Grumbling Behind Closed Doors: a daughter and mother are at loggerheads

 

Can you imagine some of the scenarios that might have happened?  For instance:

Mutti:

Lotte, can you help me with Friedrich and Hans?

Lotte:

Mutti, I can’t. I’ve got to get to my BDM meeting.

Mutti:

Can’t you miss it just for once?

Lotte:

You know I can’t. We have our first aid test today.

Mutti.

I could do with some first aid. Shouldn’t your priority be to help the family? They want us to have more children. Don’t they know how difficult this can be? Surely if you’re helping at home, helping to bring up decent German citizens, you’re doing your bit.

Lotte:

I’ve got to go now or I’ll be late.

Mutti

They haven’t really thought this through. Go on then.

 

BDM leader:

Heil Hitler. Lotte Kaiser, you’re late.

Lotte:

Heil Hitler. I’m sorry. I had to help Mutti with the twins.

BDM leader:

That’s a sloppy apology for saluting the Führer. You’ll help your two brothers better by being fully here.

Lotte:

Mutti’s finding it hard. It’s all very well having more children but with Vati away fighting and me not available to help ….

BDM leader:

Is your Mutti criticising Herr Hitler?

Lotte (bows her head and shrugs)

She wouldn’t do that.

BDM leader:

I should hope not. She should be honoured.  

Resistance

 

As you may have seen form an earlier post I have just finished reading a book that involved three British girls in some form of resistance and a fourth in map work. One girl was involved as a double agent spying on Nazi sympathisers in Britain, another worked directly with the French Resistance and a third was involved in SOE.  

There is the Resistance, the French resistance of which we have probably all heard.

There was also the German resistance.  It actually existed as early as 1933. The Church resisted and some people associated with various churches also hid Jewish people. People such as these figure in the Schellberg novels. Attempts to assassinate Hitler were made in 1939 and 1943. And Käthe Edler may have also managed it if she’d thought quickly enough.  Students formed the White Rose Association from spring of 1942. They distributed flyers protesting about the Nazi regime. Jews themselves protested in the Rosenstrasse march in spring 1943. There is now a museum dedicated to this. You can read all about it here.

There is also a gentler form of resistance in that people didn’t quite comply.  Hans Edler always said “Heil Edler” instead of “Heil Hitler”. Renate’s teachers kept her safe for a while.  Several people kept Jews safe.  Again they figure in the Schellberg cycle.

How are we currently doing on resistance? What are we resisting? Personally I’m horrified at the attempted meddling with human rights.

Are there currently any Russian people resisting what is happening in the Ukraine?  

An Obsolete Honor

 

This is a complex novel.  It is 548 ages long and has numerous sub-plots. Near the beginning of the book is a list of characters, categorised by the places where their action happened: Altdorf, Berlin, JG23, and the Eastern Front. Most of the characters are fictional .A few really existed: Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge (Army Group Commander), General Von Greiffenberg (Army Group Chief of Staff), Carl-Heinz Graf Hardenberg (ADC to C-in C) and Philipp Freiherr von Boeslager (ADC to the C-in C). A little confusingly the protagonist, who is fictional, is Philip Freiherr von Feldburg (General Staff Officer).      

Many of these characters resist the Nazi regime, one way or another. A few are fanatical Nazis.  As I seek to do with my books in the Schellberg Cycle, Helena Schrader uses fiction as a way of uncovering fact and truth.

This long novel deals with multiple scenarios:

·         Being bombed by the Allies

·         Life on the Eastern Front for German soldiers

·         Why Hitler was welcomed by the working class

·         Why some people chose to help the suppressed

·         What happened to those people who helped Jews and other  undesirables

·         Displacement

·         Aftermath of World War II

 

Schrader is well qualified to write this text.  She has studied the Nazi era for over thirty years and her PhD thesis was a biography of the German resistance leader who developed the Plan Valkyrie, which included the plan to assassinate Hitler, and details of how the regime would be handled after his death. A coup attempt was made but failed on 20 July 1944.