Review: War Story

Rolf Margenau, War Story (Frogworks,com 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58714079-war-story?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=HBC9A0f0N6&rank=1

WWII experiences of loosely connected characters, especially the adorable child Achim

This novel is a collection of stories of WWII-themed chapters from a German or German-American viewpoint. It follows the wartime experiences of aviation-mad Liesel, the German Panzer commander Horst, rocket engineer Paul and the child Achim, with each chapter following one of these.
The characters are loosely connected. Paul is a classmate of Liesel. Liesel is Achim’s babysitter, and he is best friends with Liesel’s younger sister. Horst is Achim’s uncle.
Achim enjoys the circus with his cousins, until a tiger bit of one of their hands. His best friend is no longer allowed to play with him because he’s a ‘dirty jerry’.
Commander Horst’s Panzer tank makes its way through the Libyan desert to Tripoli. He wants to dismiss the defeated Italian troops as ’cowardly macaronis’ but can’t help but see them as fellow soldiers. After the battle of Kasserine Pass, they’re no longer winning. He ends up in a POW camp in Mississippi, where he falls in love with the black nurse, Dora.
Aviation-crazy Liesel takes her first solo flight in 1936. A year later she is the youngest licensed pilot in Connecticut. She is upset over what her idol Charles Lindbergh said about Jews. Her parents are German Jews. Germans and Japanese immigrants are being ‘interned’, and her father’s law firm is representing them.
Paul graduates from Yale, then graduates from officer training in the army. He is sent to London to work at Bletchley Park.
Each chapter features one character and tells their story, but they each have a theme, as well. One wonders who are our real enemies; one examines the allocation of food and rations; one looks at everything that wasn’t as good as it was before the war. A common theme is the contradictory position of German-Americans, when their country is at war with their homeland. And what the Nazi ideology looks like from the viewpoint of the defeated. Two of the characters, Liesel and Paul, experience war-time bereavements.
Horst and Dora come to visit Achim’s family, get married, get jobs and settle in New Haven.
The novel was built around real research, and it gives hitherto little-known insights into D-Day, POW camps, the internment of ‘enemy aliens’, prisoner exchange, letters home.
The most disappointing thing about this novel was the ending. It just ends with Achim saying, ‘that’s all I wanted to tell you. Goodbye’. I don’t know how I wanted it to end, but that wasn’t it.
The best are the sections on Achim. They are written in first person, affording us a child’s eye view on the war and how it affected the children on the homefront. These chapters give us a glimpse into the hardships suffered by the nation during war, and are told from the adorable point of view of a child.