Mar
23
2008
Author: Christopher Priest
ISBN: 9780575081154 DDC: 823.914
See also: LibraryThing ; Grumpy Old Bookman ; Singling out the duplications ; Guardian Review ; Excessive Candour ; Sandstorm Reviews
The rain was falling steadily on Buxton that Thursday afternoon in March, the town veiled by drifting low clouds, grey and discouraging.
Jack and Joe are identical twins. Medal winners in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, their lives diverge down different paths. One joins the RAF and flies bombing runs during World War II, the other is a pacifist and a conscientious objector.
But it is hard to describe the plot of this novel with a brief paragraph; it is about the choices people make, about the different possibilities that are out there, and about how there is no such thing as being totally right or wrong in war. It is an alternate history, starting with the present-day investigations of historian Stuart Gratton, who lives in a world where Churchill and Hitler stepped down from power after a deal negotiated by Rudolph Hess, and saw the emergence of a far different world order.
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Tags:
1936 Olympics,
8 Stars,
823.914,
alternate history,
Arthur C. Clarke Award winner,
Britain - wwii,
BSFA Award winner,
Christopher Priest,
Germany - wwii,
London Blitz,
multiple narrators,
RAF,
sff,
War,
WWII
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May
18
2005
Author: Traudl Junge
At 22 she dreamed of being a ballerina, yet she ended up working for and “…liking the greatest criminal ever to have lived.” In this book she simply retells her experiences, without really putting her own interpretation to her actions and feelings.
Throughout the book we come up against that old cliche, the banality of evil. Hitler doesn’t really seem all that bad a boss, but all the same we know what he did, the horrific actions that he was responsible for. As with the film Downfall we get a glimpse into the life of someone who knew there was something wrong, but who didn’t really understand the situation. Junge tells us that she never knew what was going on in the concentration camps, that it was only after the war that the truth emerged and she had to face exactly who and what she worked for.
The editor, Melissa Muller has an afterword where she describes Junge’s life after the war. How she never really hid what she had done during the war but at the same time she never really examined it either. Junge was content to consign it to the past. It was only in later years that she began to understand the guilt that was constantly gnawing at her, the knowledge that youth isn’t an excuse.
Traudl Junge died of cancer in 2002, and in the Guardian’s obit they bring up “the belief of many historians that she and others close to the Führer suffered from an entirely self-induced amnesia.”
Whatever the truth, this book is well worth a read.
Tags:
Adolf Hitler,
Germany - wwii,
memoir,
non-fiction,
Traudl Junge,
Until the Final Hour
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Apr
15
2005
Dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel
* Bruno Ganz …. Adolf Hitler
* Alexandra Maria Lara …. Traudl Junge
* Corinna Harfouch …. Magda Goebbels
* Ulrich Matthes …. Joseph Goebbels
* Juliane Köhler …. Eva Braun
Opening with a group of young women being escorted by armed soldiers to meet Hitler, Downfall is not your average World War II film. Yes, it has guns, violence, death and soldiers, but this film tells of the last few weeks of the third reich from the perspective of those in the bunker with Hitler. For the most part we are shown the world through the eyes of Trudl Junge, one of those young women from the opening scene who became Hitler’s secretary.
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Tags:
10 Stars,
Adolf Hitler,
Alexandra Maria Lara,
based on true story,
Bruno Ganz,
Corinna Harfouch,
Der Untergang,
Downfall,
German,
Germany - wwii,
Juliane Köhler,
Olivier Hirschbiegel,
subtitled,
Traudl Junge,
Ulrich Matthes
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