War and Remembrance

Plot

Characters

The Henrys

• Victor "Pug" Henry — the main protagonist, becomes captain of the heavy cruiser after his prospective command, the battleship, is sunk at Pearl Harbor. He commands the ship until late 1942, when at the Battle of Tassafaronga the cruiser is sunk by Japanese long-range torpedoes. Henry is not faulted for the loss of his ship, but instead of receiving another naval command at once, is sent back to the Soviet Union to observe the effects of Lend-Lease; he observes the Siege of Leningrad and the privation of the Soviet home front. From there, he is used by Harry Hopkins as an observer. In the novel, he assists in the Tehran Conference of 1943, and then serves as a troubleshooter for landing craft production. In this capacity, he travels to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and is forced to work with Colonel Harrison Peters, his rival for Rhoda's love.
• Rhoda Henry — The war, and their time apart, puts a strain on Victor Henry's marriage to Rhoda. She ends her relationship with Palmer Kirby, only to fall in love with Harrison "Hack" Peters, an army colonel. Both the novel and the miniseries show her drinking problem getting worse.
• Warren Henry — Victor's elder son continues to serve as a naval pilot until his death on the last day of the Battle of Midway. He scored a hit on one of the Japanese carriers in the first day of the battle and his rear gunner damaged one Zero. His death affects the Henrys deeply. Victor's thoughts parallel the lament of King David for his son, Absalom.
• Byron Henry — Victor's younger son starts the war as an officer on the fictional submarine USS Devilfish. When the captain, Branch Hoban, breaks down under the strain of an attack, the executive officer, Carter "Lady" Aster takes over and leads the attack. Aster becomes commander of the boat, with Byron his executive officer. While on leave in Hawaii, Byron is aware that Janice, his brother's widow, is acting strangely. He does not know that she is having an affair with Aster.
• Janice Henry — The wife of Warren Henry. After the death of Aster she disappears from the miniseries; in the book she is given a few sentences more. Janice ends up with a politician.
• Madeline Henry — Victor and Rhoda Henry's daughter; wife of Simon Anderson.

  The Jastrows

• Aaron Jastrow — Aaron Jastrow is a Jewish American expatriate professor who has lived for years in Siena, Italy. As the book opens, Jastrow, his niece Natalie, and Natalie's son Louis are aboard a steamer in Naples, waiting to attempt the illegal and perilous sea voyage to Palestine. Then Jastrow meets a former student, Werner Beck, now in the German diplomatic corps. Beck offers them his protection, and they leave the ship to return to Jastrow's Siena villa, where it appears safe, although the Italian government refuses to give them visas, while making paper-thin excuses. Beck initially pretends sympathy and friendliness, so he can solicit Jastrow in broadcasting Axis propaganda. After Jastrow refuses, Beck makes veiled threats, so Jastrow, Natalie and Louis escape to Elba, then Corsica, and finally to Marseille, in Vichy France. After the Allied landings in Africa in November 1942, Germany occupies Vichy and closes the borders. Natalie, Louis and other trapped Americans are sent by the Vichy government first to Lourdes and then to Baden-Baden, Germany, to be part of a diplomatic exchange. Aaron falls ill and he and Natalie and Louis are transferred to Paris, where Jastrow is treated at the American Hospital. Beck reappears in Paris, again threateningly requesting that Jastrow make the propaganda broadcasts. Jastrow, Natalie and Louis attempt to flee back to Baden-Baden, but the Germans stop them and the three are soon after sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Adolf Eichmann has Jastrow savagely beaten after he refuses to join the so-called "Council of Elders". Jastrow acquiesces and takes a major role in the beautification, a Potemkin village to convince the Danish Red Cross that conditions are excellent in the "Paradise Camp." When his usefulness is ended, he is sent to Auschwitz. The Council members thought that as "prominents" they would be spared, but all were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Jastrow's body is cremated with millions of other Jews, but despite the degradation of his body, his soul was rekindled with what it means to be a Jew. He leaves behind a diary, A Jew's Journey, which is quoted throughout the book.
• Berel Jastrow — Berel, Aaron's cousin, is captured with the Red Army in 1941 and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner of war. He is transferred to a work kommando led by a Jew named Sammy Mutterperl, and the two participate in the construction of the Birkenau section of Auschwitz. Mutterperl himself is planning to escape with evidence of the murder of the Jews at Auschwitz. The kommando's task is to cover up the early massacres of Jews, and to insure that Germany benefits from any items of value the victims were carrying during the early, "crude" killings; their actions involve digging up the corpses, searching them, then burning all traces of the bodies. After the horrors of endless exhuming of the dead, and cremating the half-decayed corpses, Sammy loses his mind, grabs a weapon and kills five German guards while they wait on a train platform, before the remaining guards kill him. Berel, shortly after, escapes and joins the Czech underground in Prague. He slips into Theresienstadt when he learns that his cousin Aaron and his niece Natalie are there, and later helps them get Louis Henry out of the camp. In the mini-series, Berel dies during a massacre as he covers Louis to protect him from the bullets. In the book, there is no definite description as to how Berel dies. At the end of the book, there is a suggestion that he is killed while coming to retrieve Louis Henry from the Czech farmer he originally hid him with. Berel is the moral center of War and Remembrance. He bears witness to the worst acts of the Nazis, while still managing to maintain his deep Jewish faith and his love for his fellow men.
• Natalie Jastrow Henry — along with her son and uncle, travels through various routes across Europe, trying to get home while evading the German government. She refuses a chance to escape with Byron to Lisbon, then ends up in Theresienstadt. She becomes a member of the Zionist underground, and only when threatened with the cruel murder of Louis does she agree to take part in a beautification for the benefit of Red Cross inspectors. Another uncle, Berel Jastrow, enables Louis to get out of the ghetto. Natalie is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the same transport as her uncle, but survives and is sent to recover in a U.S. military hospital. She and Byron reunite, and Byron then locates Louis and brings him to Natalie as the book ends. In the book it implies that Natalie and Louis, when she is well enough to travel, will return to the United States to live. In the mini-series it is not so clear-cut and in fact Avram Rabinovitz, an adamant Zionist who in the book pushed hard in most conversations for Natalie to bring Louis and live in Palestine either with or without Byron, tells Byron that Natalie was talking about moving to Palestine.

  Others

• Leslie Slote — At the beginning of the war, Slote is attached to the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland. He receives a photographed copy of the Protocol for the Wannsee Conference from a German opponent of Hitler. Slote devotes himself to trying to prove to the American government what the Nazis are doing to the Jews but his superiors refuse to believe it, both on logistics and the idea any civilization could do something so monstrous. When the State Department proves to be apathetic, he resigns and becomes a member of the OSS Jedburgh paratroopers. He parachutes into France to help the resistance. He later infiltrates the German-held port of St Nazaire, but is betrayed and killed.
• Hugh Cleveland — Popular radio personality. Madeline Henry has become his personal assistant and, more recently, his lover by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. He disappears from the novel and the miniseries shortly after the Battle of Midway, Madeline finally leaving him when she becomes convinced he will never divorce his wife. He also shows a pro-Soviet bias in the book and the miniseries which he did not in the first book or the first miniseries.
• Armin von Roon — The fictional Brigader General Armin von Roon serves as a member of the German OKW, in direct contact with the Fuehrer, and seeing the gradual deterioration of Hitler as the war goes worse for Germany. Von Roon flies from Berchtesgaden to Normandy to observe the German reaction to the Normandy invasion, but finds that Hitler rejects his observations. Von Roon is wounded in the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler; he walks with a cane for the remainder of the miniseries. Von Roon's character is sent on various fact-finding missions in the novels, and his memoirs serve as a useful dramatic device to explain facts to the reader.
• Harrison "Hack" Peters — Peters, a colonel in the Army, meets Rhoda Henry and falls in love with her. His work on the Manhattan Project coincidentally forces him to work with Victor Henry, who is vigorously pursuing the specialized parts needed to build landing craft for the assault on hostile beaches in Africa, Italy and France. Since Victor is aware of Peters' romance with Rhoda, it is a very strained relationship. Peters marries Rhoda in late 1944.
• Simon "Sime" Anderson — Anderson, a naval lieutenant, works on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and marries Madeline Henry.
• Alistair Talcott "Talky" Tudsbury — Tudsbury is in Singapore when the Pacific war breaks out. He speaks about the possibility of the island falling in a subversive BBC broadcast, then leaves on the last boat. Tudsbury is killed by a landmine while on his way to interview then Lt. General Bernard Montgomery in the aftermath of the Battle of El Alamein. A fictional correspondent's report, Sunset at Kidney Ridge, reflects on the decline of the British Empire; it serves roughly as the emotional midpoint of the book.
• Pamela Tudsbury — serves as assistant to "Talky" Tudsbury until his death, then finishes his final report afterwards. She is engaged to two men during the war, but loves Victor Henry throughout and pursues him. Near the end of the war, they marry.
• Phil Rule — a dissolute British journalist and socialist; a former flame of Pamela Tudsbury. His main contribution is to provide a sarcastic commentary on the decline of the British Empire.
• Air Vice-Marshal Lord Duncan Burne-Wilke — A career RAF officer, he becomes engaged to Pamela Tudsbury in 1942. He dies of pneumonia soon after she breaks off the engagement in 1944.
• Commander Jim Grigg — Victor Henry's executive officer on the cruiser Northampton.

  Historical characters

• Adolf Hitler — As a speaking character, Hitler appears in the miniseries in a more prominent role than the novel.
• Erwin Rommel — Again, because of the requirements of television, Rommel plays a more prominent speaking role in the miniseries than in the novel. The story of Rommel's death becomes a dramatic element in the miniseries.
• Claus von Stauffenberg — The plot against Hitler, including von Stauffenberg's placing of a bomb, is more prominent in the miniseries than in the book, because of the visual drama.
• Adolf Eichmann — Eichmann appears in two sections of the novel and miniseries. In both cases, life for the Jastrows becomes worse. In the first, he orders Dr. Werner Beck, a German diplomat and Aaron Jastrow's former student, to figure out a way to convince the Italian authorities to deport Italian Jews into German control. In the second scene, he and a crony beat and bully Jastrow into accepting a position as a figurehead elder in Theresienstadt. An error in the miniseries is that Eichmann appears in November 1943 as a full SS-Colonel when, in reality, Eichmann never rose above the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer.
• Rudolf Höss - SS Obersturmbannführer, the Auschwitz concentration camp commander.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt - President of the United States.
• Harry Hopkins — Hopkins represents the person who carries out Roosevelt's grand policies.
• Winston Churchill - British Prime Minister.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower — General Eisenhower appears in the miniseries, and briefly towards the end of the novel, when he and Capt. Henry discuss aspects of the Normandy landings.
• William Halsey — Admiral Halsey's operational mistakes late in the Pacific war are discussed.
• Harry Truman - Becomes President upon the death of Roosevelt. He appoints Victor Henry as his naval aide near the end of the movie.
• Ernest Lawrence — Nobel Prize winner involved in nuclear bomb development.
• Raymond A. Spruance — Although Admiral Fletcher was in overall command, Spruance, in command of the task force containing Enterprise and Hornet, is generally credited with winning the battle of Midway. Although it isn't covered in the book or the miniseries, Spruance went on to command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, the largest carrier battle in the war.
• Eugene Lindsey — Commander of Torpedo Squadron Six ; killed at the Battle of Midway.
• C. Wade McCluskey, Jr. — Air Group Six Commander at the Battle of Midway.
• Miles Browning — Chief of Staff to Admiral Spruance at the Midway Battle.
• Hussein Ala- Minister of the Imperial Court, Iran
• Paul Blobel- Designer of mass cremation apparatus designed to conceal Nazi atrocities, upon which Berel Jastrow worked while a slave laborer at Auschwitz and throughout Eastern Europe.

  Television adaptation