(Reviewed by Glenda W. Anderson)
Another WWII book?
Since this reviewer devours this period of history, before even opening the pages, I thought, “Ah, the last days in the bunker, the Russians getting the honor of performing the coup de gras.” As if there hasn’t been enough already written and shown forever on History Channel et al (you know, film and pictures are so easy: don’t have to read a heavy book).
So, why read this one? Because there’s never been anything like the Second World War before or since. There must be millions of stories we’ve never heard, never seen on specials, but especially the one sporting a big ‘H’ in orange-red and outlined in black behind the name History Channel. It’s been said the big “H” really stands for Hitler! After all, he and his cabal of thugs and murders dominate most stories and continue to fascinate after all these years, and now countries are finally declassifying here-to-fore unknown facts. Many great writer’s sole genre is fictionalized history of these times.
So, again, why read this one? Because the author takes a unique view that speeds along like a locomotive giving the reader a great ride (oops, read)! His entire thesis is who was where, who was trying to escape, who was captured, who survived to tell their experience: Everyone we like to read about and others we’ve not likely had the privilege of ever hearing from before. Little glimpses from lives of real people caught up in all the sound and fury; the traumatic fright and dreadful fear.
The author takes an un-clinical view of many humane and heart-wrenching personal accounts.
Audrey Hepburn, her Nazi-leaning mother (both abandoned by father and husband) leave Belgium for the Netherlands because the German occupation was getting too hot. Just over the border Holland had been awarded better conditions by the German rule. Unfortunately, it too, would turn worse after Hitler bled the country of resources and materiel for their own men and in manufacturing war materiel. Who knew that Hepburn survived on tulip bulbs fried in garlic!
Or that Mussolini and his mistress sped north from Rome where anti-fascism was less profound. That they’d packed the car with food and, probably, vino. They found no place to hang out. No hotels. No one willing to shelter them. Finally, a peasant family took them in, but, they were impoverished with little or no food. Said mistress retrieved food from car and set about cooking up dinner for everyone. A gracious deed from one who’d previously had everything done up in real style for her and Il Duce. I imagined the picture: apron tied around expensive dress, shoes discarded, working like an ordinary gal, possibly even having one great time of it. She, never imagining that within days would be dead, ignominiously hung upside down, side by side, the also very dead, Benito: that proud, over-the-top arrogant Hitler ally.
Just think: Adolph Hitler had been only a mere low- ranking corporal and failed artist, running for the vote to be president. Before motoring throughout Germany, had designed for himself uniforms that cast away any memory of lowliness. The genius of obtaining those long, black, eight cylinder, six wheeled Cabriole Mercedes, allowing him to sweep into towns standing upright with his arm outstretched like a hero come to save Germany. After election win, he ditched the ordinary baggy brown shirt outfits, replacing them with streamlined, spiffy black SS uniforms topped off with silver death insignia in front of the slightly tilted off-center caps. No wonder he awed. Subdued and eventually turned everyone’s’ lives incontrovertibly ruined.
I’m not going to spoil your fun with more peeks into this wonderful collection of stories. You’ll just have to buy this book, sit back and be entertained. But, buyer beware: be prepared to wonder how many lives lost that could have enriched us all in years to come. Generations of personal history gone up if fire, smoke, ashes and buried below rubble. The grandchildren never born.
Personal after-thoughts: In college I had the pleasure of rooming with a most delightful young German woman, fluent in four languages, who survived the Allied bombings of Berlin. Her apartment, several stories high, she was awoken to the shrieks and hells of Dante’s Inferno. The whole outside wall was gone, and she lay exposed to fire and destruction. The entire building swaying in the wind. Later, as a resident of the Russian-controlled East Berlin where, she resided and worked.. One day, a friend rushed in, told her to run, not for home, but out! Now! Before the last small portion of the Wall was nearing completion.
Another friend revealed he had worked in the Norwegian Underground, hidden in an isolated cold high mountain hunter’s hut, starving so desperately, he and his fellow resisters ate rats to survive. In some ways, Audrey Hepburn was lucky.
Such were the moving, humane stories that the author assimilated into his book, that brought back memories; made one feel on a deeper level, the respect we owe those who were, mostly from none of their won faults, became victims, lives shattered, as the havoc and deeds of both Axis and Allies caught up with them.
