Hans Hellmut Kirst (5 December 1914 – 23 February 1989) was a German novelist and the author of 46 books, many of which were translated into English. Kirst is best remembered as the creator of the "Gunner Asch" series which detailed the ongoing struggle of an honest individual to maintain his identity and humanity amidst the criminality and corruption of Nazi Germany.
Biography
Early years
Hans Hellmut Kirst was born in Osterode, East Prussia. Osterode is today Ostróda in Poland.
Kirst joined the German Army in 1933 and served as an officer during World War II, ending the war as a First Lieutenant and Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffizier. Kirst was a member of the Nazi Party, stating later that he had "confused National Socialism with Germany". The Return of Gunner Asch (1957), What Became of Gunner Asch (1964) and Party Games (1980). ("Party Games", NOT part of the Gunner Asch series)
Other major novels by Kirst set during the Third Reich and World War II include Officer Factory, about the investigation into the death of a training officer in an officer school near the end of World War II, Last Stop, Camp 7, the story of 48 hours in an internment camp for former Nazis, The Wolves, a tale of crafty resistance in a German village, and The Nights of the Long Knives, about a fictitious 6-man squad of SS hit men. All of these novels featured humor and satire, with leading characters often shown positioning themselves as outspoken, ardent Nazis during the Third Reich era before effortlessly flipping to become equally ardent in their claims to have been anti-Nazi and 100% pro-democracy or pro-communist after the tide turned.
Kirst also wrote about the July 1944 attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in Aufstand der Soldaten (1965), which was translated into English as Soldiers' Revolt.
Kirst's non-World-War-II-themed novels included The Seventh Day (1957), a nuclear holocaust story that received worldwide acclaim and was dubbed "so convincing, that it doesn't seem like fiction at all". Using a wide array of viewpoint characters, most of them Germans, it describes – step by step and day by day – how in just a single week a chain of small incidents escalates into bigger incidents, small-scale fighting, all-out war, resort to nuclear arms and finally a worldwide nuclear exchange with Europe totally destroyed by the Seventh Day and "the Days of Humanity were numbered". Symbolic characters are a pair of star-crossed lovers, a West German boy and his East German girlfriend, who spend the entire book desperately searching for each other finally to find and run towards each other but before they can touch a nuclear explosion vaporizes both of them in a split second.
Die letzte Karte spielt der Tod (1955) is a fictional account of the life of Soviet spy Richard Sorge, published in the United States as The Last Card and in the United Kingdom as Death Plays the Last Card.
In 1965 Kirst was nominated for an Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America for his 1962 book Die Nacht der Generale, translated into English as The Night of the Generals. He was also a member of International PEN and The Authors Guild.