A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

by Adam Makos and Larry Alexander, Berkley Hardcover, December 2012

...this story is tightly edited and all the more powerful for its brevity and focus

Some Spoilers  --  Yet another WWII story (I know too many!).  This one a true tale of chivalry in the air war in Germany.  Using a single instance of a German fighter pilot aiding the crew of a crippled US bomber the author takes the opportunity to describe life in the German air force for those who were not Nazis.  Telling the story of Franz Stigler, a Bavarian Catholic who served as a pilot we get the background on Hermann Goering’s air corps pilots, their esprit de corps, their life styles and their battles.  The author opens with Franz’s love of civilian aviation and reluctant recruitment into the air force.  He survives numerous crashes in Spain, Germany, and North Africa.  He flies over 400 sorties for the air force and comes to question the purpose of the war.  Remarkably he survives the war, the post war hardships in Germany and immigrates to Canada.

The US pilot in the story, Charlie Brown, is younger than Stigler and much less experienced than him when their paths cross in the skies over Holland.  But Charlie has many of the same experiences as Stigler, dealing with fear, a sense of despair and the strong feeling he won’t survive the war. 

I won’t tell the tale of their encounter because the author does it much better than I could, but it is a great story.  The author (an extraordinarily lucky man to find all of the key players alive and willing to be interviewed 50 years later) does a good job of interweaving the two stories.  The events that brought both pilots together 50 years later are almost as good as the original story.  This story is tightly edited and all the more powerful for its brevity and focus.  It continues to fascinate me that we can motivate young men (and women) to put their lives on the line in the way these two gentlemen did.  A great story that would bring up a number of interesting discussions for a book club.

I read a kindle edition of this book and again am unhappy with nonfiction on the kindle.  The images provided are awful and the documents shown are unreadable.  Come on guys at least provide a link to some good images if you can’t get them on the kindle.  No more nonfiction on the kindle for me! 

I read a copy of this book that I bought

City of Women

by David R. Gillham, Amy Einhorn Books, August 2012        


...not an easy story to read but one that has stayed with me long after I finished it. 

One more WWII story, this one from a German point of view.  Set in Berlin in 1943, the story centers around Sigrid a “good” German woman living with her mother-in-law while her husband Kaspar serves at the Eastern Front.  Sigrid works as a typist in the patent office.  Berlin in 1943 is a city where women make up the majority of the population.  Sigrid retreats to the cinema to escape the despair of her life in Berlin.  She meets Egon a Jewish man in the movie theater and begins an affair with him.  She befriends a young girl living in her building, Ericha.  Ericha has been helping an underground group that has been smuggling Jews and others out of the country.  Sigrid also befriends a woman whose half brother is an SS officer.  The German propaganda machine broadcasts information about great German victories but the facts support just the opposite.  Conditions are difficult; food is in short supply, nightly trips to the bomb shelter the norm.  Sigrid slowly evolves from a fairly passive citizen of the Reich into a courageous woman as she becomes involved with the underground group. Her husband Kaspar returns wounded and adrift after a grueling combat experience and then looms over her complicated life. The suspense in the story builds as Sigrid plans the extraction of a small group of people and the SS becomes aware of her actions.

The author does a great job describing war time Berlin.  The suspicions that citizens have of one another are well described, the atmosphere of fear is palpable.  One of the themes here is the myriad of relationships that Sigrid has with women – her mother-in-law a supporter of the Nazi regime; Ericha the young rebel; her colleagues at work who are frightened of Sigrid’s developing radicalism, and the women in her building.  Each of these relationships is different and used to advance the plot nicely.

More than a war story though this is an examination of the personal courage that it takes to work against a totalitarian government when one slowly becomes aware of the evil that is taking place.  The awakening of conscience that Sigrid experiences is so well documented in this story I loved it.  I have always wondered why so few German citizens resisted Nazism.  This story lays out how difficult it was for people to take action and how extraordinary were those who did.  You are clearly left wondering how you would behave given the choices that Sigrid had.  Not an easy story to read but one that has stayed with me long after I finished it. 

I read a copy of this novel provided by the publisher.

  

In the Garden of Beasts

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson, Crown Publishing, May 2011

...a totally different view of the time period


Having read many books about WWII and the run up to it I was pleasantly surprised at Erik Larson's contribution to this body of work.  He tells the story of William Dodd, an unlikely choice to be America's ambassador to the new German government formed by Adolf Hitler in 1933.  Dodd, on paper unqualified for the job, comes from an academic background teaching in Chicago.  A self described "Jeffersonian democrat" he responds to Roosevelt's request to fill this position.  He moves his wife and two adult children, Martha and Bill to Berlin.  Martha is recently separated from an older husband and open for adventures of all kinds in Europe.

In retrospect it is easy to see the evil that was Hitler's Reich.  In 1933 as he was coming to power in Germany things were much less clear.  The primary concern of the US government appears to have been getting Germany to repay US loans (the large financial institutions making self serving decisions as usual).  To his credit William Dodd early on recognized the evil aspects of Hitler's regime.  When the career US diplomats were cautioning against any opposition to Hitler, Dodd was making speeches that warned of the lawlessness and arms building occurring in Germany.  In 1933/34 Hitler's power was far from absolute and you can only speculate what might have happened if some governments - US and European - had spoken out as Dodd wanted.

Dodd's daughter Martha had a different take on the new regime.  She had a romantic relationship with at least one military officer in the SS.  While initially enamoured of the energy and charisma of Hitler, she witnesses at least one attack by "brown shirts" and recognized the developing hatred of the regime for the Jews.  She has several affairs while in Germany and develops a lasting relationship with a Russian embassy officer, at least until he is terminated by Stalin.  Her story captures the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Berlin in the 1930s.  She too in the end recognizes the evil in the Nazi government.

Both Dodd and his daughter were faithful diarists enabling the author using the diaries and other sources to reconstruct an almost day by day account of those times.  It is a totally different view of the time period from what you would read in most histories.  It reads almost like gossipy fiction.

My one criticism of the book is that it was remarkably devoid of photos.  I've come to expect them in non fiction stories like this and there were very few throughout the text.