When early 20th-century train engineer Sebastian Braun saves the life of a comrade on a WWI battlefield, he embarks on a life-changing journey. The man he saved happens to be none other than Corporal Adolph Hitler. So begins a long and complicated relationship between the two men as Hitler builds his Nazi party and seeks world domination. The relationship is further complicated by Braun's close personal friendship with a Jewish educator, a professor at Munich University, who is ultimately imprisoned at the first German concentration camp, Dachau. "The Tattered Blue Cloth" is a masterful work of historical fiction that fans of history and literature will love.
The story begins in modern-day Munich, Germany when a visiting young American tragically strikes and kills an elderly German pedestrian as she attempts to cross a busy downtown street. The story then switches to the early 20th century at the time of the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It then continues through the two world wars and Adolph Hitler's Third Reich, before returning to the modern-day for an astonishing conclusion.