Inge's War
A German Woman's Story of Family, Secrets, and Survival Under Hitler
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4.4 • 11 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
"An extraordinary saga." —David Grann, New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon
The mesmerizing account of a granddaughter's search for a World War II family history hidden for sixty years
Growing up in Paris as the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was that her great-grandparents, grandmother, and mother had fled their home city of Königsberg near the end of World War II, never to return. But everything changed when O'Donnell traveled to the city—now known as Kaliningrad, and a part of Russia—and called her grandmother, who uncharacteristically burst into tears. "I have so much to tell you," Inge said.
In this transporting and illuminating book, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years, from falling in love with a man who was sent to the Eastern Front just after she became pregnant with his child, to spearheading her family's flight as the Red Army closed in, her young daughter in tow. Ultimately, O'Donnell uncovers the act of violence that separated Inge from the man she loved; a terrible secret hidden for more than six decades.
A captivating World War II saga, Inge's War is also a powerful reckoning with the meaning of German identity and inherited trauma. In retracing her grandmother's footsteps, O'Donnell not only discovers the remarkable story of a woman caught in the gears of history, but also comes face-to-face with her family's legacy of neutrality and inaction—and offers a rare glimpse into a reality too long buried by silence and shame.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist O'Donnell's vivid and meticulously researched debut unearths the hidden history of her maternal grandmother's flight from East Prussia during WWII and offers key insights into the lives of ordinary Germans under Nazi rule. Before 2006, O'Donnell writes, she knew her grandmother, Inge, as an "aloof, somewhat selfish woman, quick in her criticisms." But O'Donnell's visit to Kaliningrad, Russia (formerly K nigsberg, Germany), the city where Inge lived until she, her parents, and her infant daughter (O'Donnell's mother) fled the Soviet Army's advance in 1945, cracked Inge's reserve and led to a series of revelations about her family's "apathy" during Hitler's rise to power, her early adult years in wartime Berlin; her hardships as a refugee in Denmark and northern Germany; and the secret that doomed her relationship with O'Donnell's biological grandfather, a soldier captured by the Soviets on the Eastern Front. O'Donnell fills in the gaps in Inge's memories with investigative reporting, historical research, and imaginative recreations of key moments, delivering an incisive and multilayered account of family trauma, the dangers of nationalism and anti-Semitism, and the plight of refugees. This exceptional account transforms a private tragedy into a universal story of war and survival.
