ospalh quoted Day of Judgment by Jack Higgins (Simon Vaughn, #3)
June 26, 1963. JFK’s triumphal visit to divided Berlin is about to trigger catastrophe for …
Content warning Un-fictional geography
(T)he plane Teusen had arranged to fly them from Tempelhof to West Germany(...). “We land here. (...) Bitterfeld.”
— Day of Judgment by Jack Higgins (Simon Vaughn, #3) (Page 87)
So, they chartered a future plane to take them from West Berlin to West Germany, and then they want to land in East Germany? Is this a hijacking? Who told the pilot that they have to divert and land in the GDR? What did they say? I guess there was a lot of shouting involved! ... What? Oh. When he wrote Bitterfeld, he didn’t mean Bitterfeld, the town south east of Magdeburg, far inside the GDR. The town, part of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, famous for producing photographic film for East Germany. The town where we’ll meet if we don’t meet again in this world.¹
Instead of the real East German town the author dreamed up a fictional West German town. O...kay. And he adds some more Nazis. This time they people are gone, but they left a Nazi-Luftwaffe air strip behind.
1) An odd German saying, from some legend about a stage magician: Sehen wir uns nicht mehr auf dieser Welt, So sehen wir uns doch in Bitterfeld!