Women of the Castle

What would it have been like to be a German who was not a Nazi supporter.  Before the war began, as the different groups were banding together, the brown shirts, Nazi party, and others are building their coalitions and recruiting members.  Some people supported them and agreed with their ideology.  Others joined as sheep follow a leader.  Others thought it may improve their lives as an escape from an unhappy existence.  But there were those who were opposed from the beginning and fought back based on their strength of their convictions.

XXX was one of those men.  He and his friends meet as they realize the country is on the brink of war and start to build their underground retaliation.  On the surface they are business men leading normal lives, attending dance parties and getting married.  But  YYY marries the girl of his dreams as he is secretly planning to try and murder the Fuhrer.  He tells his childhood friend to look after his young wife if something happens to him. 

With a brief account of the war, we are brought to the end, as XXX goes out from the family castle to find, rescue and fulfill her promise to YYY.  She finds three of the wives of YYY and other members of the resistance and brings them and their children to the castle to live with her and her children.  This book beautifully describes the  Europe after the war.  The devastation, the starvation and all the lost people, permanently changed by the experiences they suffered through.  We meet three women and their children, hear their stories of life during the war and see how they try to put it behind them and move through the horrors to make a life on the other side.

In this book we hear about German women who suffered at the hands of the Nazi party.  A women who made terrible mistakes and joined the Nazi party, now is trying to flee who she was during the war, create a new identity.   Women who want to erase the past and start over for the future.

This is again is a novel based on truth and stories the author was told.  Another one of those books that shares with the reader a different perspective on the horrors of Germany during and after World War II.