To the Oxford undergraduates Paul, Simon, and William (characters Spender based closely upon himself, W.H. Auden, and Christopher Isherwood) the Weimar Republic seems a kind of paradise. Simon puts it this way: "Germany is the only place for sex. England's no good." During parties in the Bauhaus salons of Hamburg and pleasure-trips along the Rhine, Paul falls in love with "The Children of the Sun," as young Germans call themselves- until the shadow...