Eleven Eleven by Paul Dowswell

November 11, 1918. Three men. Three destinies that will come together in the final hours of the Great War.

Axel Meyer is heading to the Front with his fellow German soldiers when a terrific explosion jolts him awake on the train he's traveling on. Axel, who is from Wansdorf, just west of Berlin along with the other German soldiers is ordered off and told to march. Alex is befriended by Erich Becker, a young German about his age who has lost his three older brothers to the war. Exhausted, Axel hopes they are being marched to a barracks to rest but instead he finds himself in a tiny village called Saint-Libert, to be sent to the front. Alex and Erich along with a group of soldiers are marched to the village of Aulnois where the two boys are ordered into the tower of the Church of St. Nicholas as lookouts. They are expecting an attack any time now.

Eddie Hertz is a pilot in the American Air Service First Pursuit Group. Eddie, who now has four kills, one short of making him an Ace, has been stationed at the airbase at Doullens. He's been in France now for nine months and early in the morning of November 11, he too hears a catastrophic explosion. Eddie's family is the wealthy Hertz family who have an apartment on Upper East Side, across from Central Park. Eddie, along with his younger brother Bobbie has had the best education money could buy and a privileged life. He's just lost his girlfriend back in America, Janie Holland, but Eddie doesn't mind because he's met a lovely French girl, Celine who works at a field hospital close to the base. When Eddie learns that the war will be over at 11 am on November 11th, he decides to take his Camel out for one last mission, to try to get his fifth kill. As an excuse to go up, he decides to provide air support for the American troops under Colonel Miller as they attack Aulnois.

William (Will) Franklin's C Company, of the 'King's Own' Royal Lancaster Regiment is resting by the roadside. He thinks back to his sweetheart, Alice Hayworth, whose father, Dr. Hayworth convinced Will to enlist despite his being too young. Will now realizes that Alice's father wanted him as far away from Alice as possible. Will hadn't really wanted to enlist especially since his older brother Stanley had died at Passchendale, and his other older brother Jim was already overseas fighting. When Will enlisted his parents managed to have Will serve alongside Jim, in the same company. Will's unit is to attack the town of Saint-Libert while the Americans will attack the village of Aulnois. Will and his unit survive a gas attack and he is sent with his brother Sergeant Jim Franklin to reconnoiter the woods nearby for Germans before the attack. Shortly after Jim and Will's patrol leaves for the forest, a runner arrives at their unit with the new that the war is over. The soldier sent to tell them the news is shot dead by a sniper.

Meanwhile in a railway carriage in the Compiegne forest, north of Paris, negotiations to halt the war with the surrender of Germany, are ongoing. The fictitious Captain George Atherley is recording the terms of surrender. Representing Germany is Matthias Erzberger, representative of the coalition formed after the abdication of the Kaiser and Count Alfred von Obersdorff. Representing Great Britain is First Sea Lord, Sir Rosslyn Wemyss. The French delegation includes Marshal Foch, Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies. No American representatives are in attendance. The papers are signed and the war is declared over at approximately 5 am in the morning. The Armistice will come into effect at 11 am, Paris time. There were six hours left for war to rage and men to die.

On that last morning of the war all three men and the soldiers they are with will be drawn together partly by circumstances beyond their control but also by the choices they make. For some it will be the last day of their lives, for others the beginning of the rest of their lives.

Discussion

Eleven Eleven is a realistic portrayal of war by Dowswell, author of  the novel, Auslander. Dowswell is an excellent historical fiction writer, capable of bringing history to life for his young readers. His portrayal of the horror of war and the terrible fear young men endured when confronted with the realities of the battlefield are subdued but realistic.  Readers will generally get the idea that many of these soldiers suffered terrible wounds from shrapnel, mines, gunshot, shells and mustard gas.

Dowswell has chosen to focus on a very specific time period in this novel, from 2:00 am in the morning of November 11 until 1:00 pm in the afternoon on what would be the last day of the war. The end of any war is bittersweet. It's wonderful that the war has ended but bitter because of those last few men who die in the final hours of battle. The reader experiences these emotions intensely near the end of Eleven Eleven; the men who managed to survive four years of war only to die in the final hour of the war or even after the Armistice went into effect.

One aspect of this novel that stands out is how Dowswell portrayed each of the different soldiers, Americans, Germans and British as ordinary people who are remarkably similar to each other despite their different nationality. Each recognizes the fear in his enemy's eyes, sees the exhaustion and can even manage to look past the uniform to see another young person there just like them. Flashbacks for each character allow the reader to see that life at home for these soldiers is not all that remarkably different, whether they are German or British. They still struggle with the same problems, suffer the same losses, experience similar joyful moments.

Eleven Eleven, the title a reference to "the eleventh hour of the eleventh month" is highly recommended. Author Paul Dowswell is a wonderful historical fiction writer whose novels are engaging and well written.

Book Details:
Eleven Eleven by Paul Dowswell
New York: Bloomsbury
224 pp.

Auslander by Paul Dowswell

This novel tells the fictional story of a young boy, Piotr Bruck, who is taken by the Nazis to Berlin to become a reclaimed German. While Piotr may have the ideal Aryan features, he soon learns his heart and mind do not subscribe to the Aryan ideals of race.

The novel opens with Piotr undergoing a terrifying physical exam in Warsaw where he is singled out because of his ideal Aryan features of blonde hair and blue eyes. In flashback, the reader learns that thirteen year old Piotr lived with his mother and father on their farm outside of Warsaw. For a time after the Germans invaded Poland, they believed they were safe, even though their farm was situated between the Russians and Germans. But when Russian and Germany begin to carve up Poland, his parents were killed and Piotr was driven from his home by German troops. Homeless and hungry, Piotr ends up in an orphanage in Warsaw.

Returning to the present, Piotr is taken from the orphanage along with many other boys and after a physical exam in which his features are measured and examined, he is grouped together boys who are to be sent back to Germany. His blonde hair and blue eyes and his near perfect German mark him as being of German blood -volksdeutsche. He along with others judged to be volkdsdeutsche are taken by Doctor Fischer of the Race and Settlement Office who runs this eugenics program, to be Germanized.

Piotr is sent to the Lebensborn hostel in Landsberg to await adoption by a German family. Meanwhile, Doctor Fischer contacts Professor Franz Kaltenbach who lives in Berlin with his wife, Liese, and their three daughters, twenty year old Elsbeth, thirteen year old Traudl and eight year old Charlotte. He encourages the Kaltenbachs to take Piotr into their home to raise him as a German citizen despite Kaltenbach's reservations about Piotr's Polish ancestry. Kaltenbach's reluctance is based on his work for the Nazi party.

Kaltenbach works at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Dahlem-Dorft, Berlin where he has been nvolved in a number of tasks that dealt with eugenics and racial purity. He had to determine the racial purity of the children from the Ostarbeiters (Eastern workers from Poland) as well as confirm the authenticity of the Ancestral Passports of candidates for the SS. Kaltenbach achieved his post at the Institute after the ethnic cleansing of all Jewish academics.

When Piotr returns home to Berlin with the Kaltenbachs, he is renamed Peter and is expected to hold the same views as his foster family regarding Jews and Slavs as well as politically support the Nazis.Peter is uncertain as to what to believe because his parents were divided on supporting the Nazis.  At first it seems that Peter and the Professor will have as good relationship as they share an interest in aircraft. Excited to finally have a safe place to live, Peter joins the Hitler-Jugend, attends school and even begins to see a girl in his neighbourhood, Anna Reiter. Peter even dreams of one day becoming a Luftwaffe pilot.

But Peter's comfort zone is challenged by the reality of life in Berlin when he sees Polish boys, the Ostarbeiters,  being overworked and starved, when he finds he cannot accept the German's blind faith in Hitler and when the Nazis ban anything different from what the party deems acceptable. Torn between his disgust at what the Nazis are doing and his fear of working against, Peter must decide make a choice - one that could cost ultimately cost him his life.

Discussion

Told from the third person omniscient point of view, Auslander provides a unique look a life in Berlin during the Second World War. Although most of the narration is from Peter's point of view, Dowswell also includes the perspectives of many other characters in the novel including Anna, Ula and Otto Reiter, Gerhart Segur and Franz Kaltenbach. It is precisely the use of different narrators that gives this novel its balanced approach. There are German characters who are "one hundred percenters" - those who completely believe in the Nazi propaganda such as Professor Kaltenbach and his wife. The Reiters represent those Germans who did not agree with the Nazi racial policies and who worked to mitigate the suffering of the Jews and those who were part of the resistance. Also portrayed are those such as Elsbeth who originally supported the Nazis but when the learned the truth of what they were doing, tried desperately to extricate themselves. And then of course there were many German citizens such as Segur who were terrorized by the Nazis into betraying neighbours and friends.

The fanaticism of the Nazis is well portrayed in the novel and Dowswell includes parts of speeches and texts used by the Nazis to foment hatred against Jews and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable and to promote war. Dowswell captures the time period brilliantly, showing how beautiful and sophisticated Berlin was in 1941 and yet how poisoned its people were with the rabid ideology of genetics and race. This was initially deceiving to someone like Peter who did not yet recognize the iron grip the Nazis had on life in Germany. As the tide in the war begins to turn, the rationalization of German citizens and their reluctance to doubt the Nazis is demonstrated. Even the bombing of Berlin doesn't seem to sway them.

One of the major themes in the novel is that of identity. Because Peter has lost his parents, he dearly wants to fit into German society. It is a classic search for identity but one which is even more poignant because of his circumstances. Peter is not allowed to be himself, nor to express his own views about what is happening. Instead, whether he agrees or not with Nazi policy, he must conform to the Nazi way of thinking or risk being sent to a work camp or perhaps worse. Gradually, as Peter's eyes are opened to what the Nazis are doing to ordinary people simply because they are different, Peter comes to understand the price of conformity both personally and for the country. Despite being very conflicted he begins to resist in subtle secret ways that lead to him becoming part of the resistance and risking everything.

This novel is well written and thrilling from beginning to end with a likable male protagonist - something not found in many historical fiction novels. The author based the character of Ula Reiter on two German women who heroically defied the Nazi regime in Berlin during the war. He also explains the origins of some of the ideas, speeches and events portrayed in the novel in a note at the back of the novel. This is historical fiction at it's very best - effectively providing readers with a sense of what life was like during this terrible conflict.
Highly recommended.

Book Details:
Auslander by Paul Dowswell
London: Bloomsbury            2009
295 pp.