Miranda Armstadt

Chpter 10: Was Abraham Markoff's Statutory Arson Case True?

The case in Chapter 10 is based almost entirely on actual trial transcripts of Armstadt's paternal grandfather. The attorney--Homer Stille Cummings--was, as described in the chapter, a renowned criminal defense attorney of the day in the mid-1920s.

Armstadt used files that included the entire trial transcripts, front-page news stories of the day, and letters sent by both her grandmother and work colleagues of her grandfather's to the parole board to create this chapter. The letter at the end to Cummings from Abraham is almost verbatim of an actual letter in the files.

Other interesting tidbits:

The savant seven-year-old mentioned as having given police the license plate number of an unusual car at the scene is straight out of the news coverage.

Although there were many Jewish mobsters at that time, Armstadt made up some of the particulars.

Wethersfield was a real prison, and the one to which her grandfather was sent to do his time. It has long since been demolished, and is now the site of a DMV in Connecticut. Only the small prison graveyard remains.

To her knowledge, her grandfather's case was never appealed.

Chapter Eight: Was the Civil Affairs Training School Real?

The short answer is: yes.

While it may seem incredulous to some that the US government would already be planning for a post-war reality in the European theater when it wouldn't wind up for another three years, this is the actual timing of the CATS early development.

And yes, the Ivy Leagues were chosen as the key academic institutions to develop the talent required to run the show in occupied countries after the war wrapped up.

As Major General Gullion--who was real--describes in this chapter, these colleges were half-empty with so many men who would normally be students serving in the military.

https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=1243159&p=9097040

Did Uncle Sam really pay the tuition for students who were enrolled in these programs? There's no solid documentation that the government underwrote tuition, but it's conceivable they might have for the more esoteric fields of study, such as David Markoff's mastery of Serbo-Croatian and Russian.

Remember, they didn't just have to speak these languages fluently--they had to be able to translate and capture nuance as well. Therefore, Markoff would have to understand the politics and culture in Yugoslavia (his first Foreign Service post) as well the USSR, because he would be translating so much Communist propaganda.

Chapter Seven: David Markoff is "Discovered"

While the introduction of David Markoff and his potential usefuleness to the government in Chapter Seven is fictional, it is entirely plausible. The US Army Signal Corp takeover of the Astoria (Queens, NYC) movie sets is historically accurate, and the characters of Brigadier General John Martin Lewis and his movie star fiancée are realistic to the time.

Beautiful actresses were indeed asked to perform in recruitment films, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why, given the key draft demographic of young men. Remember, there was no internet and no social media--movie stars were very powerful draws in 1942, when this chapter unfolds.

The actress Veronica Doyle is fictional, but a real star of the era was a loose inspiration for her character (more on that later), and that actress did have an Army commissioned, high-ranking husband, who was far from her first marriage.

As for Abraham Markoff, Jews were definitely under suspicion as communists during this time. Antisemitism was so inbred into the US government, it was barely questioned. (Remember that General Grant forbade Jews from living in what was then called the "Tennessee District" during the Civil War and gave them 24 hours to evacuate, though Lincoln reversed this order and Grant supposedly later apologized for kicking them out.) It shows how common and longstanding suspicion of American citizens who were Jews was across the American military and government landscape.

And the USSR had been an Axis enemy until Hitler's surprise invasion of Russia in June 1941. The US didn't enter WWII until after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor in December of that year, so it's only been a year when General Lewis happens to hear David Markoff speaking Russian on the Astoria sets, which begins an unforeseeable future for the shy seventeen-year-old.

Chapter Three: George Fernsby-Waite in Yugoslavia

The character of George Fernsby-Waite is fictional, but Armstadt drew considerable inspiration for this 'Degrees of Intelligence' protagonist from a real Brit her mother had been engaged to before she married her father. The author met the inspiration in his later years, and he was still quite a rake, had become a very rich man, and was unable to credibly explain why the wedding had been called off at the eleventh hour.

That last remained a mystery to Armstadt, until she began putting some pieces together with her research.

All the background in this chapter---vis-a-vis the exiled king of Yugoslavia, the British military support for Tito at this juncture, and the background of the Royalist Chetniks and the Nazi-aligned Ustasha---is historically accurate in this geopolitical thriller.

Chapter Two: Rachel's First Letter at Radcliffe

Armstadt used a real letter sent to her mother by her media mogul grandfather as the basis for this letter in 'Degrees of Intelligence'. While it may seem formal to some readers, that was the way he wrote in 1943.

It's hard to capture for Millennials (and anyone who can't remember a pre-internet world) that in the 1940s, television was just beginning, and radio was still a constant in every American household.

There was no way to communicate via media except for radio, the newborn (and sparsely populated) TV world, and newspapers and magazines. Those who worked in these industries back then had enormous influence over their listeners, and were all considered celebrities.

So someone like Rachel Aaronson's father would have been a respected and important figure in both Washington, and across the country. And in real life, he was, as is reflected in this WWII/Cold War thriller.

Chapter One: Harvard and Radcliffe in 1943

It's a fact that at least some classes at Harvard and Radcliffe were combined in 1943, due to enrollment attrition at Harvard because so many young men were enlisted during the war.

While Radcliffe has now officially been under Harvard's wing since 1999, back then, it was downright scandalous to subject men to women in their classes. Lest you think this was due to possible distractions--perhaps--but the real reason was simply that many in academia didn't take women seriously as college students.

So as the novel opens, David Markoff and Rachel Aaronson--the two protagonists modeled after my parents--are in an unusual situation, as they will be taking some classes together.