I'm here with another book review. Recently I've been studying lots and lots of history and I really got into it more than ever before, thanks to my amazing history teacher. This year we studied about WWI and WWII and about the time in-between. I got sucked into politics and next year I want to study international relations. Back to the topic the political changes between the WWI and WWII were particularly interesting to me. But the most interesting parts were those politicians, who could make everyone follow them blindly and just make the people listen to them. The ones, who could coat the truth in sugar and make people support those awful things. One of these politicians was Hitler. I couldn't imagine, why people would follow him or support him so blindly. And this is the part were todays book comes in. The prisoners of night and fog by Ann Blankman is a fascinating historical fiction, which takes place in Munich 1931, almost 10 years after the Beer putsch, where Hitler was arrested and sent to prison. Our main character in this story is Gretchen Müller, who calls Hitler "Uncle Dolf" and is the National Socialist Party's favorite. She is in his inner circle and follows him blindly. Her father was shot during the beer putsch, while he protected Hitler with his own body. That's why her family is still taken care of by the NSDAP. Her brother, Reinhard is aggressive, cool, stone cold and animalistic in my opinion. And he is an SA (Sturmabteilug) officer. Her mother doesn't do anything about Reinhard. She just takes it and says he is just very impulsive. So one night Gretchen goes with Eva Braun and her brother and one of his friends to meet with "Uncle Dolf" for dinner. And on the way they see a Jew. Her brother and his friend try to hit him with the car and after they don't succeed, they get out of the car and start to beat him. Just because he is a Jew. So Gretchen sees this and get's out of the car to stop them, at the same tame she knows immediately it was a mistake, because she can't defend a "subhuman". And someone hears her stop them. So then this reporter contacts her, saying that he knows something about her fathers death and he want's information in exchange. Gretchen desperately wants to know the truth and together they start to investigate her father's death, which turns out to be a murder after all. There is just one problem: It's not enough, that she investigates, the reporter, who she works with is a Jew. It's really eye opening how Gretchen starts to see the truth between Hitlers words and acts. She has a really big character development in this book, which is great in my opinion. She slowly start to learn the situation with the Jews and how things work inside the Party. I liked the picture about Munich in this book, because it was very realistic. Fiction was very well combined, with history. After reading this book I feel like I understand, what went down in those years and not just because some of the characters aren't fictions. It was good because the atmosphere of this book was also awfully realistic . Anne Blankman did a great job, with this book. If you're interested in history or even if you aren't, or you just want read a book with twists and turns and a little bit of hopeless and forbidden love this is the book for you.
Bianka
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