Part 2: Spinning Compasses, Associations of Evil and Three Volumes, Footnote 1, page 415

In Footnote 1, page 415:

Straka’s phrasing here is no accident; though the characters have a map to the Vévoda estate, they still must view the location through the fog. As the essayist Norman Bergen discussed in the third volume of his Spinning Compass series, there is a powerful human need to locate evil—that is, to contain it by assigning it a specific, bounded place (in some cases, a particular person)—even though this is impossible. The boundaries of evil, Bergen argued, are blurry and porous, if they can be said to exist at all.

Part One discussed Montagu Norman's complicit involvement in the Nazi theft of Czechoslovakian gold in the days leading up to British entry into World War 2.  He is certainly the reference in the name "Norman Bergen."  It was Norman's actions in support of the Nazis that proved "the boundaries of evil...blurry and porous..."

So who or what does Bergen in "Norman Bergen" reference.  The clue is again found in the footnote,

...there is a powerful human need to locate evil—that is, to contain it by assigning it a specific, bounded place (in some cases, a particular person)...

The "specific, bounded" place is the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp founded by the Nazis in 1940 in northern Germany.  In this instance, however, the apparent human "need to locate evil" needs little help in doing so.  Bergen-Belsen is the camp where Anne Frank and the Czech author, Josef Capek lost their lives.  Also of note, Jews from Salonika accused certain members of their community of being Nazi collaborators during the Rosenberg Commission.  In a lawsuit filed by the Salonika Jews, Bergen-Belsen was allegedly the camp where the collaborators were sent to live in relative safety for betraying their community to the Nazis.

It was an evil, filthy place, a hell on Earth.

The extensive documentation, filmed footage, and photographic evidence made at Bergen-Belsen made it clear to the world the extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.  The British military ordered the location to be made into a permanent memorial, but the site languished until 1960 when the German government began a series of upgrades to improve the site.  Permanent buildings were erected and in the 1980s a permanent scientific staff was put in place.  Changes and improvements continue through to the present day.

It's not a stretch then, that the Nazi symbol, the swastika, is the "Spinning Compass" referred to in the footnote above.  It's hard to imagine that there was a time that the swastika was not associated with an ultimate evil as embodied by the Nazis under Hitler.  Prior to the swastika's adoption by the Nazis, the swastika was a popular symbol and often represented good luck; it was a common lucky charm for airplane pilots in the early days of manned flight.  It's origins trace back to ancient history and several cultures; it is symbol found all over the world. One possible interpretation is that the swastika is a symbolic representation of the sun.
The reference to three volumes would then be a reference to the three empires of Germany, an idea conceived by conservative German author, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, from one of his novels.  The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and The German Empire of 1871-1918 being the First and Second Empires.  The Third Reich (or Drittes Reich) was the term famously used as a label for Nazi Germany under Hitler's control to add legitimacy to their power by trying to place it in a historical context of past German influence and power.  By 1939, the Nazis had banned the use of term, Drittes Reich, in Germany and had provided several alternatives for the German press and government to use.