The Doughnut Boy, my father, fourteen, was dropped into an adult world as it geared up for another world war. When his father died suddenly, his mother gathered her youngest son, abandoned their home in the Northwest, fled to her family home in Norfolk, Virginia, and left my dad to his own devices. Effectively an orphan, no family ties, he was the ideal candidate for a program that would be hidden from the world for the next seventy-five years. The United States government, unprepared for another world war, desperately needed insight into the mind of its enemies. Who better to train to be a spy than a child, non-threatening, someone who could hide in plain sight?
In 1944, a civilian with no military ties, he lived with the local baker, posed as his displaced refugee nephew, and delivered Hitler's standing order for pastry to the German army headquarters in Berlin. While there, Dad hung out, visited with the officers, then repeated what he'd heard to the baker, an anti-Nazi German spy. When I asked him if he had ever been afraid, he said, "No, I was seventeen, bulletproof, and besides, who doesn't love the doughnut boy?"For the most part, my father refused to talk about his history, but our family life was constantly interrupted by odd interactions with total strangers when we walked into their bakery, butcher shop, or small store. The proprietor, who looked like death itself had walked in the door when he saw Dad, desperately searched the corners of his own building for an escape hatch. The two of them would immediately fall into an intensely emotional conversation in German after which I peppered Dad with questions about what had just happened. His explanations, obvious lies, nonetheless prodded my curiosity and would eventually result in this book.
In the search for my father, I acquired hundreds of pages of records, most of which would turn out to be a complex fabrication. Because his actual records are locked under presidential seal until 2045, this story can't be a definitive history of his experience. Instead, it's my personal story of the stress of a life lived in the shadows of the most dangerous place on earth, a place where had he been caught, he would have been summarily hung by piano wire, and how that trauma would ripple across time.
The search led to a completely unexpected secret, probably the best-kept secret to come out of World War II. What really happened to the bad guys?
