The Killers 1: To Win and To Lose by Klaus Nettson

The Killers 1
To Win and To Lose
by Klaus Nettson aka Klaus Netzen (Laurence James)
1974 Mayflower, Zebra

John Standish is a forger turned anti-Nazi operative who's a part of the Killers, a loose international network of anti-Nazi criminals. His mission is to introduce forged currency into occupied Poland and rescue a British operative, Leslie Peters, before he's forced to reveal intelligence to the Gestapo.

Standish and his assassin/painter colleague Marreq navigate through Nazi checkpoints, organize a raid of a Nazi detention center, and escape via France during the evacuation at Dunkirk. All the while dealing with Peters, who aside from being a competent organizer is a bigoted, whining, rapist swine.

The moral compass of the Killers series is skewed by the notion that smaller sins, like murdering innocents to avoid detection, are necessary to fight the ultimate evil of Nazi Germany. One could ponder the ethical implications, but here it's justification for an exploitation novel to essentially follow a gang of psychopaths as the heroes.

The violence is ugly and brutal. Knife fights slipping on the emptied bowels of a strangled sex worker. Body parts showering down after an explosion. Pleasure boats ankle deep in vomit from hundreds of evacuating soldiers. A man struggling to stay conscious long enough to empty his veins with a safety pin.

Good plotting and historical details keep the story moving, even if half the pages seem to involve hanging around safehouses.

Paperback from Amazon

The Killers 3: Night and Fog by Klaus Netzen

The Killers 3
Night and Fog (aka Mission into Auschwitz)
by Klaus Netzen (aka Klaus Nettson) (Laurence James)

1974 Mayflower

There seems to be a line of British World War II fiction written from the perspective of the Germans, which have the conceit that these are just taken from history or that the professional soldier class was apolitical and actually despised Hitler and the Nazis, but for the most part are just pro-Nazi warporn.

Based on the pseudonym and cove imagery, I assumed the Killers was of this ilk, but happily it is not.  It's still exploitive trash, but explicitly anti-Nazi exploitive trash.

The Killers are a Dirty Dozen style collective of criminals and con artists who have turned their skills against the third reich. In this volume, leader John Standish infiltrates Auschwitz to rescue a Polish scientist who has invented a new method of aiming bomb drops.

Some massive tonal shifts likely to give you whiplash and wanting a long shower. The Killers are brutally pragmatic, willing to snap the neck of an elderly woman or murder Jewish captives if they threatens their plans. Scenes of the worst atrocities known to man interspersed with goofy puns and the occasional Ilsa-esque sex scenes.

Not especially action packed, nor does it have the depth of spycraft in classier fare, but makes up for it in sheer sleaziness.

The British originals used the name Netzen while the American reprints used Nettson - strange that the Americans would be more squeamish about how German this was branded, but here we are.

Paperback from AbeBooks