, an analyst in the NSA and a sadist . Marked by being tricked into playing strip poker with marked cards in his youth , he is obsessed with taking revenge on the girls involved in the action. To this end, he illegally uses his options at the NSA to gain access to compromising data or to falsify it, which he uses to blackmail women into sexual consideration. Later he looks for numerous other, completely innocent victims.

One day, an old acquaintance named Arthur appears at Helene's, who has deserted from the Eastern Front ; should he be found, he is threatened with death by shooting . Helene's friend Marie and her husband Otto Aschenbrenner willingly hide him in a well-built hiding place under a haystack in their barn. They had actually prepared the hiding place for two Jews, who then did not show up.

During the Second World War, the NSA fought to keep it, and Lettke in particular was afraid of being drafted into the war. Helene finds condoms in his office (possession of which is punishable), some of which she steals in order to be able to sleep with Arthur without becoming pregnant.

At this time, programs were being written at the NSA to look for clues about Jews in hiding from the numerous data on the population . The first analyzes how many calories per capita were consumed in the Third Reich and shows above-average values ​​for some apartments: on the occasion of Heinrich Himmler's visit to the NSA in 1942, the function was effectively demonstrated and Anne Frank and other people hiding in the Prinsengracht 263 found.

When the program is further developed and the purchase of suspicious items is analyzed, Helene fears for Arthur. She obtained illegal administrator access and uses a program she wrote to change numerous data across the empire that would have led to many other hidden people, including Arthur, being discovered.

While searching for the last of the women who had humiliated him at the time and who emigrated to the United States , Lettke came across the American plans to build the atomic bomb on computers at the University of Berkeley . He is personally praised for this by Hitler, who accuses German scientists such as Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn for not considering building such a bomb themselves.

When the NSA comes under the Reich Security Main Office , the manipulations and private research are revealed. Both Helene Bodenkamp and Eugen Lettke are immediately suspended. Helene comes under house arrest. In her fear that Arthur might now be discovered, she agrees, to the delight of her parents, to marry the SS officer Ludolf von Argensleben, who has been courting her for a long time. In return for the marriage, Ludolf, who actually disgusts Helene, arranges Arthur's departure to Brazil , which he succeeds.

Lettke, whose mother was killed in an air raid, had to report to Berlin after his suspension in order to be sent to the combat mission in Stalingrad . Thereupon he makes the decision to kill himself . He quartered himself in the Hotel Kaiserhof to shoot himself there with his father's pistol. An artificial intelligence developed at the NSA, however, considers his behavior to be conspicuous and the police show up at the hotel. Lettke shoots himself in the head, but the suicide attempt fails: He is still viable and conscious, but cannot make contact with the outside world. Since he was classified as an Aryan class AAA, he is regularly used for sperm donation for the Lebensborn program and from then on vegetates in this state.

Helene tries to flee to Arthur in Brazil. However , this is thwarted by a new method of face recognition . While she is still in prison, London and Moscow are destroyed by German atom bombs; the USA concludes a peace treaty with the Third Reich and the Second World War is over. Shortly afterwards, Helene learns that Arthur committed suicide under the impression of the German victory.

Helene can no longer stand the unbearable coexistence with Ludolf on his Brandenburg estate and the fear of getting pregnant from him and writes offensive texts to Adolf Hitler in the "German Forum". As a result, Ludolf can no longer prevent her from being deported to the Auschwitz II concentration camp, as she intended , where forced labor determines her life. Ultimately, however, she is taken on by her former supervisor at the NSA, Dr. Danzer's personality changed by means of a brain implant , where Danzer works with Josef Mengele . After the operation, Helene turned into a National Socialist who loved Adolf Hitler ardently.

reception

Reviews

The novel received consistently positive reviews. It is often pointed out how frightening and depressing the act is because it can easily be transferred to reality:

“NSA - National Security Office” impressed me very much, even if I would have liked to throw the book into the corner out of disgust for Lettke. The thought experiment succeeds and the novel also convinced me linguistically. Eschbach goes very far in its consequences and remains shockingly realistic, so that the end is almost unbearable. "

- Inkhain.de

Awards

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ tintenhain.de , accessed on March 13, 2019
  2. ↑ Vote now on the "WDR Audience Award - My Audiobook 2018"
  3. ↑ The "WDR Audience Award" goes to: Kai-Magnus Sting
  4. ↑ KLP 2019 award winners