Used paperback in good condition. Cover and pages showing minimal wear. pages with normal age discolouration. 300 pages. Published by Pan Books, 1977. ISBN 0330250752.

The Allied stranglehold on Berlin is tightening by the day, as the escape corridor to the Bavarian Alps and the Swiss border is narrowing. In the maze of ruins that Berlin has become, a man of appalling ingenuity, with a ruthless sense of self-preservation, contrives his escape. He is the secret policeman Ernst Schöller.

In his shabby, shiny suit with its sagging pockets, he is not immediately recognizable as someone of importance, but as the Reich Special Investigator he has long been checking up on the highest in the land, and there is nothing he doesn’t know. Using his position of knowledge, he begins to bargain for his life with the Allies.

The man with whom the bargain must be made is Allen Welsh Dulles, chief of the O.S.S. in Switzerland and President Roosevelt’s personal representative. With chilling pragmatism, he sees that the longer the German surrender is delayed the deeper the Communist penetration of Europe will be. In order to stop Tito’s seizure of Trieste, he is ready to talk to the devil himself.

Schöller and Dulles, both professionals and practical men, arrive at an arrangement of expediency in Berne. Providing an accurate reconstruction of real life events, The Day Before Sunrise is a masterly piece of story-telling, recreating in minute detail the terrible last days of the Third Reich.