Oxford

Oxford matters as the place where Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann became close friends before Adolf Hitler came to power. Though the novel’s decisive political encounters take place elsewhere, their Oxford past supplies a personal and intellectual point of reference as their lives converge again amid the crisis of 1938.

A Friendship Formed at Oxford

Legat and Hartmann were great friends at Oxford. They had not seen one another since meeting in Munich six years earlier, and the intervening years had carried them into sharply different positions: Legat was now one of Neville Chamberlain’s private secretaries, while Hartmann was a German diplomat and member of the anti-Hitler resistance. Oxford therefore marks the beginning of a bond that outlasts their separation, even as political allegiance and danger complicate its renewal.

Legat’s Education and Identity

Oxford is also part of Legat’s formal biography. He is identified as a former student of Balliol College, Oxford, before his service as Third Secretary in His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service. The detail places his diplomatic career within a life shaped by education and personal loyalties, rather than presenting him only as an official caught up in the Munich crisis.

The Oxford Paradox

Oxford remains present in the language Hartmann uses to explain his predicament. He weighs remaining within the regime in the hope of sabotaging it against killing Adolf Hitler, which he believes would bring a bloodbath and destroy his family. He chooses to go on hoping, while calling hope terrible and ending with an Oxford paradox. The reference links their shared past to the moral contradictions of the present: the educated habits of argument endure, but they offer no clean solution to resistance under dictatorship.