The Big Lie (27 page)
Authors: Julie Mayhew
For further information about life under Nazism, I can recommend the following. A few of these are hard to get hold of from bookshops and libraries – try second-hand book websites or make a visit to the Wiener Library in London (
www.wienerlibrary.co.uk
).
HHhH
by Laurent Binet (Vintage, 2013)
Seemingly a novel about a real-life plot to assassinate the chief of the SS, but really it’s a story about an author’s struggle to tell the truth. Do all accounts of history contain lies?
Nazism and German Society 1933–1945
, edited by David F Crew (Routledge, 1995)
Includes several revealing essays on women’s lives in Nazi Germany, and explores how some people resisted the Nazis and others complied.
God Remained Outside: An Echo of Ravensbr
ü
ck
by Genevieve de Gaulle Anthonioz (Souvenir Press, 2000)
A personal account from the niece of Charles de Gaulle who was sent to Ravensbrück.
The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank (Penguin, 2007)
Whether she would have been a belieber or not, Anne was a wonderful writer, bringing to life the joys as well as the terrors of being young and Jewish during World War II.
Stasiland
by Anna Funder (Granta, 2011)
This is actually about the former East Germany rather than Nazism, but Anna Funder’s book is useful if you want to understand more about how states try to control their people.
What Difference Does a Husband Make?: Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Post-war Germany
by Elizabeth D Heineman (University of California Press, 1999)
Particularly good for researching the Nazis’ attitudes to marriage – and their management of it.
Hansi: The Girl who Loved the Swastika
by Maria Anne Hirschmann (Kingsway, 1973)
An unusual autobiography from a former BDM member. When Hansi discards her Nazi thinking, she replaces it with the evangelical belief that God speaks to her.
Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France
by Agnes Humbert (Bloomsbury, 2008)
A stunning memoir by art historian Agnes Humbert who was put in prison for her part in the French Resistance and forced to work in appalling conditions in factories in Eastern Europe.
Hitler’s Children
by Guido Knopp (Sutton Publishing, 2002)
Exposes how seductive the Hitler Youth and Bund Deutscher Mädel were to young people in Nazi Germany.
Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Killing Fields
by Wendy Lower (Chatto & Windus, 2013)
An abundance of evidence demonstrating that women were not always innocent bystanders in Hitler’s regime.
Account Rendered: A Dossier on my Former Self
by Melita Maschmann (Plunkett Lane Press, 2013)
Melita, who was in the BDM, writes this book as a letter to her former Jewish school friend trying to explain why she betrayed her during the war.
Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women’s Concentration Camp 1939–45
by Jack G Morrison (Markus Weiner, 2000)
A comprehensive resource for understanding the day-to-day horrors, and mundanities, of life in the women’s camp.
The Battle of Britain: Myth and Reality
by RJ Overy (Penguin, 2010)
This book gives some insight into the never-realised Operation Seelöwe (the Nazis’ plan to invade Britain) and is useful for understanding the cracks in the Allies’ campaign that were fortunately not exploited.
Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians During the Third Reich
by Claudia Schoppmann (Columbia University Press, 1996)
Vibrant and heartbreaking first-hand accounts from women forced to hide their sexuality in Nazi Germany.
Into that Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder
by Gitta Sereny (Pimlico, 1995)
Truly startling book in which the author attempts to understand how a charming family man came to be the commandant of Treblinka death camp by spending time with him in the prison where he is serving time for his war crimes.
Are You In This Hell Too?: Memoir of Troubled Times 1944–1945
by Elisabeth Sommer-Lefkovits (Menard Press, 1995)
A stark memoir by a woman who was deported to Ravensbrück and then Bergen-Belsen, and survived.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
–
www.ushmm.org
A comprehensive resource on the Holocaust, but also a good place to go to for more on the treatment of homosexuals by the Nazis.
Calvin College
–
http://research.calvin.edu/
This website has a large archive of Nazi propaganda, including those weekly NSDAP posters referenced by Jessika in the book.
Lieder, Totalitarianism and the Bund Deutscher Mädel: Girls’s Political Coercion Through Song
by Rachel Jane Anderson (McGill University, Canada, 2002)
http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/dtl_publish/8/29493.html
An online research paper examining the power of the songs in
Wir Madel singen!
, the Bund Deutscher Mädel’s official music book.
We Are Legion
For an insight into hacking and organised online protest, this is a great documentary.
This action group works towards making arts and humanities careers accessible to all young people, and runs a national alternative old boy network that aims to create privilege for people without privilege.
Lots of people helped me write this book …
I spent a great deal of time at The Wiener Library and am incredibly grateful for their extensive archive of Nazi-era literature. I want to extend particular thanks to Kat Hübschmann for her expertise on the experiences of young women living under Hitler. I am indebted to all the historians whose non-fiction works provided sparks for this novel. If you would like to read more on the themes in
The Big Lie
, a list of some suggested titles follows.
In 2014, I was lucky to be at the Southbank Centre to hear Horst von Wächter and Niklas Frank, now in their seventies, talk about their high-ranking Nazi fathers. While Niklas denounces his father, Horst still believes that his father was somehow a good man. Their honest discussion of their paternal relationships helped me shape Jessika’s psyche and her connection with her father.
Thanks to all the coaches and skaters at Planet Ice Hemel Hempstead who helped me, probably without realising. If you want to learn any of Jessika’s basic moves, Robert Burgerman’s videos at
ice-burg.co.uk
are a great resource.
The German language in this book sounds colloquial and genuine because of guidance from Claire Brooks and native-speaker Kat Sellner. As well as pruning my dialogue, Kat was incredibly generous in sharing her experiences of being a young person in Germany now, growing up under the long shadow of World War II. Tausend Dank, Kat.
Lee Simpson taught me the difference between ‘the worldwide web’ and ‘the internet’, several times, with diagrams. Though it was never necessary to explicitly explain it in the book, it was important to me that Simon and Clementine Hart’s manipulation of communications hangs together in the background. The only reason that it does is because of Lee and his patient technical explanations of DDoS, VPN, etc.
Thank you firefighter Guy Pedliman for teaching me how to, well, fight a fire. And to my husband, for lending me his degree in history, political thought and philosophy. You can have it back now, Thom. I hope I haven’t scuffed the corners too much.
A raised ‘power-to-the-people’ fist to Hot Key Books, who are certainly publishing’s rebels. Thanks in particular to Emily Thomas for championing the book, Matilda Johnson for her passionate editing, Jenny Jacoby for her keen eye and to Jet Purdie for tirelessly tracking down our cover girl.
My agent Louise ‘Marvellously Nitty Gritty’ Lamont has stoked the fire in the belly of this story every step of the way, and has always had Jessika and Clementine’s backs.
Julie Mayhew's debut novel,
Red Ink
, was nominated for the 2014 CILIP Carnegie Medal and short-listed for the 2014 Branford Boase Award.
She originally trained as a journalist, then as an actress, and started writing because she wanted there to be more brilliant roles for girls. Her plays have been performed in London and Edinburgh and on BBC Radio 4.
Julie is founder of www.berkowriters.co.uk and host of short story cabaret The Berko Speakeasy.
And she is also quite good at ice skating.
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First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hot Key Books
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
Text copyright © Julie Mayhew 2015
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4714-0475-7
This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher
Hot Key Books is part of the Bonnier Publishing Group