Surviving the Fatherland: A True Coming-of-age Love Story Set in WWII Germany

In Surviving the Fatherland: A True Coming-of-age Love Story Set in WWII Germany, Annette Oppenlander vividly illustrates destroyed cities, utter hunger, and people who have to continue living after having lost everything they knew to one man’s ambitions.

Though Lilly and Günter are destined to meet, fall in love, and face a troublesome part in the evolution of their relationship, they will first have to grow up. They have to do so in WWII Germany, as well as the years that followed immediately after the war. Their fathers have both joined Hitler’s war machine. Fatherless during this time, they grew into adults while being affected by the war in different ways.

The three-book structure allows for the reader to see Lilly and Gunter experience WWII Germany as children, to see them grow into their adult selves after the war and, ultimately, to find each other and fall in love. Though the first person narratives between Lilly and Günter do alternate, exactly who will captain a chapter cannot be predicted. This unpredictability of the chapters’ protagonists works in favor of the story’s development.