Hi, I’m Aleksandr Voinov, and I’m glad to join you today to write a bit about the background of my new release Skybound, freshly out from Riptide Publishing. Thank you very much for the invitation.
Skybound is a short story set in the dying days of the Third Reich and tells the story of two Germans falling in love despite the circumstances. They are at the brink of destruction, at risk to be killed between two titanic forces and the overall chaos and horror of war.
So, why not write a sweet contemporary romance—which sell a great deal more? Why even touch the Third Reich, and then from a German perspective, which a great deal of non-German readers might find unsettling? Why spend so much time and money getting every tiny aspect right? (As “right” as possible, anyway.)
I’ve cursed this story certainly enough. It was hard to write. Harrowing. There were moments when I thought, I can’t do this, I’m simply not good enough a writer. But sometimes, stories choose you and all you can do is try and give your best. And what was taking shape on the page was good. I think that in terms of style and voice and emotion, Skybound is, so far, the best thing I’ve done. All growth hurts, I assume. It certainly does for me.
The Third Reich is a time of extremes, of madness, and yet, with the financial crisis ravaging lives globally, the lessons of the Weimar Republic—how mass unemployment, austerity cuts and credit crisis can combine into a witches’ cauldron and turn normal, decent people into desperate wild animals ready to turn against their fellows—are extremely contemporary and virulent.
The big illusion about Nazi Germany is that it’s over and doesn’t matter anymore. Yet we can never forget that much of what we in Europe enjoy in terms of social security, unemployment benefits, and Germany’s reluctance to “just print money” to get out of the crisis are direct echoes of the Second World War, the Third Reich and the lessons we learnt from them. The lesson that people, once they are desperate and humiliated enough, will listen to anybody who offers them a solution.
That said, all that is still abstract. As a school kid, I was bored by the Third Reich. We were taught Third Reich things in German, Sociology, History, Religion. Every year or so we cycled back to analysing how the Weimar constitution allowed Hitler to come to power. Even as a kid, I rebelled against that and kept thinking that history was so much larger than re-doing those twelve years over and over again. Consequently, when I went to university, I did the absolute minimum of modern German history and was still bored every minute of it.
Teaching the Third Reich focuses on how it could happen, how the Nazis did it. Once that has been discussed to the point where nobody is awake in the classroom, and it had been drilled into us to accept our national shame and responsibility, history lessons usually jumped forward into the fifties. As far as my teachers were concerned, Hitler comes to power, everybody dies, oh look, Germany is now a democracy and the nightmare is over.
Nobody actually managed to explain to me that the picture was more complex than my ancestors and family having been irrational monsters whipped into a killing frenzy by a demagogue until they became good, law-abiding democrats once Hitler was dead. That the picture is much more complex.
Due to how recent German history was taught, Germans’ attitudes to their own country are extremely critical. Even now, living as an expat with the outsider view, part of me still winces when anybody around me is “proud to be British”, or says “America, fuck yeah!” Germans don’t really have that. Anybody who says “I’m proud to be German” is seen as a Neo-Nazi, or, at best, highly suspect. There’s a tenseness about “being German” that still echoes, and that’s an echo of the Third Reich as well (I mean, this blog post is full of my “German unease” as it’s called). The first time I’ve seen a crowd waving German flags without too much wincing was during the Football World Cup held in Germany a few years ago.
That tension extends to the arts. If you go into any German bookshop, there will be books on the Holocaust/the Shoah, books on the officer’s resistance (Operation Valkyrie), the White Rose, another resistance group, and then Anne Frank’s diary. There will be a number of general histories of the Third Reich. There will likely be a book or two on memories of people who fled from Eastern Prussia or other former German-settled territories (these can already be suspect and are sometimes seen as “in love with the past” and “revisionist”). And that’s it. You’ll struggle to find a military history, for example. It’s a stark contrast to any bookshop in the UK or US, where the Third Reich is examined in a huge amount of detail, and, I’d add, with more fairness and honesty. The view in the US/UK is much more balanced, at least among serious historians. For Skybound and my upcoming WWII novels, I’ve relied pretty much exclusively on books published in the UK/US (though I did get my hands on the memories of some high-ranking German officials, usually published in the sixties and very much out of print).
Fiction is worse. When I told my agent, who’s still hopeful to get a historical novel from me one day, about my two WWII novels, his response was: “They sound really good, but there will be no way on earth any publisher is going to buy that.”
And, no, none of these novels feature hardcore Nazis as main characters. The Nazis are actually the evil guys in both.
All this might seem pretty abstract, but it’s been brought home in my own family. My grandfather was an NCO on an anti-aircraft (flak) gun, leading a team of five men, I believe, and he’s seen action in the Balkans, Greece, then Russia, where he received shrapnel in the knee and was flown out as a casualty just before the Sixth Army was encircled and completely crushed at Stalingrad. Out of his unit, he was the only survivor.
It took me decades to work out why my family is emotionally weird—it’s down to the echoes of my grandfather’s survivor’s guilty and PTSD. I’d even argue that my grandmother, a nurse on the medical trains out of Russia at the tender age of 17, was emotionally stunted because seeing hundreds of young men dying and suffering would mess up just about anybody.
The responses in my own family allow me to understand why a WWII novel still cannot be published in Germany (Skybound wouldn’t stand a chance, either, even if there were a paying market for short stories). My grandfather never really talked about his experiences, which is pretty typical of PTSD sufferers. One weird thing about him was that he was a food hoarder, unable to resist the “reduced” shelf in any supermarket. Picture a wizened, bowed-over, limping old man stocking up on sausages that will go out of date tomorrow. He couldn’t throw anything away and contracted food poisoning three or four times when he ate out-of-date meat, putting himself into hospital, even in his late seventies. Just imagining what experiences in wartime programmed that behaviour into him that he never managed to shake it makes me shudder.
His sons were extremely critical. His eldest, George, went so far as to call him and his comrades a murderer, and old Nazi (at Christmas, no less). When my grandfather relayed that story to me, his large brown eyes filled with tears, “how can he say that about my comrades?” Way to trigger that survivor’s guilt, Uncle George.
From what I can tell, the generation of my parents, the “baby boomers” in Germany, are at conflict with their own parents. There’s intergenerational tension, of course, but it’s in the arts, in the media, in publishing houses, too. In an effort to move forward and rebuild, the past was cemented over, people were told to shut up, and the story of many people was never told. They were judged collectively, and many resigned to that. I only have fragments of my grandfather’s story, but I’m fairly certain that he wasn’t a Nazi or a “believer”. He was a soldier; the reason why my grandmother ended up on those trains? She’d “fed Russians” (rather than toss the potato peel to the pigs, she’d given them to Russian forced labourers/POWs) and had been reported to the local Nazi authority, so she was spirited away before she could be punished. Whether correct or not, but she told me she could have ended up in a concentration camp for aiding the enemy.
Even writing about these matters would make me suspect in Germany. I could be seen as a right-winger (I’m actually a humanist/liberal), a Nazi apologist, just for my critical interest in that part of history, which is family history for every German family (and pretty much for every European family, too). The generation of my parents controls how we can write about Nazi Germany, how we think about it, how we interpret it.
All these restrictions make perfect sense to them: It’s to ensure it can never happen again, as if knowing too much and acknowledging individual suffering and sacrifices would turn us all into Nazis, blood-thirsty for revenge of the dead of Hamburg or Dresden.
Personally, I think that’s not true. Acknowledging that the experience of Nazi Germany was more complex, more personal, than what we’re taught at school doesn’t turn us or anybody back in time and into racists, expansionists, or mass murderers. It does not change our conflicted idea of nationhood and nationality. Reading a story won’t turn anybody into a baseball bat-wielding skinhead.
As a writer, I’m interested in people, in the stories of individuals, in experiences. Maybe I’m even attempting a bit to understand my grandparents, their generation and circumstances, and tip my virtual hat to my grandfather, saying, in my own way, I understand you now.
Blurb:
Love soars.
Germany, 1945. The Third Reich is on its knees as Allied forces bomb Berlin to break the last resistance. Yet on an airfield near Berlin, the battle is far from over for a young mechanic, Felix, who’s attached to a squadron of fighter pilots. He’s especially attached to fighter ace Baldur Vogt, a man he admires and secretly loves. But there’s no room for love at the end of the world, never mind in Nazi Germany.
When Baldur narrowly cheats death, Felix pulls him from his plane, and the pilot makes his riskiest move yet. He takes a few days’ leave to recover, and he takes Felix with him. Away from the pressures of the airfield, their bond deepens, and Baldur shows Felix the kind of brotherhood he’d only ever dreamed of before.
But there’s no escaping the war, and when they return, Baldur joins the fray again in the skies over Berlin. As the Allies close in on the airfield where Felix waits for his lover, Baldur must face the truth that he is no longer the only one in mortal danger.
Biography
Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London, where he makes his living editing dodgy business English so it makes sense (and doesn’t melt anybody’s brain). He published five novels and many short stories in his native language, then switched to English and hasn’t looked back. His genres range from horror, science fiction, cyberpunk, and fantasy to contemporary, thriller, and historical erotic gay novels.
In his spare time, he goes weightlifting, explores historical sites, and meets other writers. He singlehandedly sustains three London bookstores with his ever-changing research projects and interests. His current interests include World War II, espionage, medieval tournaments, and prisoners of war. He loves traveling, action movies, and spy novels.
Visit Aleksandr’s website at http://www.aleksandrvoinov.com, his blog at http://www.aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.com, and follow him on Twitter, where he tweets as @aleksandrvoinov.
Giveaway:
Thank you for reading and stopping by! If you have any questions, I’ll be here to respond. To celebrate the launch of Skybound, I’ll be giving away a $25 Amazon gift certificate to one commenter on the tour, with two more receiving book swag (so please leave your email address so I can be in touch).
Oh this is a very interesting post, Aleks. It addresses all the concerns that I felt before reading your story. I was worried that a WW2 story set from a German point of view would be too much for me as a British person whose grandparents fought in and lived though that war. However, this post sets some of those worries to rest and having read Skybound, I know that your focus on on the humanity and relationships between people in wartime, the fears and hopes that span both sides in a war.
I’ve never really thought about the impact the second world war still has on German people. Thank you for highlighting that today and giving me a different perspective on that period of history.
I am really looking forward to reading this. Please include me in the drawing.
tmadamski(at)msn(dot)com
@Tm Thank you! And you’re on my list. Good luck with the draw!
Hi Jen – thanks for hosting me. 🙂 I’m aware that the setting and the chosen POV might make people queasy (my partner’s grandmother is from Coventry, so talk about loaded relations). I just think it fills a white spot on the map — at the end of the day, three generations on, while we’re all touched by it and all feel the echoes, and I think we can talk about these experiences without ire or nationalistic fervor; there were people on both sides, and the experience of the small people was even eerily similar, all considered.
If anything, that’s one of the lesson for me: they were just people, all sides suffered a great deal, and all individuals had their guilt and errors and bravery and heroism. I’m seeing war as a human experience, which is a step away from the “cataclysmic clash between Pure Good and Pure Evil”, as it’s too often sold. Reality is more complex than that, and I think as the third generation, we might be able to hold all these terrible contradictions in our heads and put them into some semblance of sense. It was even a British historian who said that the first victims of the Nazis were the Germans themselves.
Thanks for this post. I’ve definitely just added another book to my wishlist. I think, although you give the US credit for being balanced, that we still all too often vilify a cardboard cutout of WWII Germany and WWII Germans. We forget all about the history before, and those personal issues you mention, and that Germans had a reason to be proud of their country–they were the best at nearly everything (composing music, writing novels, philosophizing, several genres of art…). I hate to hear that Germans no longer feel free to be proud of who they are and who they were because of what some of them once became for a few years out of desperation and fear.
@Julia – There *is* vilification, absolutely. Growing up on diet of Hollywood movies, it was deeply impressed that Germans were evil, not to be trusted, and generally bloodthirsty fanatics during the period. And all Americans were natural heroes sacrificing themselves to rid the world of evil.
The historians are much more balanced, and some even write about the crimes committed against German soldiers (SS were often shot on sight, and even after surrender); or German civilians with a great amount of unease. I’m not going to wave the “We Poor Germans Were Victims” flag – history is a chain of events and cause and effect, and all wars have excesses and crimes committed on all sides, because there is a certain type of human being that just slips the chain during war and shows its basest nature.
But I think there are stories that are untold and that are interesting and touching and basically need to be told, and saying they are not legitimate or that are censored from the start strikes me as unfair–and, worse, breeding a great amount of resentment. I think this can be done without finger-pointing, just sharing our memories and grief and very basic humanity. Being born as a German or American or Brit is an accident–I think what me make of it is the really important part.
Thank you for commenting!
Oh, and I meant to leave my email… whoops. julia_and_jose@yahoo.com
It is a very interesting post.
Curiously, the idea that your characters could be Nazis didn’t cross my mind, so I read your book without a shadow of unsettling feeling.
I’m French, my grand parents were in their twenties during WWII and told me endless sad and terrifying stories about the war and the Occupation. However, they had also a fond memory of a young German officer with whom they had forged a bond (against all expectations) and he took the risk to help my grand father in a dark moment. At the Liberation, he was made prisoner and they helped him too.
They were also very bitter about the Collaboration and how suddenly everybody claimed to be a resistant when the war was over.
They were scarred but taught me that there is a lot of grey in war time.
Ilhem – Thanks for stopping by. And I absolutely need to pick your brain for the WWII novel I’m working on right now (set during the Occupation)–both for the French and the culture, because, being not French, I’ll likely make mistakes that would be totally obvious to a French person. The Occupation is an extremely dark, paranoid chapter, with those huge pre-war rifts in French society really splitting open. I’d wager that the France that we know now is very much created as a response to that, with the interior scars, the betrayal, paranoia and, possibly above all, humiliation. There’s quite a bit of joking in Germany about how, after the Unification, everybody in Eastern Germany was not actually involved in the State System; similarly, after WWII, nobody had been a Nazi, and nobody had known what was happening to the Jews/Communists/Socialists and everybody who resisted or didn’t fit it. It’s sad that human nature is so constant–regardless of nationality, really.
Sad, indeed. What you wrote about the crisis in Europe is also very clever and some political answers here in France are concerning.
Concerning my brain, pick all the French you need!
Yes. I’m also looking at Spain and Greece with some real concern. We should have learned that humiliating a people in difficulties can only breed resentment. I’m getting the sense that some groups in Europe are at breaking point, and it makes my Third Reich reading just a touch more chilling.
Can you give me your email address? 🙂
h.ourabah@free.fr
Thank you!
This novella is one of my favourite reads so far this year, and it’s because it gets to the reality of war, and away from that Good v. Evil simplification. The history taught me in school rarely went beyond that, and when it did, it was only because we had to read Anne Frank’s Diary. Sympathy for the Germans was never considered.
@Alyssa – Sympathy for the Germans was never even considered on our side. That was the big disconnect for me. I heard how all Germans had been absolute monsters, and then looked at my (one surviving) grandfather and simply didn’t believe it.
So when I approached him as a historian – without rancour or pre-set beliefs – and asked him questions, he answered some of them. He actually wanted me to write about him and his unit, but I wasn’t ready for it, and he died before we could really get to work. He did say that, as far as he was concerned, Hitler re-established law and order in Germany, after the chaos and very near civil war of the preceding years. Which is a sentiment that’s actually very common.
Hitler’s strategy to win the election was that he was the “strong man” who’s reestablish order and stop the killing and street fighting (which, obviously, his side very much incited to terrorize the opposition). If I look at something like the London riots, and imagine that that would have gone on for years and all over the country, with open running, bloody battles in the streets, would I trust myself not to elect somebody who says he can make it stop? Honestly, I have no idea.
From that, I started to ask more questions and, with my background in military studies, just tried to get the most complete picture I can. And when I told my English or American friends what I was interested in and where my enquiries were going, they were all fascinated – it was totally new to them. So I figured, why not take a shot and turn it into fiction.
I don’t know as much about WWII history as I would like (and at the moment, just don’t have the time to delve deeper–it’ll be a bucket list thing), but I would hope that any truly good historian considers those sorts of questions when they’re looking at why certain actions and events occurred.
Not to call the current PM of Canada a Nazi, but his Conservative party ran on a platform of being ‘tough on crime’, and he positioned himself as a strong man in that regard, unwilling to ‘weaken’ legislation, and insinuating social disorder without his legislation. That kind of rhetoric appeals to a lot of people: the ones who are concerned about change, concerned about the security of their person and their belongings, where the perception of risk differs highly from actual risk.
I can see where Hitler’s stance would be very attractive to people looking to get back to ‘normal’ after WWI and the post-war chaos. And likely most wouldn’t know that it was his side inciting a lot of the violence.
On a slightly related note, a significant portion of my dad’s side of the family is of German descent (from a small village in Bavaria, whose name I can’t remember, and which doesn’t exist anymore), and during the wars, they were subjected to quite a lot of abuse and discrimination, never mind that they’d been in Canada since the early 1900s (1906, or thereabouts, I think). Even to people who had known them for years, farmed with them, etc. were very quick to simplify their views.
Alyssa – Harper is a scary guy. You’d think a guy like that wouldn’t have any chance to win in a place as civilised as Canada. And regarding the repressions against Germans in WWII – one of the things that really impressed me in the museum in Wellington (New Zealand) was that they incarcerated the 70 or so Germans there at the outbreak of WWII. I imagine it must have been like that or similar everywhere in the world. Of course, Stalin’s forced resettlements of the “Volga Germans” to Siberia were probably the most dramatic.
I’m so glad that I’m not the only one that thinks Harper is a scary guy. Somehow I can’t convince a lot of my older relatives (including my parents) that he is not good for Canada. But then, they’re often the ones that are looking to be reassured by tough on crime legislation, etc. I had really hoped for a minority gov’t. during the past election, and was horrified that Harper won a majority. (Another part of the problem is that people are very focussed on economic issues, and somehow think that social liberalism and fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive.)
Offhand I don’t know that any German-Canadians were incarcerated during the war, but there most definitely were internment camps for Japanese-Canadians. (actually, it feels very strange to even type ‘German-Canadians’ or ‘Japanese-Canadians’ because as far as I’m aware, we rarely tend to categorise people thusly; they’re all just Canadian as far as I’m concerned.)
The Canadians overall are pretty damn good at integration, from what I can see from over here. 🙂
I don’t see many books based in this time in history, remarkable really considering how it changed the world in so many ways. I look forward to reading it.
Melanie – Thank you. And yes, I think it’s interesting and we can only approach the truth if we see all sides. All human experiences are valid – pre-selecting what we’re allowed to read or think or write won’t actually yield all the lessons that we can learn from this. And I think we owe all the dead on all sides top learn as much as we can.
Thank you so much for the post and wonderful read!! I am a firm believer that if we don’t discuss the past we are not only doomed to repeat past mistakes but will NEVER learn how not to repeat them. I am an Army brat myself. My father was stationed in Germany on three different rotations, two of which I was around for, and fell in love with not only the country but it’s people. I was very young my first time (5 weeks-3 years) but I remember my second stay (5 years to 8 years) fondly. I hope to go back some day while I can still enjoy the trip.
My maiden name is Frank and my ancestors on my fathers side are from Germany. Yep, same family, distantly. That one was hard to comprehend.
It seems that people, as a whole, tend to forget that the Germans were protecting themselves. I’m not speaking of the leaders. The grunts, the pilots, the gunmen,etc……they had families, friends and homes they were simply trying to keep safe. They were soldiers following orders just as all soldiers are meant to do. They didn’t start the war. They were just trying to survive it.
Does it make my heart hurt to know of all of the atrocities that happened? Yes. But in the end they are/were just as human as the rest of us.
There is ugliness on both sides of wars. No side is without fault.
Thank you for reminding us 😉
*hugs*
Kassandra
Kassandra – Wow, re: your family relations. I’m always amazed where we’re all coming from, really. I have a friend whose grandfather (she’s from a long, long “medical” family, going back five or six generations) was one of the awful Nazi doctors, apparently deeply involved in “race hygiene” and possibly euthanasia. My friend is an extremely kind, generous, lovely person (and a total left-winger), but she does carry that burden, and that one can’t be easy, regardless of the fact you weren’t even born at that point, nor were your parents.
I’m also keenly aware that one of my exes was Jewish, and his family wasn’t too thrilled about him being interested in a German. One of my closest friends is Jewish, and I’m aware that her family was all but wiped out in Germany’s campaign of annihilation in the East.
And in terms of family history, my family on my father’s side was in Dresden when it was bombed, and my family on my mother’s side is from Essen, which, as home of the Krupp Steel works, was bombed into rubble, which includes vast bombing campaigns against the civilians in Essen. In the center,
there’s pretty much nothing left standing from before the war, and even the church, 1,200 years old, burned.
On the other hand, there are always moments when I’m flabbergasted how far we’ve come in just three generations. I’m friends with Americans whose ancestors might just have flown the planes that my grandfather was trying to shoot down over the Balkans. And here, just a few decades later, we’re talking and interacting and sharing things and making friends. If that doesn’t give us up, what else?
I’m so pleased to get extra background on your book Aleks. You already know how highly I think of it. This post has me realizing though, how much my children (15 and 24) are untouched by WWII. In some ways that disappoints me. I want them to know their history. In other ways though, with greater distance, they can form their own opinions and conclusions without being so tainted by political viewpoints.
Without question, my own parents colored my vision of Nazi Germany and they aren’t ones to separate idealisms. They are ‘ashamed’ racists but claim they can’t change their ways. I fight their unintended teaching (brainwashing)every day. It’s like being underwater trying to reach the surface for a pure breath of air.
My children though, seem clean. I’m very proud of that. Certainly they have opinions and viewpoints but they just aren’t as tainted as mine. So, to me, it is a relief to see forward movement but at the same time they need to understand history. I just hope they can look at it from a clearer perspective.
**No prizes for me, thanks!
Lisa – Thank you. And I think we’re breaking that kind of conditioning with every generation, hopefully ending up a little wiser with every generation. See, I’m an optimist about mankind. But, yes, good work on the kids. 🙂
I was taught all Germans were EVIL as a child. I never questioned it, even though a majority of my family is of German descent and still speak German, two and a half centuries after coming to America. WWII was a forbidden topic at family gatherings, when I was growing up. I didn’t know what anyone in the family did or thought about the war, until my Grandparents had past away.
My great grandpa Bauer, and Grandma Werkheiser had been making a statement, the whole time, by growing white roses by the front door of the family homestead. Learning that started my digging into my families history. I found some relatives were in the KKK, some in the Bunker, America’s version of the NAZI party, and still others that had been Abolishionists, Freedom Riders, and a Great-Uncle who not only saw the Death Camps, but helped free one.
Mostly I found people who were just living their lives the best they could.
I am a much better person for learning all this, and truly believe we need stories that humanize, everyone.
H E, thanks for sharing your story. And I couldn’t agree more. The more we see the human faces behind the big events, I feel we’re better for it as human beings. (Also, I’ll need your email address for the draw. 🙂 )
Thank you – this was a really interesting post. Dad has quite an interest in military history (he was in the RAF as a young man) and is one of the main organisers for the Remembrance Sunday service at their local church – the poems he uses for the service are written by both British and German poets.
I’m not sure whether dad was ever stationed in Germany or just visited, but I know he loves the country.
I’d always assumed that given how many historical books are available here in the UK that the same would be true of Germany; it’s a shame that isn’t true.
I’ve downloaded Skybound today (slight delay due to no internet access for most of the weekend!) and am looking forward to reading it. I’ve read quite a few thrillers/war novels set around then but always from the British point of view (mostly Jack Higgins tbf).
Make that, I think dad includes both British & German poems – it has been a long time since I last watched him preparing for the service and my memory is a little flaky.
Sarah – I think that’s a beautiful way to remember the people who were involved. And regarding the books – I think there is maybe less of a market for “popular history” in Germany. Certainly not the same quality or abundance. It’s either dumbed down a lot or very academic. (With some very good exceptions, but that’s the sense I got while still in the country and when I visited.) I still need to read Higgins. Any one you’d recommend?
I guess the ‘classic’ Jack Higgins book is ‘The Eagle has Landed’ – I can’t speak for the standard of his research, but I’ve read it a few times now and always enjoy it. (I do like the film as well).
‘Night of the Fox’ is another WW2 one, but it’s been a long time since I read that one and I can’t remember what it was like.
He has a lot of books out there; the Sean Dillon ones are contemporary (Eye of the Storm has him as a villain and is set before the others – Thunder Point is the first one with him as a ‘good’ character), there’s a lot with SAS main characters which were contemporary as he wrote them – I have a soft spot for those given I’m from Herefordshire 🙂 There are also a few that have been republished as Higgins novels but were originally under other names.
They can get a bit similar, especially the earlier books, but a lot of them are pretty quick reads.
I’ll check it out. I think I want to write a proper thriller next. Can’t hurt to read a few (or many 🙂 ). Thanks!
A fascinating post there. I visited one of the UK’s German War Cemeteries last year with an Anglo-German friend (completely by chance: we saw the signpost and made a detour). The stories behind the inscriptions on the headstones were very moving, as were her stories about her father (a POW in England for much of the war) and the family he lost touch with during and after the war.
Hi Stevie – thanks for stopping by. I have to admit I didn’t even know there was a German cemetery in the UK. Could you give me a link?
I’m not sure it has a specific website, but there are details here and here. The post with some of my photos is here.
Excellent, thank you. I’m thinking I might get involved too if it’s anywhere close (no car).
Sadly, I’m not sure it’s that easy to get to without a car.
Hello! Just dashing through to show my support… and enter the drawing because how could I pass up the opportunity? LoL! Much love to ya, thanks!
(Syfy)
sylvan65@hotmail.com
Hi Sylvan – Thanks for the love & support, and of course I’m adding you to the drawing! 🙂
Thank you for your very personal insights about your background, your family and the story.
strive4bst(At) yahoo(Dot) com
Jbst – Thanks for reading and stopping by! 🙂
Wow, I learned so much just from this post…the book sounds fascinating.
vitajex(at)aol(dot)com
Trix – Don’t take my word for it (I’m necessarily subjective), but there’s a whole lot of interesting things surrounding that topic. Thanks for coming over!
Thank you for sharing so much. Really appreciate it. *hugs*
Aija – You’re welcome. I think sharing is good. I’m always fascinated by these stories myself. 🙂
I am, too. 🙂 It’s just that I’ll never ask people to share something that personal simply out of curiosity – I’d rather they decide to share themselves. It’s so much more precious then. 🙂
Well, I’ve written *much* easier posts, that much is clear. 🙂 But it’s always interesting what comes up.
I still remember my grandmother telling us about this time in her life. As a kid it was really hard to see her cry and I still remember, that I swore, to never ask her again.
And then there was school. I can tell you, nothing changed since your time. 😉 We learned more about Hitler and WWII than anything else and we all got bored! But you were not supposed to say this… since it was expected of you to learn it, because it is a part of our history. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t learn about it and learn from it, but I didn’t like this sense of “guilt”.
Like you said, a few years ago we couldn’t even wave the German flag, even if it was for football. And this year, during the EM (again football) some strangers destroyed these little flags for cars, claiming we can’t show them, because it would mean we were Nazis…
So yeah, it’s still a touchy subject, but it gets better. At least we young people can see it with different eyes. 🙂
And what I really wanted to say: I’m sure I will enjoy your story, because I know you’re a great writer and because I know there will be a happy end. 😉
Bleistiftbox (at) gmail (dot) com
Nova – Thanks for weighing in. I kept wondering, how do they push the “German guilt” onto all the immigrant children (I’m from the Ruhrpott – lots of Turks and Poles and Russians and Croats and Greeks and Italians – it seems so unfair to push the WWII guilt on them…)? I understand why we were conditioned that way, but I can also see that some antics of some people are a direct reaction and refusal (“Trotzreaktion”) against that. I knew a kid once who was actually of German-Polish parentage, and she flirted with right-wing ideology because it was her way to rebel against society (yes, rebellious teenager). I did give her a talking to, and eventually she grew out of it, but it made me think. I’m really torn about the whole subject, but I think we need to have these discussions out in the open, rather than hide them away and breed resentment. All stories and experiences are valid, and I’m really hopeful that the children’s children will find a way to deal with all this in a constructive manner. Or maybe the generation after me. 🙂
And yes. All the WWII stories have a happy ending. With WWII messing with their lives, a happy ending is the very least I can give my characters. They go through so much shit before that happens, they deserve it!
Some of my best friends are Russians and Poles and since they lived here in Germany for all their live, they “feel” like Germans. We grew up together, went to school together but we don’t exactly feel guilty. I can’t describe it. We know the difference, we all know what happened, we don’t want it to happen again, but we still act (at least the older generations) like it might happen again.
And we all can’t understand why someone would destroy a flag. It has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Nazis or what we think. At least for us. New generation! 😉 But it was suddenly all over the news. Everyone talked about it. Should we show our flag? Isn’t it wrong? That’s what makes me angry. They acted like we did something wrong. Like we actually were Nazis and that it would be disrespectful. All I could think was, that it was just football and all we did, was to cheer for our team.
If we talked more, maybe it would get better. But there is still this fear, that everyone would shout we were Nazis. And again, it’s the older generation which creates this fear. It takes time, but I know it will change. 🙂
Yes, happy ending! 😉 I so love how your characters suffer and hurt (huh, I’m strange…). But it’s so much more satisfying!
Yep. That “unease” breeds resentment and insecurity and pretty much robs of of a positive (constructive, pleasant) way to “be German”. We might be allowed to be proud of our economic strength (which is what people outside Germany admire), but anything having to do with flags is a big fat no. So we’re leaving that to the Neo Nazis, which isn’t constructive either. I don’t know. I’m hoping that once the generation pass away, we’ll find a constructive, natural and relaxed way of “being German”.
Also, I always test them to the limit. That’s half the fun in writing. 🙂
Can’t wait to read this one, Aleks! You write the characters and the situations so realistically. Thanks for doing the tour and giving us some brackground.
Sheesh…. seritzko AT verizon DOT net
SusieQ – Thank you for stopping by! I’m often a bit blind and barely realise that all that background is actually any interesting (that’s when you over-research – it’s all second nature and gets a bit dull). So I’m glad this is interesting and entertaining. 🙂
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