History is like a fire. The further one steps away from it, the colder it grows. Burkhard Bilger's grandfather was a Nazi group leader of a small town in Alsace, yet Burkhard would be an adult, born and raised in Oklahoma at the heart of middle America, before he learned this. His mother never told stories of her youth, never taught her son the truth of the era in which she spent the days of WWII. This fact left him with neither a sense of history nor a sense of shame when he learned of his ancestor. It did leave him with many questions that demanded answers. His chosen profession of journalist at the New Yorker provided his the access to resources he would need to answer them.

FATHERLAND begins with the trial of Bilger's grandfather, Karl Gonner, for war crimes. Yet it is the people who he governed who would step forward to give testimony of the merciful treatment he showed them that would surprise those who would paint every Nazi with the same brush. Their stories show that there were those Nazis pushed into service of a belief they did not share, their beliefs were in surviving an era of brutality to anyone who questioned their right to rule. The story is fascinating. I've read many books set in the years surrounding the Nazi's regime. Bilger's story adds a dimension I'd not seen before. A great addition for anyone interested in history and it's aftermath. What does happen to the families of the "monsters" that dominate so much of history? This is easily a 5 story read for anyone.

Burkhard Bilger’s Fatherland is about Bilger’s journey to uncover the truth about his grandfather. In his powerful memoir, Bilger writes about his grandfather's role as a Nazi official during World War II. I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this well-written, well-researched, honest book about the past, secrets, family, and history. If you like history, this book is for you!

"Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets" by Burkhard Bilger portray an interesting perspective. Exploration and finding the human, personal angle of German ancestors/relative which were involved in WWII, was certainly a new peek into the lives of the German people, involved with the Nazi's and generally living at that time, their hardships, conflicts and realities examined. I appreciated this memoir. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

"Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets" by Burkhard Bilger is a complex and deeply engaging exploration of a family's past intertwined with the broader historical context of World War II. As you mentioned, the book does require navigating through extensive family biography, which, while detailed, serves as a path to understanding the larger truths and secrets of the author's family history.

Bilger delves into the life of his grandfather, Karl Gönner, a minor Nazi official, providing a personal and humane perspective on a figure who was part of a notoriously brutal regime. The narrative weaves together Gönner's experiences in rural Germany, his time on the battlefields of the First World War, and his role in Nazi-occupied Alsace. This journey through his life offers readers a unique insight into the individual lives affected by and involved in the broader historical events of the era.

The book also grapples with broader themes such as the nature of war, complicity, and the lasting impact of history on individuals and families. It poses important questions about our relationship with the past and how we come to terms with complex family legacies. Bilger's exploration is not just a recounting of historical events but also a reflection on the present and the moral complexities inherent in understanding one's ancestry.

"Fatherland" is therefore recommended for readers who are interested in a deep and thoughtful exploration of family history set against the backdrop of World War II. It's a book that combines meticulous historical research with the emotional depth of a personal journey, offering a unique perspective on a widely covered period of history. A rather unique perspective.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Rating memoirs is always hard for me. I will say that Fatherland by Burkhard Bilger provided me with a different perspective than I've read before on WWII. It's a book about ancestry and what it means to explore one's family when atrocities were committed.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

4.4 storied stars, rounded up
“There were no little errors in wartime Germany. The choices you made put you on one side of history or the other.”
“Like many men of his generation, my grandfather wasn’t much for self-expression…He wanted to forget, not remember.”

Author Burkhard Bilger is an American, “taught to be unafraid of history – to believe that God is on my side, or at least willing to forgive my lapses. But I also have German blood, so I know that forgiveness doesn’t always come easily.” His family had known that like many of his generation, grandfather Karl belonged to the Nazi party. Fatherland shares Bilger’s research through telling stories about Karl, his mother, (a young child during WWII) and the places they lived.

Bilger has been a writer for The New Yorker for decades and his prowess with words and organization shines throughout the book. “It was a gift, this life. She knew that better than anyone. After the howling sirens and concussing shells, even boiling diapers could seem a blessing. But a darkness still clung to things.” Breaking Karl’s life into chapters based on his life roles worked extremely well: Suspect, Father, Ancestor, Son Soldier, Casualty, Teacher, etc. The black and white photographs at the beginning of each chapter made the book even more personable.

The author makes astute observations. “In Germany, there always seemed to be only one right way to do things – cross a street, wear a hat, raise a child – and if you dare to do otherwise, someone was sure to let you know.” (I found this the case with all my grandparents; they were rigid, stiff, inflexible.) Karl’s granddaughter wanted to know about the war, but knew it was taboo to ask. “’He just wanted to forget. It was the same with others after the war. They were just as broken, as soul sick. I think they raised their kids without emotion to make them as tough as possible.”

I requested the book because like the author’s family, my grandparents and great-grandparents never talked about the war. (My grandmother, who immigrated after WWI, had brothers fighting for both Germany and for the Allies.) Bilger’s descriptive storytelling gave me insights into the desperate, starving times both before and after the war. He made me ponder the moral dilemmas of tough wartime choices.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fatherland is an uncomfortable book to read, which is appropriate for a book that circles relentlessly around uncomfortable questions around the author's family's history during the Holocaust and Nazi regime. Burkhard Bilger grew up steeped in his family's German heritage (his parents having immigrated to the United States after World War II), but among all their stories, there's a gap around their wartime experiences. Bilger learns that his maternal grandfather was a Nazi party member and official, and he proceeds to explore the meaning of that. This book is the result of ceaseless questioning and ten years of research to find out what that meant his grandfather's specific situation. The book is a model for uncovering and confronting uncomfortable truths, for not resting with the first answer or the third, for getting people on all sides to tell the stories they don't particularly want to remember.

Thanks to the publisher, the author, and Netgalley for my earc in exchange for an honest review.

This is a very disturbing but well-written account of the author's journey into his grandfather's dark past as a Nazi soldier. I would recommend to anyone interested in World War 2 and an honest accounting of the atrocities that occurred there.

Thanks to HarperCollins for my ARC!

Fatherland by Burkhard Bilger is an illuminating nonfiction read that was both chilling and haunting. The bravery of the writing really showed the investigative talents of Bilger in his search for the truth and the omissions of his families’ history in Germany and Alsace, France. I learned a lot about the second world war and the horrific tolls Nazi inflicted on the people. A journey of morality and the monstrous regime that should never ever be repeated in history.

Fatherland: A Memoir is a must-read for readers who gravitate to histories of the European theater of WWII. The book is a case study, illuminating aspects of the human side of these histories which are often left in the dark: here, what happened to those millions of Germans who were caught up in the Nazi machine, willingly or otherwise? Significant numbers of the German citizenry did not support the Nazi party, but as the regime gained power Germans were pressured into adopting or participating in its politics in both minor and significant ways. Thousands were caught between survival and their beliefs, others benefited from the regime’s policies, witnessing no ill-effects as so many millions of others did.

War and ideological divides produce so much more intimate conflicts and consequences than politics would suggest. Fatherland makes this complexity abundantly clear, and more importantly, without being apologetic or sympathetic to Nazism. Indeed, it highlights the different between Nazi party members, Germans, and the Nazi state, forcing the reader to see beyond the inaccurate and unjustified conflation of these constituents with one another.

Bilger dives into their own family history to produce a prosopography, one which explores the complicated consequences of surviving the Nazi regime before, during, and after the war, especially for those who were forced or otherwise minor participants in state operations. Their family derives from a region of Europe straddling the often fluctuating boundary between France and Germany, Alsace and the region around the Black Forest. This geography has — and continues — to produce a culturally and politically fluid community. Bilger also looks beyond their own family, including the personal war-time histories of other German and French citizens in their proximity: for example, mayors of the myriad of French-German towns who were caught in the Nazi and French crossfire, and women who were forced to interact (in platonic and other ways) with German soldiers or Nazi officials.

During the interwar and WWII years, citizens found themselves dispossessed of either their French or German identities, subject to changes in language, dress, and culture as politics blew one way or the other. After the war Germans and French alike found themselves needed to pick up the pieces of their lives, and grapple with former enemies living in their midst. Questions of culpability rent communities and families apart in the aftermath of WWII as war crimes were being prosecuted; to what degree was Life and the Need to Survive responsible for the choices that people made? To what degree was circumvention of Nazi policies a resistance against Nazism? Did local officials and citizens pander to Nazis out of genuine belief in the regime or were their actions made under duress? Did neutrality absolve people from being responsible for war crimes that occurred?

Indeed, the years following the end of war were some of the hardest, perhaps even harder than during the war for some Germans and French. This aspect of Fatherland is, to this reader, its most poignant and significant contribution; war does not begin with a declaration, nor does it end with a surrender and a treaty. War begins so much earlier, the combat and physical destruction being only its peak, and it lingers on for years, even decades, afterward. Bilger reveals that in the case of Germans, the effects of WWII remain today; it is a scar stretched across multiple generations.

Thank you to NetGalley for this e copy of Fatherland by Burkhard Bolger in exchange for a honest review.This is a historical non fiction book about the author’s maternal grandfather and the author’s quest to finally understand the role he played in a farmer’s death after the war.He also wanted to come to terms with his grandfather’s involvement in the Nazi party when he was a schoolteacher in Alsace, Francis during World War 2.This story has a lot of information and is very detailed orientated.The main theme I gathered from this book was that during the war people were forced to do some bad things or let bad things occur to save themselves. .

I really enjoyed learning about this little known piece of history in the foothills of the mountains. The plot was captivating and kept me intrigued through the very end. It makes one think about their own history and the pain that can come from uncovering the truth...or leaving it hiding in the shadows.

History buffs will find this interesting. There are things are grandparents wouldn't and couldn't speak of. Bilger dives into his own ancestors and their live during Nazi Germany's reign. It's a personal story and a good addition to this genre.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's always good to get a well-researched personal view of wartime.

I think this is an important book and one which needed to be written, but I had a hard time staying invested... to the point I finished it in April but I'm only now getting around to reviewing it. I was immediately intrigued by the perspective of how Germans felt during the war, and what recovery looked like for them afterward--this isn't something I've found anywhere else. When I've talked to my German friends about WWII they just say "Americans have a certain sense of pride in their country... that's not something we can have."

The difficulty that is everpresent in Bilger's story is that his contacts don't WANT to talk about it, and the main insight we get in the therapy sessions that he goes to are that it's simply too painful, too shameful. I think this gets somewhat lost in the larger thread he's unraveling around whether his grandfather was ultimately a "good person." Between jumping back and forth between WWI and WWII, America and Germany, I felt a little disoriented, and wasn't sure what I was supposed to take away from this.

I'm grateful to have read this story, I just wish it had delved a little more into the questions of how people are able to move forward from trauma. What does it mean to be German in the modern day? Will there ever be enough time and distance for Germans to heal from their ancestors' pasts?

Would highly recommend, and already have done so.

A remarkable exploration of one man's experience in a remote region in Germany during that country's most turbulent decades, pre-WWI through today. This is a very well written, and researched, biography of an individual told in the context of a greater historical era.

When Burkhard Bilger began the lengthy process of investigating the life of his own maternal grandfather, he didn’t know what he would find. His grandfather, Karl Gonner, had fought in World War I in the German Army and been seriously wounded. After the war, he became a schoolteacher, married and watched all of the changes that the world watched as Hitler rose to power, consolidated that power and set about recreating a new world. How did Karl live in/with this Nazi world. Bilger’s mother, who was only a young child during those war years also wanted to know more about her father and his relationship to the Nazi Party. It seemed impossible to square who he had been with that evil.

Bilger, a writer for the New Yorker, has taken a circuitous route to find his answers, a route that I did not initially appreciate for its worth. Learning about Europe at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the mindset of some of the nations and people who would soon be heading to war, what a shock that war was to so many, and the extreme cost that hit all of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles with its settlement of debt. Seeing his grandfather’s place through all of this sets up the next stage…the arrival of Naziism. The document searches here required all of the skills he had developed in his work.

What was Karl’s relationship to the Nazi Party? There are answers found, but it takes much time, interviewing some few people still alive and their descendants, scouring archives in Germany and France. There are notes and a bibliography at the end.

This book was obviously a personal labor of family love but also a search for what truth could be found. I also think it provides another look at an era that should never be forgotten. It shows how some people found ways to survive under a brutal regime without losing their humanity.

Recommended for those who read biographies and history.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Fatherland was an interesting family history. The author searches his own family, trying to understand how his grandfather had become a member of the Nazi Party. In trying to make sense of this, he draws parallels to American racism.
Although I enjoyed the book, it did seem a bit scattered and muddled.

Thank you to #NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I really want to like this book. It is written well and I love German/Nazi history. I will come back to this story at a different time.

It's easy to dismiss the many war criminals and criminals against humanity of Nazi Germany as the work of evil people. We can't imagine being evil, so it's unnecessary to put more thought into who could do such things. This book is about the author's journey to explain his own grandfather's life - a grandfather who was an ordinary man who some said protected the innocent, but others that he was dictator of his own little village. Was he guilty, innocent, or some strange combination of the two?

FATHERLAND: A MEMOIR OF WAR, CONSCIENCE, AND FAMILY SECRETS by Burkhard Bilger

Published: 5/02/2023 by Random House Publishers
Hardcover, Page Count: 336




This well written memoir is told in the mode of a mystery story as Bilger uncovers the truth and secrets regarding his maternal grandfather, Karl Gonner, Seemingly spurned onward to this arduous journey when his mother, Edeltraut received in the mail a packet of letters and documents from a cousin shedding light on the secrets of wartime Germany and his grandfather. This lead to over a decade of intensive investigation, with extensive interviews with relatives and witnesses and descendants of the children of the war, in the hopes of uncovering the truth. The actual perpetrators are long gone, but left to bear the scars are those children of the adults living in Germany during the evil reign of Hitler. Most are conscious of their dark legacy and abhor its occurrence. Dealing with your ancestor’s actions and motivations is the origin of such an extensive journey into the past.
Karl Gonner was an elementary teacher by trade and father of four children . He had fought and survived World War I, and sustained an eye injury and loss of vision due to shrapnel. He had watched Hitler rise to power and preach his new world order. The common German folk seemed ripe for such extreme actions still suffering from the devastating effects of the loss of World War I and the censures imposed by the Treaty of Versailles …. and its far reaching effects on their economy.
Eventually Karl, in order to make a living for his family, accepted a job away from his family as school master in Bartenheim, a small village located in Alsace region. Through history this parcel of land has changed back and forth masters with both Germany and France. He soon became the Nazi local group leader of the town. He certainly was in a position of authority and potential abuse. The narrative provides anecdotal evidence of his actions while in charge. When the Allies took over he was arrested and was confined to prison for two years. However, when formally charged with war crimes … he was exonerated. His life was saved with testimony provided by the local Bartenheim residents and several members of the Resistance
Naturally his motivations will never be known, but only suspected. Is there really a “good Nazi?” Oscar Shindler, who was a Nazi Party member, and yet saved Jews.
Burkhard Bilger expertly weaves a complex tapestry of information obtained during interviews and poring over extensive documents and archives strewn across Germany and France to construct a story and memoir that reads more like a mystery novel, than a cold documentary, These eighteen chapters attempt to uncover and give truth to the complex person of Bilger’s grandfather, Karl Gonner. Untimately this superb memoir will make peace with his family history. Bilger muses that his grandfather exhibited quiet opposition, non-violent resistance, and attempted to undermine the regime, and protected his charges from deportation to work and concentration camps. The monsters of the Nazi regime were easy to identify, but the ordinary men involved in the periphery where much harder to identify and assign appropriate degrees of guilt. This flowing narrative provides an extraordinary odyssey through such a dark time in the history of mankind.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishers for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review.