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Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets
A New Yorker staff writer investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief, in “a finely etched memoir with the powerful sweep of history” (David Grann, #1 bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon)
“Fatherland maintains the momentum of the best mysteries and a commendable balance.”—The New York Times
“Unflinching and illuminating . . . Bilger’s haunting memoir reminds us, the past is prologue to who we are, as well as who we choose to be.”—The Wall Street Journal
A BEST BOOK OF THE The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews
One spring day in northeastern France, Burkhard Bilger’s mother went to the town of Bartenheim, where her father was posted during the Second World War. As a historian, she had spent years studying the German occupation of France, yet she had never dared to investigate her own family’s role in it. She knew only that her father was a schoolteacher who was sent to Bartenheim in 1940 and ordered to reeducate its children—to turn them into proper Germans, as Hitler demanded. Two years later, he became the town’s Nazi Party chief.
There was little left from her father’s era by the time she visited. But on her way back to her car, she noticed an old man walking nearby. He looked about the same age her father would have been if he was still alive. She hurried over to introduce herself and told him her father’s name, Karl Gönner. “Do you happen to remember him?” she said. The man stared at her, dumbstruck. “Well, of course!” he said. “I saved his life, didn’t I?”
Fatherland is the story behind that story—the riveting account of Bilger’s nearly ten-year quest to uncover the truth about his grandfather. Was he guilty or innocent, a war criminal or a man who risked his life to shield the villagers? Long admired for his profiles in The New Yorker, Bilger brings the same open-hearted curiosity to his family history and the questions it What do we owe the past? How can we make peace with it without perpetuating its wrongs?
“Fatherland maintains the momentum of the best mysteries and a commendable balance.”—The New York Times
“Unflinching and illuminating . . . Bilger’s haunting memoir reminds us, the past is prologue to who we are, as well as who we choose to be.”—The Wall Street Journal
A BEST BOOK OF THE The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews
One spring day in northeastern France, Burkhard Bilger’s mother went to the town of Bartenheim, where her father was posted during the Second World War. As a historian, she had spent years studying the German occupation of France, yet she had never dared to investigate her own family’s role in it. She knew only that her father was a schoolteacher who was sent to Bartenheim in 1940 and ordered to reeducate its children—to turn them into proper Germans, as Hitler demanded. Two years later, he became the town’s Nazi Party chief.
There was little left from her father’s era by the time she visited. But on her way back to her car, she noticed an old man walking nearby. He looked about the same age her father would have been if he was still alive. She hurried over to introduce herself and told him her father’s name, Karl Gönner. “Do you happen to remember him?” she said. The man stared at her, dumbstruck. “Well, of course!” he said. “I saved his life, didn’t I?”
Fatherland is the story behind that story—the riveting account of Bilger’s nearly ten-year quest to uncover the truth about his grandfather. Was he guilty or innocent, a war criminal or a man who risked his life to shield the villagers? Long admired for his profiles in The New Yorker, Bilger brings the same open-hearted curiosity to his family history and the questions it What do we owe the past? How can we make peace with it without perpetuating its wrongs?
337 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2023
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December 6, 2022
How would you react to the knowledge that your father was a Nazi party chief?
Reactions to such a revelation have varied wildly, from people like Gudrun Himmler and Edda Göring staying loyal to their fathers to their last day to people like Niklas Frank and Monika Hertwig that have practically disowned their fathers. And the grandchildren? It's less divided. Whilst you can find children of Nazis that still defend their forebears, you couldn't find grandchildren of Nazis that act like that. Maybe it's the passage of time, the less close bonds, and education in history, but the grandchildren tend to be like Rainer Höss, Katrin Himmler, and Bettina Göring: conscious of the dark legacy of their families and unwilling to excuse it.
Dealing with an ancestor's actions during WWII is familiar territory for Germans. At this point in time, the perpetrators are essentially all gone. The WWII generation that is still alive are the Kriegskinder (children of war), those who were young children or minor teenagers and therefore victims of the adults' decisions. They were the children who were born when Adolf Hitler was already around and never knew anything but him and his ideology growing up, into which they were indoctrinated. They are the children that grew up loving parents that might've done horrible things outside the home. They are the children that were used as cannon fodder in the last years of the war. And they are the generation that was left to pay for and deal with the destruction the adults had brought down on Germany. There are plenty of them around still, if you know a German around or past 80 years of age, then you can be sure they're a Kriegskind. There's even some of them here on Goodreads.
They have, until recently, been considered the unacknowledged victims of Nazism, until books about them and by them began to be published, books like Alfons Heck's memoir or Helene Munson and Sonya Winterberg's non-fiction books on boy soldiers and war orphans as well as many interviews and testimonies by the youth that were pressed into the Hitlerjugend, the BDM, etc. It's the kind of inter-generational trauma that the families of camp survivors endure but that isn't talked about so much because, frankly, these are the children of the perpetrators and for better or for worse, sympathies go to the victims first and foremost. The children of the perpetrators and accomplices have thus been the last to be acknowledged.
But there's another category that's even less known: the Kriegsenkel, the grandchildren of war. You could argue that everyone in Germany whose family was there during the war is one by default, so they don't stand out, and you could argue that most don't have anything to do with the WWII generation anymore. But there's a type of grandchild of war that stands out: the grandchildren of notorious Nazis, the grandchildren of Nazis that occupied a position of power somewhere in the Reich, the grandchildren of the "more guilty."
Burkhard Bilger is a grandchild of war, but he's a rarity amongst the Kriegsenkel. He is American.
An American Kriegsenkel? He reminds me so much of my father-in-law that you'd not suspect anything outside the ordinary in his family history. What could a sturdy boy from Oklahoma who is a walking advertisement of American cultural traits have to do with old rotten Nazi Germany? Well, for a start, his Opa was a Nazi party chief, that's what.
Bilger's maternal grandfather, Karl Gönner, was the Orstgruppenleiter (local group leader) of the town of Bartenheim. But before you can begin with the casting of aspersions, you learn where Bartenheim is: in Alsace. Yes, that Alsace that's been ping-ponged between France and Germany so many times throughout the centuries they don't know what they are anymore. That little detail explains all the geopolitical complications for a man in Gönner's position, who has to operate in that tangle of loyalties as both the local chief of the NSDAP and the town's schoolmaster.
This double job as local Nazi chief and schoolmaster sounds like a childhood nightmare, you can easily envision a petty tyrant in his own little kingdom, far away from the big cities and the big NSDAP bosses. His was a perfect position to abuse, and who was going to rein him in and punish him if he did? The NSDAP weren't exactly known for discouraging abusive chiefs, after all, there was another local Nazi chief not far away that was a petty tyrant and the Gauleiter in charge of the whole of Alsace was a right bastard, too. Karl Gönner was a member of the ruling NSDAP, an invader, an occupier, and was ultimately arrested after the war, staying two years in an Allied prison.
And yet, it was the Bartenheim residents, specifically a member of the Résistance, who saved his life. The people he lorded over in Bartenheim were, in the end, the reason he wasn't shot or left in prison to rot. How?
Well, because Gönner was a complex man. Bilger at one point says "good Nazi" sounds like an oxymoron, and I agree. And yet, you have people like that, who were Nazi Party members for one reason or another yet escape neat category boxes and defy our preconceptions about what Nazis were like. There's Oskar Schindler, who was a Nazi Party member, and yet saved Jews. There's men like Karl Gönner, who was the chief of an occupied town, and yet protected that town's people from worse and from a nearby camp. What do we do with those? Bilger asks the difficult questions and goes on a quest to find an answer after having lived decades with the guilt-ridden memories of his mother, Edeltraut, a Kriegskind that only knew Gönner as a loving father and struggled for the rest of her life, rather quietly, with the knowledge that her father was a Nazi.
Her son wrote this book as a means to put those memories to rest. In eighteen chapters with titles that allude to a facet of his grandfather's life, Bilger opens with his grandfather as a prisoner of the Allies being interrogated on suspicion of being a war criminal, and works backwards from there to tell his grandfather's life story chronologically from youth to old age. He shows his grandfather as a child, as a son, as a soldier in WWI, as a wounded veteran, as a teacher, as a Nazi party member, as town NSDAP boss, as traitor to his country, as Opa... it's a large and complete picture of Karl Gönner, as complete as there can be without interviewing the man himself, with documents and accounts from family and Bartenheim eyewitnesses. All well peppered with the history of Alsace and the Low Rhine, because you simply can't understand the man without the place. Man makes the place and place makes the man here.
As the subheader says, it's indeed about "war, conscience, and family secrets." But it's also about making peace with your family history. And that's what I liked best in this book, besides Bilger's writing style and self-reflective nature. I am fortunate that I can look at the WWII era and not be ashamed of any family member, but this book shows you how even if that's the case, there's always circumstances we can't help being born into and have to deal with. One of the scenes Bilger tells in this book that touched a chord was that anecdote where he says he was looked at with wariness for being "a German" when he was younger and one day a Jewish girl approached him to tell him with candour that she'd decided he was fine even if he was German. I remember thinking it must've been off-putting, it's racism after all, and that also reminded me of the anecdote Rainer Höss, the grandson of the Commandant of Auschwitz, told about how a Jewish woman whose grandmother is a survivor didn't want to be present at a conference where he'd be speaking until her grandmother chided her that Rainer hadn't been born yet and didn't have to be judged for who his grandfather was. The grandchildren can be more judgmental and intolerant sometimes, we don't always want to see the nuances. Nothing but headlong confrontation seems to be acceptable, as Bilger muses at one point, and quiet opposition, non-violent resistance, ways of undermining the regime, quietly protecting the weak seems so little. His own grandfather was both a willing participant and a traitor to the cause for helping those he was sent to oppress.
That's the kind of nuance that boggles the mind. The monsters are easy to identify, paint all black, and hate, but they were only the top scum of the Nazi broth; the ordinary men were the broth. I particularly loved that passage where Bilger compares the reactions to him being an ethnic German decades ago to how people nowadays take the news of him having a Nazi party chief grandparent: they just nod and tell him about that slave-owning ancestor, that great-great-great-grandpa that was a Confederate, that QAnon conspiracist uncle, that cousin that spews hate at Muslim refugees... We don't all have a Nazi in our family tree, but we all do have an embarrassing relative with problematic politics; and that should remind us just how easy is it to become the embarrassing Opa or Oma to our grandchildren years down the road.
I liked this sincerity and openness to discuss a thorny past, and I liked the book's closing paragraphs that make a connection between that more and more distant past and our present without the usual hamfisted and often facile similarities drawn between WWII and current events. Bilger muses on how he's made his peace and how he now relates to the "fatherland" he's lived in at different points in his life and whose language he speaks. It's been one of the best memoirs I've read in recent times, and would recommend it warmly to history buffs in special but also lovers of family memoirs.
Thank you to Random House & the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Reactions to such a revelation have varied wildly, from people like Gudrun Himmler and Edda Göring staying loyal to their fathers to their last day to people like Niklas Frank and Monika Hertwig that have practically disowned their fathers. And the grandchildren? It's less divided. Whilst you can find children of Nazis that still defend their forebears, you couldn't find grandchildren of Nazis that act like that. Maybe it's the passage of time, the less close bonds, and education in history, but the grandchildren tend to be like Rainer Höss, Katrin Himmler, and Bettina Göring: conscious of the dark legacy of their families and unwilling to excuse it.
Dealing with an ancestor's actions during WWII is familiar territory for Germans. At this point in time, the perpetrators are essentially all gone. The WWII generation that is still alive are the Kriegskinder (children of war), those who were young children or minor teenagers and therefore victims of the adults' decisions. They were the children who were born when Adolf Hitler was already around and never knew anything but him and his ideology growing up, into which they were indoctrinated. They are the children that grew up loving parents that might've done horrible things outside the home. They are the children that were used as cannon fodder in the last years of the war. And they are the generation that was left to pay for and deal with the destruction the adults had brought down on Germany. There are plenty of them around still, if you know a German around or past 80 years of age, then you can be sure they're a Kriegskind. There's even some of them here on Goodreads.
They have, until recently, been considered the unacknowledged victims of Nazism, until books about them and by them began to be published, books like Alfons Heck's memoir or Helene Munson and Sonya Winterberg's non-fiction books on boy soldiers and war orphans as well as many interviews and testimonies by the youth that were pressed into the Hitlerjugend, the BDM, etc. It's the kind of inter-generational trauma that the families of camp survivors endure but that isn't talked about so much because, frankly, these are the children of the perpetrators and for better or for worse, sympathies go to the victims first and foremost. The children of the perpetrators and accomplices have thus been the last to be acknowledged.
But there's another category that's even less known: the Kriegsenkel, the grandchildren of war. You could argue that everyone in Germany whose family was there during the war is one by default, so they don't stand out, and you could argue that most don't have anything to do with the WWII generation anymore. But there's a type of grandchild of war that stands out: the grandchildren of notorious Nazis, the grandchildren of Nazis that occupied a position of power somewhere in the Reich, the grandchildren of the "more guilty."
Burkhard Bilger is a grandchild of war, but he's a rarity amongst the Kriegsenkel. He is American.
An American Kriegsenkel? He reminds me so much of my father-in-law that you'd not suspect anything outside the ordinary in his family history. What could a sturdy boy from Oklahoma who is a walking advertisement of American cultural traits have to do with old rotten Nazi Germany? Well, for a start, his Opa was a Nazi party chief, that's what.
Bilger's maternal grandfather, Karl Gönner, was the Orstgruppenleiter (local group leader) of the town of Bartenheim. But before you can begin with the casting of aspersions, you learn where Bartenheim is: in Alsace. Yes, that Alsace that's been ping-ponged between France and Germany so many times throughout the centuries they don't know what they are anymore. That little detail explains all the geopolitical complications for a man in Gönner's position, who has to operate in that tangle of loyalties as both the local chief of the NSDAP and the town's schoolmaster.
This double job as local Nazi chief and schoolmaster sounds like a childhood nightmare, you can easily envision a petty tyrant in his own little kingdom, far away from the big cities and the big NSDAP bosses. His was a perfect position to abuse, and who was going to rein him in and punish him if he did? The NSDAP weren't exactly known for discouraging abusive chiefs, after all, there was another local Nazi chief not far away that was a petty tyrant and the Gauleiter in charge of the whole of Alsace was a right bastard, too. Karl Gönner was a member of the ruling NSDAP, an invader, an occupier, and was ultimately arrested after the war, staying two years in an Allied prison.
And yet, it was the Bartenheim residents, specifically a member of the Résistance, who saved his life. The people he lorded over in Bartenheim were, in the end, the reason he wasn't shot or left in prison to rot. How?
Well, because Gönner was a complex man. Bilger at one point says "good Nazi" sounds like an oxymoron, and I agree. And yet, you have people like that, who were Nazi Party members for one reason or another yet escape neat category boxes and defy our preconceptions about what Nazis were like. There's Oskar Schindler, who was a Nazi Party member, and yet saved Jews. There's men like Karl Gönner, who was the chief of an occupied town, and yet protected that town's people from worse and from a nearby camp. What do we do with those? Bilger asks the difficult questions and goes on a quest to find an answer after having lived decades with the guilt-ridden memories of his mother, Edeltraut, a Kriegskind that only knew Gönner as a loving father and struggled for the rest of her life, rather quietly, with the knowledge that her father was a Nazi.
Her son wrote this book as a means to put those memories to rest. In eighteen chapters with titles that allude to a facet of his grandfather's life, Bilger opens with his grandfather as a prisoner of the Allies being interrogated on suspicion of being a war criminal, and works backwards from there to tell his grandfather's life story chronologically from youth to old age. He shows his grandfather as a child, as a son, as a soldier in WWI, as a wounded veteran, as a teacher, as a Nazi party member, as town NSDAP boss, as traitor to his country, as Opa... it's a large and complete picture of Karl Gönner, as complete as there can be without interviewing the man himself, with documents and accounts from family and Bartenheim eyewitnesses. All well peppered with the history of Alsace and the Low Rhine, because you simply can't understand the man without the place. Man makes the place and place makes the man here.
As the subheader says, it's indeed about "war, conscience, and family secrets." But it's also about making peace with your family history. And that's what I liked best in this book, besides Bilger's writing style and self-reflective nature. I am fortunate that I can look at the WWII era and not be ashamed of any family member, but this book shows you how even if that's the case, there's always circumstances we can't help being born into and have to deal with. One of the scenes Bilger tells in this book that touched a chord was that anecdote where he says he was looked at with wariness for being "a German" when he was younger and one day a Jewish girl approached him to tell him with candour that she'd decided he was fine even if he was German. I remember thinking it must've been off-putting, it's racism after all, and that also reminded me of the anecdote Rainer Höss, the grandson of the Commandant of Auschwitz, told about how a Jewish woman whose grandmother is a survivor didn't want to be present at a conference where he'd be speaking until her grandmother chided her that Rainer hadn't been born yet and didn't have to be judged for who his grandfather was. The grandchildren can be more judgmental and intolerant sometimes, we don't always want to see the nuances. Nothing but headlong confrontation seems to be acceptable, as Bilger muses at one point, and quiet opposition, non-violent resistance, ways of undermining the regime, quietly protecting the weak seems so little. His own grandfather was both a willing participant and a traitor to the cause for helping those he was sent to oppress.
That's the kind of nuance that boggles the mind. The monsters are easy to identify, paint all black, and hate, but they were only the top scum of the Nazi broth; the ordinary men were the broth. I particularly loved that passage where Bilger compares the reactions to him being an ethnic German decades ago to how people nowadays take the news of him having a Nazi party chief grandparent: they just nod and tell him about that slave-owning ancestor, that great-great-great-grandpa that was a Confederate, that QAnon conspiracist uncle, that cousin that spews hate at Muslim refugees... We don't all have a Nazi in our family tree, but we all do have an embarrassing relative with problematic politics; and that should remind us just how easy is it to become the embarrassing Opa or Oma to our grandchildren years down the road.
I liked this sincerity and openness to discuss a thorny past, and I liked the book's closing paragraphs that make a connection between that more and more distant past and our present without the usual hamfisted and often facile similarities drawn between WWII and current events. Bilger muses on how he's made his peace and how he now relates to the "fatherland" he's lived in at different points in his life and whose language he speaks. It's been one of the best memoirs I've read in recent times, and would recommend it warmly to history buffs in special but also lovers of family memoirs.
Thank you to Random House & the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
November 23, 2024
4.5
What do we owe the past? Why does it have such a hold on us?
“Life can’t be cheated and every little error comes back to take its revenge.”
-Karl Gönner to his son (1957)
In Fatherland, Bilger sets out to find out the truth about Karl Gönner, his maternal grandfather’s past who was a schoolteacher and a Nazi chief and was sent to Alsace in 1940 to ‘Germanize’ the population.
To be German, it seemed, was always to be one part Nazi. In my case, that part was my grandfather.
In this tale of searching and unearthing, Bilger begins from the beginning, telling us about Karl’s childhood and his aspirations; how everything changed when he was sent to fight for his country in the WWI; how he almost lost his life and came back dispirited and dejected.
War finds our weaknesses even more than our strengths.
When Bilger eventually puts all the pieces of the puzzle together, will he find his grandfather guilty or innocent?
Was Karl Gönner an evil Nazi or was he a good man caught between his principles and his humanity?
We live in an unforgiving time, impatient to pass judgment and rectify the past.
What do we owe the past? Why does it have such a hold on us?
“Life can’t be cheated and every little error comes back to take its revenge.”
-Karl Gönner to his son (1957)
In Fatherland, Bilger sets out to find out the truth about Karl Gönner, his maternal grandfather’s past who was a schoolteacher and a Nazi chief and was sent to Alsace in 1940 to ‘Germanize’ the population.
To be German, it seemed, was always to be one part Nazi. In my case, that part was my grandfather.
In this tale of searching and unearthing, Bilger begins from the beginning, telling us about Karl’s childhood and his aspirations; how everything changed when he was sent to fight for his country in the WWI; how he almost lost his life and came back dispirited and dejected.
War finds our weaknesses even more than our strengths.
When Bilger eventually puts all the pieces of the puzzle together, will he find his grandfather guilty or innocent?
Was Karl Gönner an evil Nazi or was he a good man caught between his principles and his humanity?
We live in an unforgiving time, impatient to pass judgment and rectify the past.
August 23, 2023
When Burkhard Bilger began the lengthy process of investigating the life of his own maternal grandfather, he didn’t know what he would find. His grandfather, Karl Gonner, had fought in World War I in the German Army and been seriously wounded. After the war, he became a schoolteacher, married and watched all of the changes that the world watched as Hitler rose to power, consolidated that power and set about recreating a new world. How did Karl live in/with this Nazi world. Bilger’s mother, who was only a young child during those war years also wanted to know more about her father and his relationship to the Nazi Party. It seemed impossible to square who he had been with that evil.
Bilger, a writer for the New Yorker, has taken a circuitous route to find his answers, a route that I did not initially appreciate for its worth. Learning about Europe at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the mindset of some of the nations and people who would soon be heading to war, what a shock that war was to so many, and the extreme cost that hit all of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles with its settlement of debt. Seeing his grandfather’s place through all of this sets up the next stage…the arrival of Naziism. The document searches here required all of the skills he had developed in his work.
What was Karl’s relationship to the Nazi Party? There are answers found, but it takes much time, interviewing some few people still alive and their descendants, scouring archives in Germany and France. There are notes and a bibliography at the end.
This book was obviously a personal labor of family love but also a search for what truth could be found. I also think it provides another look at an era that should never be forgotten. It shows how some people found ways to survive under a brutal regime without losing their humanity.
Recommended for those who read biographies and history.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. The review is my own.
Bilger, a writer for the New Yorker, has taken a circuitous route to find his answers, a route that I did not initially appreciate for its worth. Learning about Europe at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the mindset of some of the nations and people who would soon be heading to war, what a shock that war was to so many, and the extreme cost that hit all of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles with its settlement of debt. Seeing his grandfather’s place through all of this sets up the next stage…the arrival of Naziism. The document searches here required all of the skills he had developed in his work.
What was Karl’s relationship to the Nazi Party? There are answers found, but it takes much time, interviewing some few people still alive and their descendants, scouring archives in Germany and France. There are notes and a bibliography at the end.
This book was obviously a personal labor of family love but also a search for what truth could be found. I also think it provides another look at an era that should never be forgotten. It shows how some people found ways to survive under a brutal regime without losing their humanity.
Recommended for those who read biographies and history.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. The review is my own.
November 29, 2025
Would I have had the nerve to stand up to the Nazi Party leaders in Mulhouse? To risk my life for the people of Bartenheim? There was a mulishness in my grandfather, an unflinching conviction, that just wasn't in me--and that I might have needed. War finds our weaknesses even more than our strengthsLiterally millions of people could have written this book. How lucky we are, then, to have New Yorker staff writer Burkhard Bilger take on this topic, to research what his own grandfather did during the Nazi regime. Such a project is bound to uncover some hard truths, but also (in his case) to uncover some of the finer human qualities -- fairness, compassion, responsibility.
Burkhard Bilger was born and raised in Oklahoma, a place his parents fled to as soon as they were able. Their "names were almost comically German: Hans and Edeltraut Bilger. Their accents were a dead giveaway. Yet they found Americans unaccountably welcoming."
On the night of their transatlantic flight [in 1962], my parents were waiting with their children for a connection in New New York, when a lady with purple hair sat down across from them. My mother gave her a sideways glance--Mensch! Are the people really so strange here?--but she was soon distracted by my brother and sisters. They were sprawled out on the bench beside her, wrung out from the long propeller flight over. Their fussing and whining had built to a squall when my mother looked up to find the lady with purple hair standing in front of her. She had walked to a nearby vending machine--itself a wonder--and had brought back a handful of candy bars. It was November 22, 1962: Thanksgiving Day.WWII was a serious conflict, and this book poses a number of serious questions, and Bilger does his best to answer them. Some of them defy answers, of course -- we read of a 'bright and lovely' French girl who was not always right in her mind, sent to an asylum "and returned to them two weeks later, ashes in a box." There is no need for me to catalog all the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans and their allies during the war. The question that interests Bilger, and me, is how can people possibly have acted this way? Knowing his grandfather was a full-blown Nazi provided him the motive and opportunity to dig into this question, and this very well-written and well-researched book was the result.
The book is depressing, because we learn yet again of the depths to which our species can sink, but also slightly hopeful, in that we also see that there are and always will be people who resist, who insist on decency, even if they have to pay with their lives. We owe such people our greatest respect.
This book rewards the reader in far more ways than I can recount here.
June 3, 2023
He was a stern man, Grandpa Karl: taciturn, unsmiling, rigid of bearing, an unnerving gaze. A veteran who had been severely wounded in the first World War — he lost an eye and had, he said, been saved from death, by a ghostly visitation. He was a teacher. In mid-life, a loyal member of the Party. Separated from his family when he was sent to a school district in Alsace. Later, before the Fall, he’d been promoted to a position of responsibility in the Party. He was, as one person who knew him back in those days put it, “a Nazi, but a reasonable one.”
"A Nazi, but a reasonable one." What is one to make of this phrase? It cries out for a moral reaction of some kind. Is it paradox? Oxymoron? Another category entirely? In our time we’ve heard of "good people on both sides.” Which is to say: torch-carrying Neo-Nazis and the people who protested against them. Is it that kind of thing?
I find myself thinking: The word Nazi holds a unique place in our minds. It has almost mythic stature: Nazism was (is) the very embodiment of Evil, industrialized Evil, methodical Evil, inhuman Evil. Except that it was human. Entirely human. What must it be like to learn that someone in one's own family, someone close, his mother's father, was a Nazi?
Burkhard Bilger, a staff writer at the New Yorker, learned at the age of 28 that his grandfather had been a Nazi before and during the war. Bilger was born and raised in Oklahoma. His mother, a historian, a German immigrant, had spoken many times about the War and the Nazis. But she'd never mentioned this fact. The discovery shook him, as it would any of us. Imagine what he must have felt the first time he saw his grandfather’s signature written under the handwritten words Heil Hitler. He came to understand that the phrase was required for all Nazi officials and officers, but still...
In time Bilger began a ten year project to find out who his grandfather was, what he was. “Fatherland” traces grandfather Karl’s life — his service in the First World War, education, the years of deprivation during the Great Depression, his entry into the Nazi Party, his service in Alsace in occupied France, what he did as a Nazi. It is also a chronicle on Bilger’s complicated thoughts as he investigated his family’s past, the character of a grandparent. His own blood. It captures the moral questions he was forced to wrestle with. The impossible-to-ignore echoes in our own time of those nightmarish years.
Grandfather Karl Gonner was a teacher and head of the local Hitler Youth. Then, in 1942, he was promoted to Ortsgruppenleiter, a political post that required him to interact with Nazi officials and to report suspicious townspeople and those who violated Nazi orders. Bilger had to wonder: Did his grandfather denounce people? Was anyone killed because of something he wrote in a report to superiors? Did he have blood on his hands? Was Grandfather Karl a monster?
What made Karl join the Party in the first place? Why did anyone join the Nazi Party? Power? Acceptance? A warped and deformed soul? Bilger quotes Milton Meyer, an American reporter who spent nine months in Germany in the early 50s “trying to understand how ordinary people came to allow such a catastrophe to happen.” One of Meyer’s interview subjects, a woman who lived through it, told him about attending a movie with a Jewish friend and her 13 year old daughter one afternoon back in the early 30s. Scenes from a Nazi parade crossed the screen. The girl caught her mother’s arm and said, “Oh Mother, if I weren’t a Jew, I think I’d be a Nazi.” That, Meyer concluded, was a large part of how the Nazis took over Germany — “not by attack from within or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler.”
Spectacle drew them to the Party, true, but there was also indoctrination. “It was,” Bilger tells us, [grandfather’s] job to wake up every morning and don his uniform, square the imperial eagle on his cap, and march across the square to deliver war reports to children. It was his job to mold their minds for the new Reich.” As a teacher it was his responsibility to instruct his students in the Nazi version of history, of the world, to instill race consciousness, obedience to authority, and belief in German superiority. Did Grandfather do his job well and with enthusiasm? Was his membership in the Party a matter of conviction or necessity? (By 1937, 97% of public school teachers belonged to National Socialist Teachers League. “As a teacher,” Bilger tells us, “[Karl] had to sign an oath to Hitler before he could enter a classroom.”) Was he a rabid antisemite? Surely at some point he must have known what the Nazis were doing, must have heard rumors about cramps and deportations, realized the madness that lay at the heart of Der Führer’s rhetoric, realized that the vile words and threats were not said for dramatic effect but expressions of Hitler's true beliefs. And yet he remained loyal to the Party. After the war he was accused of murder, called an “enraged Nazi” by one person in a signed statement to French authorities.
Seventeen Alsatian French villagers spoke out in his defense.
After the war, when his former students came to visit, Grandfather Karl would say, “ ‘Was für Rindvieh ware wir.’ What cattle we were.”
Bilger faced troubling questions again and again in doing his research. He scoured archives, sought people who had known his grandfather in those days. He interviewed Germans who had lived then. Their grown children too, now themselves become old. “I would have done better,” he thinks after one interview. “I never would have joined the Nazi Party, never followed Hitler or left my family behind. But then everyone tells themselves that.” The reader shares Bilger's uncertainty. Can we feel sympathy or connection with a loyal Nazi, even a"reasonable" one? Can we say with any confidence that we would have brave enough to speak out, alert enough to see past the parades and banners, the patriotic spectacle?
The report Fatherland gives us is thoughtful, introspective. For the most part the larger-than-life monstrosity called NAZISM lies in the background, offstage. It is the day-to-day of a Nazi grandfather in Nazi-occupied France that Bilger seeks to uncover. It's a personal journey but it's also something bigger. He writes: “What do we owe the past? Why does it have such a hold on us? The more I know about my grandfather — the longer I stumble along in his footsteps — the more these questions echo beyond my family history. What seemed like a German problem when I began has become an American one, too… Friends who used to nod sympathetically, or with carefully blankened expressions, when I talked about my grandfather now tell me about their own ancestors who owned slaves, or their great-uncle who was a McCarthyite or a member of the Klan. They talk about their cousin or sister-in-law who believes in QAnon or white supremacy. They feel both betrayed by their history and implicated in it."
Good people, on both sides...
Oklahoma had been conservative all his life growing up, Bilger says, but “in a more reticent, plainspoken way. Texas without the swagger.” Now, however, Oklahoman conservatism wears the robes of conspiracy theory and religious fundamentalism, voter suppression and anti-immigrant messaging. He wonders whether the world is “doomed to endlessly repeat its mistakes,” whether history is “irredeemable.” Whether we as a country are redeemable.
The question speaks powerfully to us all today.
My thanks to Random House and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
Postscript: As I was reading Fatherland I had the opportunity to see a theatrical production called Here There Are Blueberries. It’s a dramatic reenactment of a true event: in 2007 more than 100 black and white photographs arrived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with no information about its provenance, authenticity, or even who sent it. The lengthy ensuing investigation (the description of which forms the heart of the play) revealed that the photos had been the property of Karl-Friedrich Höcker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz. The pictures were of Nazi officers, Auschwitz officials, young women, relaxing in the sun, laughing, singing to accordion accompaniment. In an hour and a half we learn the answer to the researchers' questions. If you have the chance, I strongly encourage you to see the show. You will be deeply moved.
"A Nazi, but a reasonable one." What is one to make of this phrase? It cries out for a moral reaction of some kind. Is it paradox? Oxymoron? Another category entirely? In our time we’ve heard of "good people on both sides.” Which is to say: torch-carrying Neo-Nazis and the people who protested against them. Is it that kind of thing?
I find myself thinking: The word Nazi holds a unique place in our minds. It has almost mythic stature: Nazism was (is) the very embodiment of Evil, industrialized Evil, methodical Evil, inhuman Evil. Except that it was human. Entirely human. What must it be like to learn that someone in one's own family, someone close, his mother's father, was a Nazi?
Burkhard Bilger, a staff writer at the New Yorker, learned at the age of 28 that his grandfather had been a Nazi before and during the war. Bilger was born and raised in Oklahoma. His mother, a historian, a German immigrant, had spoken many times about the War and the Nazis. But she'd never mentioned this fact. The discovery shook him, as it would any of us. Imagine what he must have felt the first time he saw his grandfather’s signature written under the handwritten words Heil Hitler. He came to understand that the phrase was required for all Nazi officials and officers, but still...
In time Bilger began a ten year project to find out who his grandfather was, what he was. “Fatherland” traces grandfather Karl’s life — his service in the First World War, education, the years of deprivation during the Great Depression, his entry into the Nazi Party, his service in Alsace in occupied France, what he did as a Nazi. It is also a chronicle on Bilger’s complicated thoughts as he investigated his family’s past, the character of a grandparent. His own blood. It captures the moral questions he was forced to wrestle with. The impossible-to-ignore echoes in our own time of those nightmarish years.
Grandfather Karl Gonner was a teacher and head of the local Hitler Youth. Then, in 1942, he was promoted to Ortsgruppenleiter, a political post that required him to interact with Nazi officials and to report suspicious townspeople and those who violated Nazi orders. Bilger had to wonder: Did his grandfather denounce people? Was anyone killed because of something he wrote in a report to superiors? Did he have blood on his hands? Was Grandfather Karl a monster?
What made Karl join the Party in the first place? Why did anyone join the Nazi Party? Power? Acceptance? A warped and deformed soul? Bilger quotes Milton Meyer, an American reporter who spent nine months in Germany in the early 50s “trying to understand how ordinary people came to allow such a catastrophe to happen.” One of Meyer’s interview subjects, a woman who lived through it, told him about attending a movie with a Jewish friend and her 13 year old daughter one afternoon back in the early 30s. Scenes from a Nazi parade crossed the screen. The girl caught her mother’s arm and said, “Oh Mother, if I weren’t a Jew, I think I’d be a Nazi.” That, Meyer concluded, was a large part of how the Nazis took over Germany — “not by attack from within or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler.”
Spectacle drew them to the Party, true, but there was also indoctrination. “It was,” Bilger tells us, [grandfather’s] job to wake up every morning and don his uniform, square the imperial eagle on his cap, and march across the square to deliver war reports to children. It was his job to mold their minds for the new Reich.” As a teacher it was his responsibility to instruct his students in the Nazi version of history, of the world, to instill race consciousness, obedience to authority, and belief in German superiority. Did Grandfather do his job well and with enthusiasm? Was his membership in the Party a matter of conviction or necessity? (By 1937, 97% of public school teachers belonged to National Socialist Teachers League. “As a teacher,” Bilger tells us, “[Karl] had to sign an oath to Hitler before he could enter a classroom.”) Was he a rabid antisemite? Surely at some point he must have known what the Nazis were doing, must have heard rumors about cramps and deportations, realized the madness that lay at the heart of Der Führer’s rhetoric, realized that the vile words and threats were not said for dramatic effect but expressions of Hitler's true beliefs. And yet he remained loyal to the Party. After the war he was accused of murder, called an “enraged Nazi” by one person in a signed statement to French authorities.
Seventeen Alsatian French villagers spoke out in his defense.
After the war, when his former students came to visit, Grandfather Karl would say, “ ‘Was für Rindvieh ware wir.’ What cattle we were.”
Bilger faced troubling questions again and again in doing his research. He scoured archives, sought people who had known his grandfather in those days. He interviewed Germans who had lived then. Their grown children too, now themselves become old. “I would have done better,” he thinks after one interview. “I never would have joined the Nazi Party, never followed Hitler or left my family behind. But then everyone tells themselves that.” The reader shares Bilger's uncertainty. Can we feel sympathy or connection with a loyal Nazi, even a"reasonable" one? Can we say with any confidence that we would have brave enough to speak out, alert enough to see past the parades and banners, the patriotic spectacle?
The report Fatherland gives us is thoughtful, introspective. For the most part the larger-than-life monstrosity called NAZISM lies in the background, offstage. It is the day-to-day of a Nazi grandfather in Nazi-occupied France that Bilger seeks to uncover. It's a personal journey but it's also something bigger. He writes: “What do we owe the past? Why does it have such a hold on us? The more I know about my grandfather — the longer I stumble along in his footsteps — the more these questions echo beyond my family history. What seemed like a German problem when I began has become an American one, too… Friends who used to nod sympathetically, or with carefully blankened expressions, when I talked about my grandfather now tell me about their own ancestors who owned slaves, or their great-uncle who was a McCarthyite or a member of the Klan. They talk about their cousin or sister-in-law who believes in QAnon or white supremacy. They feel both betrayed by their history and implicated in it."
Good people, on both sides...
Oklahoma had been conservative all his life growing up, Bilger says, but “in a more reticent, plainspoken way. Texas without the swagger.” Now, however, Oklahoman conservatism wears the robes of conspiracy theory and religious fundamentalism, voter suppression and anti-immigrant messaging. He wonders whether the world is “doomed to endlessly repeat its mistakes,” whether history is “irredeemable.” Whether we as a country are redeemable.
The question speaks powerfully to us all today.
My thanks to Random House and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
Postscript: As I was reading Fatherland I had the opportunity to see a theatrical production called Here There Are Blueberries. It’s a dramatic reenactment of a true event: in 2007 more than 100 black and white photographs arrived at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with no information about its provenance, authenticity, or even who sent it. The lengthy ensuing investigation (the description of which forms the heart of the play) revealed that the photos had been the property of Karl-Friedrich Höcker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz. The pictures were of Nazi officers, Auschwitz officials, young women, relaxing in the sun, laughing, singing to accordion accompaniment. In an hour and a half we learn the answer to the researchers' questions. If you have the chance, I strongly encourage you to see the show. You will be deeply moved.
Read
May 1, 2023This is an extremely well-written, thoughtful, unsettling book that holds a very dark mirror up to some of the ugly thinking that is trying to overturn democracy today.
After the discovery that his maternal grandfather, Karl Gonner, was not only a member of the Nazi Party, but also party chief of the town of Bartenheim in occupied Alsace, the author decided to delve for the truth. Like many descendants of survivors of that war, on both sides, he'd run into the brick wall of silence, but persisted, to the point of traveling to the area, and investing not only extant records, but interviewing every living Bartenheim resident he could find. Then doing even more research, to discover, if he could, what kind of man his grandfather was.
Karl Gonner was, eventually, cleared of all charges related to his actions as party chief. Bilger comes by degrees to the conviction that his grandfather was not culpable in perpetuating the horrors, that he walked a very difficult line at a time when so many people were finding themselves capable of acts that that would shadow them for the remainder of their lives, just to survive.
This book is not just for those of us who find similar skeletons in our family closets, or for WW II history buffs, but for all thoughtful readers who want a look at what makes human beings do what they do in extremis--and how we get there. All the while, the clock is ticking now, as hate mongers rant, rave, lie, just as Hitler did a century ago...
After the discovery that his maternal grandfather, Karl Gonner, was not only a member of the Nazi Party, but also party chief of the town of Bartenheim in occupied Alsace, the author decided to delve for the truth. Like many descendants of survivors of that war, on both sides, he'd run into the brick wall of silence, but persisted, to the point of traveling to the area, and investing not only extant records, but interviewing every living Bartenheim resident he could find. Then doing even more research, to discover, if he could, what kind of man his grandfather was.
Karl Gonner was, eventually, cleared of all charges related to his actions as party chief. Bilger comes by degrees to the conviction that his grandfather was not culpable in perpetuating the horrors, that he walked a very difficult line at a time when so many people were finding themselves capable of acts that that would shadow them for the remainder of their lives, just to survive.
This book is not just for those of us who find similar skeletons in our family closets, or for WW II history buffs, but for all thoughtful readers who want a look at what makes human beings do what they do in extremis--and how we get there. All the while, the clock is ticking now, as hate mongers rant, rave, lie, just as Hitler did a century ago...
November 28, 2022
Seventy-seven years have passed since World War II ended and the world learned of the mass murder of millions of European Jews by the Nazis. At first, there was largely silence from those who experienced those years firsthand. Then a sprinkling of memoirs from survivors, from bystanders, from resistors, and from perpetrators began to appear in print. Now, there are over 20,000 books addressing what has come to be known as the Holocaust: histories, document collections, books aimed at children, and memoirs by not only individuals who experienced these events firsthand, but also by their children and their grandchildren. Yet, despite this massive literature to which authors such as Burkhard Bilger continue to add, Holocaust denial, antisemitism, and hate crimes persist and at least in the United States, many Americans lack basic knowledge about the Holocaust. A 2021 survey done by the Claims Conference found that roughly one-third of all US citizens believe that the number of Jews killed by the Nazis was substantially less than six million. That number rises to 41 percent for millennials. Moreover, forty-five percent of US citizens cannot even name one concentration camp and certainly do not realize that there were roughly 40,000 such camps and ghettos scattered across Europe. Equally disturbing, eighty percent of Americans have never visited a museum dedicated to the history of the Holocaust. As the number of living witnesses to the Holocaust dwindle, this lack of knowledge is likely to grow, as Hollywood movies become the primary way in which many young Americans are introduced to the Holocaust. While such movies can be powerful, they also tend to simplify complex events, giving, for example, the naïve impression that more individuals resisted the Nazi regime than supported it and that more survived the camps than died within them. Thus, while from a historical standpoint Burkhard Bilger’s book about his grandfather’s wartime experiences in Alsace-Lorraine as a Nazi Party official adds nothing new to our knowledge of the era, it does provide a nuanced narrative that counters the simplified narratives of pop culture representations and as such is valuable.
Fatherland reminds us that those who were attracted to the Nazi party were not monsters, but rather ordinary people wanting the best for their families. Most converted to Nazism because of the promise of jobs, of job security, and of a better future free from the hunger and shame of the post-WWI years. They focused on the Nazi economic programs and dismissed the party’s antisemitic rhetoric as bombast. Today, we think how they could have been so blind. However, as the author notes here and there in the narrative: How much really has changed since the Holocaust? How cyclical is history and man’s inhumanity to man? What, if anything, did we learn from the mistakes of our parents? Our grandparents? Our ancestors? Even as the author researched and wrote about his grandfather’s initial attraction to the party and his subsequent disillusionment with it, Americans elected Donald Trump as president. Trump promised “America first,” a restoration of national pride, and unprecedented economic success, and like a past generation, many dismissed Trump’s hate-mongering comments as bombast. They ignored or denied Trump’s hateful comments about immigrants, his mocking of disabled persons, his ugly remarks about women, and his vilification of anyone who thought differently. This drift to the far right and nativism was not isolated to the United States. In Germany, as the author notes, the anti-immigrant party claimed thirteen percent of the national vote in 2017. Some politicians spoke of the “Islamization” of Germany, called for the banning of mosques, and even tried to rehabilitate the word völkisch which the Nazis had used to glorify the German race and dehumanize other groups. Yet, these recent turns to xenophobia and hate are often ignored or downplayed. We prefer to blame lone gunman for mass killings, rather than examine the culture of hate that makes such murderous rampages possible and how this culture of hate can infect ordinary people. The author hints at the dangers of this cycle, but never confronts it directly. In fact, he writes in the “Acknowledgments”:
Again and again, while writing this book, the events I was describing were reenacted by the day’s news, whether in racist attacks and the rise of the far right, or the war of aggression in Ukraine. In the darkest moments when the world seemed doomed to endlessly repeat its mistakes, it was always a comfort to return to Alsace. The villagers in Bartenheim have lived through the worse of history’s cycles and somehow emerged with their wisdom and sharp wit intact.
For the author, the past seemingly becomes a refuge from the present. Perhaps, the author intended these lines as a message of hope; that like then, we too shall emerge on the other side. However, given that conquering hate requires active resistance, taking solace in the past does not seem the right note on which to end this narrative about the Nazi past, as it communicates a certain fatalism and passive acceptance of the cycle of hate that continues to leave in its wake a trail of suffering and death.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Fatherland reminds us that those who were attracted to the Nazi party were not monsters, but rather ordinary people wanting the best for their families. Most converted to Nazism because of the promise of jobs, of job security, and of a better future free from the hunger and shame of the post-WWI years. They focused on the Nazi economic programs and dismissed the party’s antisemitic rhetoric as bombast. Today, we think how they could have been so blind. However, as the author notes here and there in the narrative: How much really has changed since the Holocaust? How cyclical is history and man’s inhumanity to man? What, if anything, did we learn from the mistakes of our parents? Our grandparents? Our ancestors? Even as the author researched and wrote about his grandfather’s initial attraction to the party and his subsequent disillusionment with it, Americans elected Donald Trump as president. Trump promised “America first,” a restoration of national pride, and unprecedented economic success, and like a past generation, many dismissed Trump’s hate-mongering comments as bombast. They ignored or denied Trump’s hateful comments about immigrants, his mocking of disabled persons, his ugly remarks about women, and his vilification of anyone who thought differently. This drift to the far right and nativism was not isolated to the United States. In Germany, as the author notes, the anti-immigrant party claimed thirteen percent of the national vote in 2017. Some politicians spoke of the “Islamization” of Germany, called for the banning of mosques, and even tried to rehabilitate the word völkisch which the Nazis had used to glorify the German race and dehumanize other groups. Yet, these recent turns to xenophobia and hate are often ignored or downplayed. We prefer to blame lone gunman for mass killings, rather than examine the culture of hate that makes such murderous rampages possible and how this culture of hate can infect ordinary people. The author hints at the dangers of this cycle, but never confronts it directly. In fact, he writes in the “Acknowledgments”:
Again and again, while writing this book, the events I was describing were reenacted by the day’s news, whether in racist attacks and the rise of the far right, or the war of aggression in Ukraine. In the darkest moments when the world seemed doomed to endlessly repeat its mistakes, it was always a comfort to return to Alsace. The villagers in Bartenheim have lived through the worse of history’s cycles and somehow emerged with their wisdom and sharp wit intact.
For the author, the past seemingly becomes a refuge from the present. Perhaps, the author intended these lines as a message of hope; that like then, we too shall emerge on the other side. However, given that conquering hate requires active resistance, taking solace in the past does not seem the right note on which to end this narrative about the Nazi past, as it communicates a certain fatalism and passive acceptance of the cycle of hate that continues to leave in its wake a trail of suffering and death.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
November 27, 2024
A fascinating family memoir, written by a German-American man whose maternal grandfather was a Nazi: specifically, a school principal and party chief of a small occupied town in Alsace during World War II. While it took me a bit to get into the author’s writing, I ultimately found it quite compelling. Bilger’s examination of his grandfather’s context is especially interesting, from the history of Alsace and the Black Forest area of Germany to the question: what makes a Nazi? In this case it seems to have been mostly poverty and lack of opportunity. The Black Forest town the grandfather was born into at the turn of the 20th century was still governed along medieval lines, and then he was injured in WWI and saw his employment opportunities curtailed. He does seem to have been a serious teacher and to have had a lot of struggles in life, and somewhat uncomfortably, I wound up sympathizing with him more than expected.
On reflection, though, I do wish the author had reckoned more with his grandfather’s beliefs. Bilger is an ideal author for this kind of story in that he remains open-minded (while firmly rejecting Nazi ideals, which these days that probably does need to be said) but alert to the urge to whitewash one’s family. And I appreciated the story and enjoyed the author’s journey of tracking down evidence. That said, he is more focused on discovering the facts of the grandfather’s life than his conscience. Bilger takes him for a “Hitler will fix the economy” Nazi, rather than someone who wanted to harm others. (He seems to have done a good job of protecting the village’s inhabitants from deportation and forced labor—said villagers being able-bodied white French people, but less than enthused about being governed by Nazis, which at times put them at risk.) But beyond learning from his mother that his grandfather did sometimes make anti-Semitic comments (“rarely at home”), Bilger doesn’t actually examine his beliefs much—particularly not after the war, when I wanted to know if he ever concluded that Hitler was wrong or renounced white supremacy. A difficult question to answer, no doubt, about a reserved person who died decades ago, but I wanted Bilger to make the attempt!
At any rate, I do think this is a worthwhile book: it does a strong job of portraying a particular place and time (World War II has been done to death in literature and yet this one was still novel for me) while also being a thoughtful examination of a particular family’s baggage. I’ll leave you with a quote (reproduced here from someone else’s interview on the Nazi period) as food for thought:
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You would wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes.
On reflection, though, I do wish the author had reckoned more with his grandfather’s beliefs. Bilger is an ideal author for this kind of story in that he remains open-minded (while firmly rejecting Nazi ideals, which these days that probably does need to be said) but alert to the urge to whitewash one’s family. And I appreciated the story and enjoyed the author’s journey of tracking down evidence. That said, he is more focused on discovering the facts of the grandfather’s life than his conscience. Bilger takes him for a “Hitler will fix the economy” Nazi, rather than someone who wanted to harm others. (He seems to have done a good job of protecting the village’s inhabitants from deportation and forced labor—said villagers being able-bodied white French people, but less than enthused about being governed by Nazis, which at times put them at risk.) But beyond learning from his mother that his grandfather did sometimes make anti-Semitic comments (“rarely at home”), Bilger doesn’t actually examine his beliefs much—particularly not after the war, when I wanted to know if he ever concluded that Hitler was wrong or renounced white supremacy. A difficult question to answer, no doubt, about a reserved person who died decades ago, but I wanted Bilger to make the attempt!
At any rate, I do think this is a worthwhile book: it does a strong job of portraying a particular place and time (World War II has been done to death in literature and yet this one was still novel for me) while also being a thoughtful examination of a particular family’s baggage. I’ll leave you with a quote (reproduced here from someone else’s interview on the Nazi period) as food for thought:
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You would wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes.
June 3, 2023
FATHERLAND: A MEMOIR OF WAR, CONSCIENCE, AND FAMILY SECRETS by Burkhard Bilger
Published: 5/02/2023 by Random House Publishers
Hardcover, Page Count: 336
This well written memoir is told in the mode of a mystery story as Bilger uncovers the truth and secrets regarding his maternal grandfather, Karl Gonner, Seemingly spurned onward to this arduous journey when his mother, Edeltraut received in the mail a packet of letters and documents from a cousin shedding light on the secrets of wartime Germany and his grandfather. This lead to over a decade of intensive investigation, with extensive interviews with relatives and witnesses and descendants of the children of the war, in the hopes of uncovering the truth. The actual perpetrators are long gone, but left to bear the scars are those children of the adults living in Germany during the evil reign of Hitler. Most are conscious of their dark legacy and abhor its occurrence. Dealing with your ancestor’s actions and motivations is the origin of such an extensive journey into the past.
Karl Gonner was an elementary teacher by trade and father of four children . He had fought and survived World War I, and sustained an eye injury and loss of vision due to shrapnel. He had watched Hitler rise to power and preach his new world order. The common German folk seemed ripe for such extreme actions still suffering from the devastating effects of the loss of World War I and the censures imposed by the Treaty of Versailles …. and its far reaching effects on their economy.
Eventually Karl, in order to make a living for his family, accepted a job away from his family as school master in Bartenheim, a small village located in Alsace region. Through history this parcel of land has changed back and forth masters with both Germany and France. He soon became the Nazi local group leader of the town. He certainly was in a position of authority and potential abuse. The narrative provides anecdotal evidence of his actions while in charge. When the Allies took over he was arrested and was confined to prison for two years. However, when formally charged with war crimes … he was exonerated. His life was saved with testimony provided by the local Bartenheim residents and several members of the Resistance
Naturally his motivations will never be known, but only suspected. Is there really a “good Nazi?” Oscar Shindler, who was a Nazi Party member, and yet saved Jews.
Burkhard Bilger expertly weaves a complex tapestry of information obtained during interviews and poring over extensive documents and archives strewn across Germany and France to construct a story and memoir that reads more like a mystery novel, than a cold documentary, These eighteen chapters attempt to uncover and give truth to the complex person of Bilger’s grandfather, Karl Gonner. Untimately this superb memoir will make peace with his family history. Bilger muses that his grandfather exhibited quiet opposition, non-violent resistance, and attempted to undermine the regime, and protected his charges from deportation to work and concentration camps. The monsters of the Nazi regime were easy to identify, but the ordinary men involved in the periphery where much harder to identify and assign appropriate degrees of guilt. This flowing narrative provides an extraordinary odyssey through such a dark time in the history of mankind.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishers for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review.
Published: 5/02/2023 by Random House Publishers
Hardcover, Page Count: 336
This well written memoir is told in the mode of a mystery story as Bilger uncovers the truth and secrets regarding his maternal grandfather, Karl Gonner, Seemingly spurned onward to this arduous journey when his mother, Edeltraut received in the mail a packet of letters and documents from a cousin shedding light on the secrets of wartime Germany and his grandfather. This lead to over a decade of intensive investigation, with extensive interviews with relatives and witnesses and descendants of the children of the war, in the hopes of uncovering the truth. The actual perpetrators are long gone, but left to bear the scars are those children of the adults living in Germany during the evil reign of Hitler. Most are conscious of their dark legacy and abhor its occurrence. Dealing with your ancestor’s actions and motivations is the origin of such an extensive journey into the past.
Karl Gonner was an elementary teacher by trade and father of four children . He had fought and survived World War I, and sustained an eye injury and loss of vision due to shrapnel. He had watched Hitler rise to power and preach his new world order. The common German folk seemed ripe for such extreme actions still suffering from the devastating effects of the loss of World War I and the censures imposed by the Treaty of Versailles …. and its far reaching effects on their economy.
Eventually Karl, in order to make a living for his family, accepted a job away from his family as school master in Bartenheim, a small village located in Alsace region. Through history this parcel of land has changed back and forth masters with both Germany and France. He soon became the Nazi local group leader of the town. He certainly was in a position of authority and potential abuse. The narrative provides anecdotal evidence of his actions while in charge. When the Allies took over he was arrested and was confined to prison for two years. However, when formally charged with war crimes … he was exonerated. His life was saved with testimony provided by the local Bartenheim residents and several members of the Resistance
Naturally his motivations will never be known, but only suspected. Is there really a “good Nazi?” Oscar Shindler, who was a Nazi Party member, and yet saved Jews.
Burkhard Bilger expertly weaves a complex tapestry of information obtained during interviews and poring over extensive documents and archives strewn across Germany and France to construct a story and memoir that reads more like a mystery novel, than a cold documentary, These eighteen chapters attempt to uncover and give truth to the complex person of Bilger’s grandfather, Karl Gonner. Untimately this superb memoir will make peace with his family history. Bilger muses that his grandfather exhibited quiet opposition, non-violent resistance, and attempted to undermine the regime, and protected his charges from deportation to work and concentration camps. The monsters of the Nazi regime were easy to identify, but the ordinary men involved in the periphery where much harder to identify and assign appropriate degrees of guilt. This flowing narrative provides an extraordinary odyssey through such a dark time in the history of mankind.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishers for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review.
May 9, 2023
Can we ever look objectively at our own family's history? I'm not sure, and this book doesn't lend much evidence to it. I'll give Bilger credit - he at least went to the places where his grandfather lived and worked as a Nazi and actually talked to people and looked at document archives, so he tried. But ultimately this book seemed like a rose-colored glasses attempt at explaining why his grandfather wasn't a "bad" Nazi, like all those other Nazis. Why he was one of those who just "go along to get along." Newsflash - that's a huge part of the problem! If people don't stand up against this type of thing, if everyone's a "good German" and just looks the other way, it makes it easier for this to happen. You. Are. Complicit.
December 18, 2022
As I thought about reviewing this book, the word that came to mind over and over was "honest."
In response to the deeply unsettling knowledge that one's maternal grandfather was not only a member of the Nazi Party, but also party chief of the town of Bartenheim in occupied Alsace, most of us might look away. Bilger instead embarked on a years-long project of interviewing seemingly every Bartenheim resident still alive from that time and combing through every conceivable archival source to reconstruct his grandfather's life and actions, and to arrive at an assessment of his culpability.
Karl Gonner was, eventually, cleared of all charges related to his actions as party chief. Was that just? Did it comport with the truth? Bilger seems to think so, and I'm inclined -- somewhat to my surprise -- to agree. But the question of Gonner's culpability opens out into the larger question of how we judge people in extreme circumstances, and the uses some people make of catastrophe in aid of their own petty revenge.
Fascinating, scrupulous, brilliant work. Essential, I think, for anyone interested in the history of Nazism, and especially for anyone whose family history includes such moral complications. Which, as Bilger points out, means all of us.
In response to the deeply unsettling knowledge that one's maternal grandfather was not only a member of the Nazi Party, but also party chief of the town of Bartenheim in occupied Alsace, most of us might look away. Bilger instead embarked on a years-long project of interviewing seemingly every Bartenheim resident still alive from that time and combing through every conceivable archival source to reconstruct his grandfather's life and actions, and to arrive at an assessment of his culpability.
Karl Gonner was, eventually, cleared of all charges related to his actions as party chief. Was that just? Did it comport with the truth? Bilger seems to think so, and I'm inclined -- somewhat to my surprise -- to agree. But the question of Gonner's culpability opens out into the larger question of how we judge people in extreme circumstances, and the uses some people make of catastrophe in aid of their own petty revenge.
Fascinating, scrupulous, brilliant work. Essential, I think, for anyone interested in the history of Nazism, and especially for anyone whose family history includes such moral complications. Which, as Bilger points out, means all of us.
June 6, 2023
This was not as good as I was hoping it would be. The author quotes Eric Johnson often and he is one of the reviewers on the back so I thought this would be more in that narrative nonfiction style. But this was boring, he some how made Nazis boring. The book dragged...and it was hort. The only things I enjoyed really was when he explained the process of going back to Germany for interviews and archives. I also like the explanation of historical German penmanship. But as an archival librarian that's my niche so of course I would enjoy it...not sure others would. I will continue my quest to find good books about post-war memory in Germany. If the topic interests you read 'Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home' by Nora Krug.
May 17, 2023
In this memoir, New Yorker staff writer, Burkhard Bilger, investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief.
“To be German, it seemed, was always to be one part Nazi. In my case, that part was my grandfather.”
"Bilger wrestles with one of the essential questions of our time. How can we make peace with our ancestor's past?"
Burkhard Bilger leaves nothing for the imagination concerning his grandfather, Karl Gönner. Ten years of detailed research brings not only Gonner's history alive, but also, the history of Alsace, that (how crazy is this), millions of people from all over the world have died fighting over it.
This reads like fiction and I could not put it down. Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for my copy of Fatherland in return for my honest review.
#5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“To be German, it seemed, was always to be one part Nazi. In my case, that part was my grandfather.”
"Bilger wrestles with one of the essential questions of our time. How can we make peace with our ancestor's past?"
Burkhard Bilger leaves nothing for the imagination concerning his grandfather, Karl Gönner. Ten years of detailed research brings not only Gonner's history alive, but also, the history of Alsace, that (how crazy is this), millions of people from all over the world have died fighting over it.
This reads like fiction and I could not put it down. Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for my copy of Fatherland in return for my honest review.
#5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
March 19, 2023
This book details the search by the author of his grandfather’s place as a well placed Nazi on the local level during World War II. It is well written helping to make it a fairly quick read. The subtitle of the book gives a clear description of what occurs in the book. Well worth the time to read.
I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page
I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page
August 16, 2024
Recently, I received a notice from our library that they acquired the book Fatherland that I requested. Although not completely unusual, I had absolutely no recollection of the request. Checking GR, I remembered that GR friend Bruce had reviewed it about a year ago and, based on his review, I made my request. In Fatherland, New Yorker journalist Burkhard Bilger writes about his investigation into his grandfather’s WWII past, during which his grandfather was a Nazi official sent to a small town in the Alsace region in France.
My interest was heightened by reading a “who’s who” list of testimonials (David Grann, Patrick Radden Keene, Atul Gawande) praising Fatherland. Also, last fall we visited the Alsace area, piquing my curiosity. I’ve heard little about the book over the past year - maybe, everyone’s just too tired of hearing about Nazis. That’s a shame because I thoroughly enjoyed this well written account of Bilger’s investigation into his grandfather’s past.
I found a number of interesting threads in the book: First, the story itself of Karl Gonner, a small town teacher in Germany sent to the Alsace region to re-educate the former French population; Bilger’s lengthy investigation to discover what actually happened; the tortured history of the Alsatian residents who endured four changes in nationality in less than forty years; the terrible conditions people face during - and after - wars.
Overall, a very worthwhile read.
My interest was heightened by reading a “who’s who” list of testimonials (David Grann, Patrick Radden Keene, Atul Gawande) praising Fatherland. Also, last fall we visited the Alsace area, piquing my curiosity. I’ve heard little about the book over the past year - maybe, everyone’s just too tired of hearing about Nazis. That’s a shame because I thoroughly enjoyed this well written account of Bilger’s investigation into his grandfather’s past.
I found a number of interesting threads in the book: First, the story itself of Karl Gonner, a small town teacher in Germany sent to the Alsace region to re-educate the former French population; Bilger’s lengthy investigation to discover what actually happened; the tortured history of the Alsatian residents who endured four changes in nationality in less than forty years; the terrible conditions people face during - and after - wars.
Overall, a very worthwhile read.
October 23, 2023
A well researched memoir of one man's Nazi grandfather and the family's attempt to grapple with it. Due to the location of the story, the reader will come across much French and German in this book, most of which is translated.
April 22, 2023
A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family
10 years in the making “Fatherland” is a griping tale of encounters and discoveries. The author explores the life of his grandfather Karl Gönner who was posted as a school principal and Nazi Party official to the village of Bartenheim in the province of Alsace during WW11.
What follows is a suspenseful story of encounters and discoveries in dusty archives across Germany and France. He asked searching questions about the extent to which his grandfather was guilty of the war crimes he stood accused of. Arrested in 1946, was he guilty or innocent? Tracing one family’s path through history is a long task. Beautifully written this thought provoking book is not only a family memoir but a fascinating history lesson. The research is intricate, exhaustive and meanders through the recollections of acquaintances and witnesses who kept records. Told through the eyes of Germans it shows us that even among the Nazis there were decent people. There is another side of the coin, describing how the same war devastated the lives of millions of Germans.
I was totally captivated knowing the history of the Alsace how it switch from being part of France then part of Germany again back to France, back and forth they went through the times and by law changed their names and those of public places to conform to the new government they happened to be part of. Why change names of streets, topple monuments and harass people for speaking another language even another dialect....
A lot happens in this multi-faceted story. While the author did not mince his words he remained guarded through his narrative and gave us an excellent account. Well said, well done.
Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for this ARC
10 years in the making “Fatherland” is a griping tale of encounters and discoveries. The author explores the life of his grandfather Karl Gönner who was posted as a school principal and Nazi Party official to the village of Bartenheim in the province of Alsace during WW11.
What follows is a suspenseful story of encounters and discoveries in dusty archives across Germany and France. He asked searching questions about the extent to which his grandfather was guilty of the war crimes he stood accused of. Arrested in 1946, was he guilty or innocent? Tracing one family’s path through history is a long task. Beautifully written this thought provoking book is not only a family memoir but a fascinating history lesson. The research is intricate, exhaustive and meanders through the recollections of acquaintances and witnesses who kept records. Told through the eyes of Germans it shows us that even among the Nazis there were decent people. There is another side of the coin, describing how the same war devastated the lives of millions of Germans.
I was totally captivated knowing the history of the Alsace how it switch from being part of France then part of Germany again back to France, back and forth they went through the times and by law changed their names and those of public places to conform to the new government they happened to be part of. Why change names of streets, topple monuments and harass people for speaking another language even another dialect....
A lot happens in this multi-faceted story. While the author did not mince his words he remained guarded through his narrative and gave us an excellent account. Well said, well done.
Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for this ARC
July 9, 2024
History is a complicated thing. Very rarely is it neat, organized, or wholly positive. It can become even more complicated when it involves our own family. New Yorker writer Burkhard Bilger uses Fatherland to trace his own family history: the story of his grandfather, a member of the Nazi party, who taught children at school and had political authority in a village in Alsace during the Second World War, and who was later accused of war crimes.
I found this book to be a very engrossing read. We weave through not only Bilger's own travels and research, but the story of Karl Gönner, his maternal grandfather. He was drafted and saw combat during the First World War, and went on to be a teacher. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, but seemed drawn more toward their early economic policies than anything that would come later. When Bilger asked his mother if Gönner had any anti-Semitic views, "I could see her wrestling with her memories and then resigning herself to them. Her father rarely made anti-Semitic remarks at home, she said, but he did make them."
But later, when being tried for being an accomplice to murder, Gönner had many people speak out on his behalf. He may have looked the other way when kids didn't join the Hitler Youth; he may have pretended not to hear someone badmouth Hitler. "He was that strange and contradictory figure that villagers... later described to me: a reasonable Nazi. Was there even such a thing?" And for me, that's kind of the lasting question of the book.
We seem to almost end on a note of 'yes, he was a Nazi, but not one of the really bad ones.' He wasn't on the Eastern Front murdering Russian peasants. He wasn't sending Jews to death camps. He wasn't a general bulldozing his troops through France. And Bilger does provide examples, as mentioned, where Gönner actively went against the Party line, or aided villagers in small ways. But at the same time, he more or less went with the flow. Are his small actions of resistance (if we can even call it that) enough to exonerate him? I don't think that's what Bilger is asking readers to do, however. I don't think Fatherland is meant to act as a judgement at all. It's the story of one man, but one man who was like many others during this period - and what do we make of that?
I found this book to be a very engrossing read. We weave through not only Bilger's own travels and research, but the story of Karl Gönner, his maternal grandfather. He was drafted and saw combat during the First World War, and went on to be a teacher. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, but seemed drawn more toward their early economic policies than anything that would come later. When Bilger asked his mother if Gönner had any anti-Semitic views, "I could see her wrestling with her memories and then resigning herself to them. Her father rarely made anti-Semitic remarks at home, she said, but he did make them."
But later, when being tried for being an accomplice to murder, Gönner had many people speak out on his behalf. He may have looked the other way when kids didn't join the Hitler Youth; he may have pretended not to hear someone badmouth Hitler. "He was that strange and contradictory figure that villagers... later described to me: a reasonable Nazi. Was there even such a thing?" And for me, that's kind of the lasting question of the book.
We seem to almost end on a note of 'yes, he was a Nazi, but not one of the really bad ones.' He wasn't on the Eastern Front murdering Russian peasants. He wasn't sending Jews to death camps. He wasn't a general bulldozing his troops through France. And Bilger does provide examples, as mentioned, where Gönner actively went against the Party line, or aided villagers in small ways. But at the same time, he more or less went with the flow. Are his small actions of resistance (if we can even call it that) enough to exonerate him? I don't think that's what Bilger is asking readers to do, however. I don't think Fatherland is meant to act as a judgement at all. It's the story of one man, but one man who was like many others during this period - and what do we make of that?
May 23, 2024
'How should a son live with the sins of his father?' is an academic question. An answer typically comes via meandering journalism. This book is no exception. 'Let me tell you a story about my Nazi grandfather' is a great hook. Bilger didn't convince me to care about any character in this book (even himself). This only matters for the sake of finding the stamina to finish a book. I finished (begrudgingly). There was a small payoff at the very end - "He was that strange and contradictory figure that villagers...later described to me: a reasonable Nazi. Was there even such a thing? And who would risk defending him...?" This line belongs in the beginning of the book. The answer, from Bilger, is no. There is no such thing as a reasonable Nazi. But even a Nazi can be a reasonable grandfather. This is a fine thesis; I wish, in this instance, it didn't take so long to get there.
August 13, 2023
I don’t read much non-fiction and when I do it is mostly literary—biographies of writers, essay collections by writers, literary criticism,etc. So this a major change for me and I bought it only because I went to a reading/conversation featuring the author and, as always when I go to these events, I felt obligated to buy the book. I meant to give it to a German friend, but she went home to Germany before I could do so.
So I started to read it and quickly became immersed in this moving and beautifully written tale of a man searching to understand his Nazi grandfather and the legacy of that past.
Highly recommend it!
So I started to read it and quickly became immersed in this moving and beautifully written tale of a man searching to understand his Nazi grandfather and the legacy of that past.
Highly recommend it!
May 12, 2023
Burkhard Bilger is an American born German whose family came to America after the end of World War II. With an obviously German name, Burkhard was sensitive to his family’s participation in Germany’s war effort, particularly his grandfather Karl, his mother’s father. Because he speaks fluent German, Burkhard was able to read primarily documents and conduct interviews with survivors. This book is the result of his research. Berkhard was born in the US after his parents emigrated in 1962 so speaks English as a native language but speaks German at home.
The Bilgers lived in Alsace which put them central to the conflict between Germany and France where two languages were spoken. Changing nationalities was more then a matter of swapping street signs. It reached down into society's smallest gears. Sermons had to be rewritten, labels reprinted, and anthems relearned. Farmers had to change their crops (out with grapes, in with hops), restaurants rework their menus (in with wurst, out with foie gras).
Karl was a teacher and his job for the Germans was to teach young Germans how to be good soldiers, to ready them for service. It was America's Jim Crow laws that the Nazis used to create their laws. In 1937 forced sterilization was legal in 32 states. And when the first German eugenics research was done in the 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation helped to fund it. When the French reclaimed Alsace Karl was imprisoned for his role.
Karl's letters to his son Gernot from prison were to encourage him with bracing optimism to look at job opportunities in customs, finance, teaching, vocational instructor, or in the chemical industry. Bilger thought of that letter again and again these past few years, as the world has seemed to spin to pieces around him - "war, mass shootings, and climate disasters, racism, pandemic, and a deepening gulf between rich and poor." Karl told his son that he could land a job, find a vocation, and help piece his country back together. That the world the Nazis had nearly destroyed was worth inheriting."
The Bilgers lived in Alsace which put them central to the conflict between Germany and France where two languages were spoken. Changing nationalities was more then a matter of swapping street signs. It reached down into society's smallest gears. Sermons had to be rewritten, labels reprinted, and anthems relearned. Farmers had to change their crops (out with grapes, in with hops), restaurants rework their menus (in with wurst, out with foie gras).
Karl was a teacher and his job for the Germans was to teach young Germans how to be good soldiers, to ready them for service. It was America's Jim Crow laws that the Nazis used to create their laws. In 1937 forced sterilization was legal in 32 states. And when the first German eugenics research was done in the 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation helped to fund it. When the French reclaimed Alsace Karl was imprisoned for his role.
Karl's letters to his son Gernot from prison were to encourage him with bracing optimism to look at job opportunities in customs, finance, teaching, vocational instructor, or in the chemical industry. Bilger thought of that letter again and again these past few years, as the world has seemed to spin to pieces around him - "war, mass shootings, and climate disasters, racism, pandemic, and a deepening gulf between rich and poor." Karl told his son that he could land a job, find a vocation, and help piece his country back together. That the world the Nazis had nearly destroyed was worth inheriting."
June 10, 2023
This is one of those books I wish I would have read rather than listened to the audiobook only so that I could take notes and better keep track of the heart wrenching story of the authors grandfather. Beautifully written with seemingly no shameful history left out. I adore that the author shared certain aspects of the research journey and the reflection of discovering who his ancestors really were. It was entertaining & not just a recounting of facts or re-writing of letters, documents & journals although many excerpts from these are scattered throughout the chapters. This story will stick in my mind for a while to come. Many thanks to the author for sharing this personal & intimate piece of family history!
September 12, 2025
Such an interesting book. Bilger writes about his family's complicated past, specifically related to his maternal grandfather, Karl, and his role as a Nazi Party chief and schoolteacher in the village of Bartenheim. I absolutely love how this was written; it felt part novel and part history lesson. It was just as fascinating to read about the family dynamics and disruption during the war as it was to learn about the contested region of Alsace and its ever-swapping nationality. Ultimately, the book boils down to Bilger's search for an answer to the question he, and to a larger extent his mother, has always asked: was Karl an enthusiastic Nazi and proud leader of the National Socialist party or was he a German father and schoolteacher who did what he could to protect the people of his village without risking his own family's lives?
April 3, 2024
Read as the jury for the Booktube prize
My Ranking - 3Rd out of 6 books (Top 3)
Rating - 4.8 stars
NPS - 10 (Promoter)
We weren’t for the Germans, even if we had to play along with them. He understood that. He was a Nazi, but a reasonable one.
A very critical and important account of being the descendant of a Nazi; the author takes upon his own hands to research and understand his family lineage and how he discovered his grandfather’s journey from WW 1 to becoming a Nazi during WW 2.
The picture is never white, but always grey, and this book is the testament of the same.
Recommend it if you are interested in World War II history.
My Ranking - 3Rd out of 6 books (Top 3)
Rating - 4.8 stars
NPS - 10 (Promoter)
We weren’t for the Germans, even if we had to play along with them. He understood that. He was a Nazi, but a reasonable one.
A very critical and important account of being the descendant of a Nazi; the author takes upon his own hands to research and understand his family lineage and how he discovered his grandfather’s journey from WW 1 to becoming a Nazi during WW 2.
The picture is never white, but always grey, and this book is the testament of the same.
Recommend it if you are interested in World War II history.
November 29, 2022
This is such an amazing tale of family secrets, Nazi Germany, propaganda, and how the choices we make, the death and destruction it can cause, haunts not only the chooser, but subsequent generations. Told in such a sweeping manner, you’ll feel like you’re watching a movie, watching the events play out live, and will be swept away with the story.
Burkhard Bilger knew there was something hidden in his grandfathers past, but never was able to ask the questions while he was alive. Grown now, Bilger sets out to find and retrace his grandfathers plight living in Nazi Germany after fighting in WW1. The choices he made to survive are amazing and heart breaking. The choices he makes to resist while being a Nazi leader for a small town will have you captivated, saddened, emboldened, and seeing things from a whole different perspective.
This is historical fiction at its best. A true must read for any history lover, WW2 enthusiast, and anyone wanting to take another dive into life in and around Germany under Nazi rule.
Thank you so much to #NetGalley, the publisher #RandomHousePublishing, and the amazing author #BurkhardBilger for extending an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. This is one that everyone should read.
Happy reading my friends! 😊
Burkhard Bilger knew there was something hidden in his grandfathers past, but never was able to ask the questions while he was alive. Grown now, Bilger sets out to find and retrace his grandfathers plight living in Nazi Germany after fighting in WW1. The choices he made to survive are amazing and heart breaking. The choices he makes to resist while being a Nazi leader for a small town will have you captivated, saddened, emboldened, and seeing things from a whole different perspective.
This is historical fiction at its best. A true must read for any history lover, WW2 enthusiast, and anyone wanting to take another dive into life in and around Germany under Nazi rule.
Thank you so much to #NetGalley, the publisher #RandomHousePublishing, and the amazing author #BurkhardBilger for extending an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. This is one that everyone should read.
Happy reading my friends! 😊
December 26, 2022
Beautifully written and thought-provoking book. It is not only an insightful family memoir but also a fascinating history lesson, which brings the facts that are rarely mentioned in the official accounts of the wars. Even among the Nazis there were decent people, and even the glorified victors could be cruel and vengeful.
It reminded me of Wade Davis’ brilliant Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, which made me understand how the Great War scarred the whole generation of English young men, Mallory among them. ‘Fatherland’ shows the other side of the coin, describing how the same war devastated the lives of millions of young Germans and prepared ground for the Nazis.
Thanks to the publisher, Random House, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
It reminded me of Wade Davis’ brilliant Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, which made me understand how the Great War scarred the whole generation of English young men, Mallory among them. ‘Fatherland’ shows the other side of the coin, describing how the same war devastated the lives of millions of young Germans and prepared ground for the Nazis.
Thanks to the publisher, Random House, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
March 7, 2024
"War finds our weaknesses even more than our strengths."
In essence, Fatherland is not just a story of war, but a poignant exploration of the human condition, reminding us of the profound ways in which conflict shapes our lives and exposes the depths of our vulnerabilities. Bilger offers a nuanced commentary on "misguided loyalty" that is often overshadowed by the black and white wartime narratives.
In essence, Fatherland is not just a story of war, but a poignant exploration of the human condition, reminding us of the profound ways in which conflict shapes our lives and exposes the depths of our vulnerabilities. Bilger offers a nuanced commentary on "misguided loyalty" that is often overshadowed by the black and white wartime narratives.
Read
July 24, 2023It’s really hard to rate this one. It’s fantastically written, but there’s no such thing as a good Nazi. There just isn’t. The go along to get along idea was exactly the problem. Not enough people stood up in time to say no, this is wrong.
November 10, 2024
"There were no little errors in wartime Germany. The choices you made put you on one side of history or the other."
Karl Gönner, a veteran of the first World War, was a school teacher when the Nazis came to power. During the war, he was posted in occupied France, responsible for moulding French children into "proper Germans."
After the fall of the Third Reich, Gönner was arrested and charged with giving a work order that, once refused, led police to beat a local resident to death.
Historical accounts were mixed when it came to Karl Gönner. Was he the monster we envision all Nazis to be, a murderous criminal with a thirst for power? Or was he a reasonable man caught on the wrong side of history? Fatherland is a family memoir, with Gönner's grandson unraveling the mystery of his grandfather's Nazi past.
"Why did he join the Nazi Party in 1933? What was he thinking two years later, when Hitler introduced the Nuremberg Race Laws, depriving Jews of citizenship? Why was he imprisoned in Strasbourg after the war? ...It must have been torment to [my mother], trying to square what she learned about the war with her memories of her father. How could he have been both the man she loved and the monster history suggested?"
This snapshot of history is interesting, filled with scenes from the classroom - less the frontlines - where classes begin with "Heil Hitler!" and students are taught arithmetic by calculating projectile trajectories and the economic cost of keeping the disabled alive through middle age.
It, too, questions the guilt and conscience of everyday Germans, at a time where being true to your country was "the one involate rule of war."
By 1945, Germany had more than 2,000 race-based laws and ordinances. In his first two years as Chancellor alone, Hitler banned trade unions, formed the Gestapo, withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations, and outlawed all political parties but his own.
There's thought that everyday Germans knew that terrible crimes were being committed, but either suffered from unparalleled group psychosis or lacked the information so irrefutable that it would've left them no choice but to act.
In Karl Gönner's case, if he kept up with appearances - if he wore the uniform, if he attended party meetings, if he refrained from chewing out his fellow party officials - there was a chance he would not only survive the war, but shield others from the worst of it. Karl's post as Party Chief of Bartenheim made him more powerful than the village mayor, responsible for the adherence of over 2,000 residents to Nazi rule. During his tenure, no family was deported, and no one died in a camp.
Was it possible for a Nazi officer to both carry out orders and not violate his own conscience?
I'm not sure that Fatherland lives up to the historical mystery the reviews describe it to be. In fact, for a memoir, it wasn't even particularly effective at telling a linear narrative. However, it's at least as interesting as happening upon a box in the attic with letters and photographs from a long time passed, and taking your time to view each with care.
3.25 out of 5
Karl Gönner, a veteran of the first World War, was a school teacher when the Nazis came to power. During the war, he was posted in occupied France, responsible for moulding French children into "proper Germans."
After the fall of the Third Reich, Gönner was arrested and charged with giving a work order that, once refused, led police to beat a local resident to death.
Historical accounts were mixed when it came to Karl Gönner. Was he the monster we envision all Nazis to be, a murderous criminal with a thirst for power? Or was he a reasonable man caught on the wrong side of history? Fatherland is a family memoir, with Gönner's grandson unraveling the mystery of his grandfather's Nazi past.
"Why did he join the Nazi Party in 1933? What was he thinking two years later, when Hitler introduced the Nuremberg Race Laws, depriving Jews of citizenship? Why was he imprisoned in Strasbourg after the war? ...It must have been torment to [my mother], trying to square what she learned about the war with her memories of her father. How could he have been both the man she loved and the monster history suggested?"
This snapshot of history is interesting, filled with scenes from the classroom - less the frontlines - where classes begin with "Heil Hitler!" and students are taught arithmetic by calculating projectile trajectories and the economic cost of keeping the disabled alive through middle age.
It, too, questions the guilt and conscience of everyday Germans, at a time where being true to your country was "the one involate rule of war."
By 1945, Germany had more than 2,000 race-based laws and ordinances. In his first two years as Chancellor alone, Hitler banned trade unions, formed the Gestapo, withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations, and outlawed all political parties but his own.
There's thought that everyday Germans knew that terrible crimes were being committed, but either suffered from unparalleled group psychosis or lacked the information so irrefutable that it would've left them no choice but to act.
In Karl Gönner's case, if he kept up with appearances - if he wore the uniform, if he attended party meetings, if he refrained from chewing out his fellow party officials - there was a chance he would not only survive the war, but shield others from the worst of it. Karl's post as Party Chief of Bartenheim made him more powerful than the village mayor, responsible for the adherence of over 2,000 residents to Nazi rule. During his tenure, no family was deported, and no one died in a camp.
Was it possible for a Nazi officer to both carry out orders and not violate his own conscience?
I'm not sure that Fatherland lives up to the historical mystery the reviews describe it to be. In fact, for a memoir, it wasn't even particularly effective at telling a linear narrative. However, it's at least as interesting as happening upon a box in the attic with letters and photographs from a long time passed, and taking your time to view each with care.
3.25 out of 5
February 18, 2024
I listened to this book. I have a passion to read as much about the holocaust, mostly survivor stories, that I can get my hands on! This was a very different twist something I have not read much about maybe one other book. I’m glad that he did the research but I agree with some others that he does make it sound like he wasn’t a bad Nazi. That’s why I gave it four stars because I truly believe that, all Nazis were bad unless they somehow escaped it and ran away. I don’t know how I would do it. I’m not sure what I would do if I was in that position especially if my family needed food and money I would probably do anything I needed to do to help them survive, but nowadays, and everything I know from the past I believe I would resist evil forces, I don’t regret reading this story it does give a little bit more insight into the common life ofa Nazi
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