"A graveyard in contemporary Israel has an unlikely visitor. The elderly gentlem
an from Japan, a former news correspondent, lays a bouquet of flowers at the tom
b of one Adolf Kamil. For he remembers the tale of three Adolfs: Kamil, a Jew wh
o grew up in Kobe, Japan, the son of a baker; Kaufmann, only child of a German c
onsul stationed at that port city and his Japanese wife; and the F'uhrer with wh
om the Far Eastern nation made common cause. A briskly paced political thriller,
in this first part Message to Adolf takes us from the Nazi propaganda victory o
f the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the ravaging flames and atrocities of World War II
. The disastrous education of Adolf Kaufmann in the ways and prerogatives of the
master race begins"
