Postwar and Cold War Literature Leon Uris Signed Armageddon A Novel of Berlin Typed Typescript

Leon Uris Novel Armageddon

Manuscript & Autographs

Uris, Leon. Signed typescript excerpt from Armageddon: A Novel of Berlin, circa 1964, directly addresses the relationship between German national mythology, martial identity, and the political culture inherited by postwar Germany. Published in 1964, Uris’s novel follows Germany from the destruction of the Second World War through the Allied occupation of Berlin and the 1948–1949 Soviet blockade, placing German reconstruction within the emerging conflict between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The typescript belongs to the cultural literature of the early Cold War, illustrating how a widely read American novelist interpreted German identity and the persistence of militarized national traditions for a postwar audience. Uris’s surviving papers include drafts, research on the Berlin Airlift, maps, contemporary German publications, and a 1963 Saturday Evening Post condensation of the novel, confirming the extensive documentary background behind the work.

Uris, Leon. Armageddon: A Novel of Berlin. Signed typescript excerpt, undated. One page on gold-colored parchment paper, signed “Leon Uris” in the author’s hand; dimensions not supplied. The passage begins: “No people in all of the Western world live closer to their mythology than the German people. Siegfried and other legendary figures, particularly warriors, are deep within the soul of the German people...” Rather than recounting the novel’s military and political action, the selection isolates Uris’s interpretation of mythology as a continuing influence on German national consciousness. Its reference to Siegfried, the warrior hero of the Nibelungenlied tradition, shows Uris connecting legendary models of heroism to the historical problem of militarism, collective identity, and political reconstruction after Nazism. As a separately signed excerpt rather than a working draft, the sheet documents the author’s presentation and circulation of a thematically central passage from the novel.

Armageddon traces the Allied occupation and the Berlin Airlift through historical fiction, using the divided city to examine denazification, political rivalry, German rehabilitation, and the opening phase of the Cold War. The Harry Ransom Center dates the novel to 1964 and preserves its first draft, revised typescripts, research files on the 1948–1949 airlift, and related screenplay material, establishing the excerpt within a substantial surviving record of Uris’s composition and historical research. The sheet displays no condition defects identified in the supplied description; signature remains clear and the gold-colored paper presents well, near fine. Author-signed literary artifact joining a consequential passage on German mythology and militarism with Uris’s broader fictional treatment of occupation, reconstruction, and Cold War Berlin.

Item #1996

Price: $220.00