Resistance in Nazi Germany and the Power of Inspiration

Inspiration. I spent years looking for inspiration. I often imagined inspiration would find me on a sunny day, under a leafy tree with a book in hand and a butterfly on my knee. Clarity would strike, and like something out of a movie, I’d be inspired to create something beautiful and lasting—something with my hands maybe, or something with my mind. In reality, inspiration struck while I was walking downstairs with a laundry basket full of dirty clothes. Yep. Right there, with my hair in a ponytail and wearing sweatpants; I was inspired.

The History Channel was on the TV and set to a program about what it was like being German in Nazi Germany. I’ve seen a hundred programs on Nazi Germany, but this one was different. This show talked about the historic Nuremberg Kunstbunker, a secret art bunker the townsfolk hid from Hitler.

I was intrigued.

I set the laundry basket down and watched the show.

The program talked about the youth resistance movement—kids who grew up in Hitler’s Germany where Nazi indoctrination started in kindergarten. As these kids reached adulthood, they realized that what they had been taught to admire wasn’t worth admiring after all, and they resented the way the Nazi Party tried to control all facets of their life.

Now I wasn’t just intrigued. I was enthralled.

I have a degree in history, so when I stumble across events I’m not aware of, I’m almost always inspired to find out more. That was ten years ago, in October, 2009. I searched the internet for more information about the youth resistance, and I found some, but not enough to feed my appetite. I looked for a novel on the subject and I couldn’t find one. I never thought I’d write a novel. Ever. But when I realized that the novel I wanted to read didn’t exist, I was inspired to write it myself.

My research plunged me into the dark underbelly of the youth German Resistance. Once there, I found that the resistance was more varied than I thought, and that the many different groups that existed didn’t work together (if they had, perhaps history would have played out differently.) The White Rose, probably one of the most notable youth resistance groups, was a passive group of young adults known for their anti-Nazi leaflets.

The Swing Kids was another, a group (and a movement) who openly resisted the confines of Nazi behavior. They listened to banned music and essentially behaved like American teens, which was absolutely scandalous and an arrestable offense. However, not all youth resistance groups were passive. The Leipzig Meuten and Edelweiss Pirates had a more aggressive strategy, one that used street bombs, mob attacks, and ambushes—they played the Reich at their own game. 

Yet, in between these groups, between the passive and the aggressive, there were youths printing phony identification papers and providing safe houses for Jews. There were special sects—some of them female—who sabotaged patrols, schemed to assassinate Hitler, and infiltrated the Reich to spy for the British. When I learned this, the desire to have The Girl I Left Behind play out as a female-driven spy novel became too good to resist. 

I’m not giving the plot away by saying Ella, the main character in my book, finds work inside the Reich as a secretary. I was a secretary once. Young, just seventeen. What’s significant about my time as a secretary was that I worked at a high security nuclear test reactor (not the kind that generated electricity.) Crazy to think about.

What’s even crazier is that I was one of the few people, aside from the plant manager, to have a security clearance into some of the most sensitive areas of the plant. Nobody questioned me. I had a badge. They let me in. It is important to note that at seventeen I actually looked thirteen, and I found myself in an adult world where I was still very much a teen.

I hated my job there. I never saw value in it, and for so many years I thought of that time as “the lost years” because it was before I went to college and before I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Oh, if only I knew then how important that job would be to me later and how my duties, and the people I came into contact with, would inspire some of the situations Ella finds herself in.

Now, armed with my research and life experiences, I had so many questions. How far would a young girl go in the name of freedom? Most importantly, what would make her break? Sure, history can tell us these things, but through fiction we can feel them.

Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be had I not been passing by the TV that fateful day in October, 2009. In the last ten years I’ve written five novels, three of which I sold to Aria Fiction. So, inspiration is a very powerful thing. You never know when it will strike, or where it will take you. 

—

Andie is an American writer living in Washington State with her husband and two boys. She writes female-driven WWII historical fiction. Her debut novel, The Girl I Left Behind, was published by Aria Fiction in October 2019.

The Girl from Vichy, her second novel with Aria Fiction, will be released in July 2020 with a third untitled novel due to release in 2021. Andie holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Washington State University and a Master in Teaching. Andie would love to say she spends her free time gardening and cooking, but she’s killed everything she’s ever planted and set off more fire alarms than she cares to admit. Andie does, however, love spending time with her family, trail running, traveling the world, and drinking copious amounts of coffee.

You can find discussion questions for Andie’s novels on her website www.andienewton.com. You can also find Andie on Twitter @andienewton and Facebook: fb.me/newtonauthor. If you would like to add The Girl I Left Behind to your Goodreads shelves, click here: http://bit.ly/2mGh6bF

Links to buy:

Amazon USA  https://amzn.to/2AU61Hj

Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2MmLsZv

KOBO: http://bit.ly/2m8DQAc

Apple: https://apple.co/2m6GU04

Google: http://bit.ly/2mq9UQk

THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND

What would you risk to save your best friend?

As a young girl, Ella never considered that those around her weren’t as they appeared. But when her childhood best friend shows Ella that you can’t always believe what you see, Ella finds herself thrown into the world of the German Resistance. 

On a dark night in 1941, Claudia is taken by the Gestapo, likely never to be seen again, unless Ella can save her. With the help of the man she loves, Ella must undertake her most dangerous mission yet and infiltrate the Nazi Party. 

Selling secrets isn’t an easy job. In order to find Claudia, Ella must risk not only her life, but the lives of those she cares about. 

Will Ella be able to leave behind the girl of her youth and step into the shoes of another? 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing