Guilt, complicity and consequences: The German wife

Australian novelist, Kelly Rimmer, takes real stories and events and weaves them into historical novels, set during and just after WW2. Her research is meticulous, and she does a great job of evoking the time period. I've also read Rimmer's The Paris agent, based on the lives of two women who were part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the war.

The German wife | Published June 2022 | Read September 2023

The German wife is loosely based on the life of Werner von Braun and other German engineers and scientists who were shipped out of Europe by the Americans after WW2. These scientists were considered valuable, largely because of the Cold War and the competition with the Soviet Union for technical advances. Involvement in the war, even if for crimes against humanity, was conveniently overlooked in the Americans' quest to harness German scientific and engineering knowledge.

The German wife jumps between exploring the fictional von Meyer Rhodes family during the war years and their new life in Huntsville, Alabama in the 1950s. Jurgen von Meyer Rhodes is forced to work on the Nazi rocket program during the war, then he and his family are later relocated to Huntsville by the Americans to work on their new space program (Operation Paperclip). Sofie von Meyer Rhodes stands on the sidelines, dealing with the impact of her husband's work in both Germany and the US.

There is a parallel story involving Lizzie, who survives the Dust Bowl drought in Texas in the 1930s and later marries a scientist who works with Jurgen in Huntington. Part of Lizzie's story concerns her brother, Henry, who returns from service in Europe after the war, clearly suffering from PTSD.

I found the war story fascinating, forcing the reader to consider what they might do if placed in the same situation as Jurgen and Sofie. I could have read a whole novel on their struggles to stay true to their beliefs in a regime they didn't agree with, yet they seemingly had no choice but to follow. Sofie loses her two older children to the propaganda of the Hitler Youth and her Jewish best friend, who is forced into hiding. At the same time, her husband is complicit in the atrocities committed against forced labourers as he advances the German rocket program and is compelled to join the Nazi party. In the post-war part of the book, I liked the exploration of the integration of the German families into the Huntington community. They endured suspicions and hatred as living examples of the Nazi regime, particularly when the town was also home to American war veterans.

The parallel story in the American dust bowl of Lizzie is less compelling and not needed in as much depth as is written to flesh out the post-war part of the novel. It makes the novel unnecessarily cluttered. My feeling is that it doesn't add value to the main theme of the book.

Overall, The German wife is an interesting and thought-provoking read that makes you question how far you would go to protect your family. Rimmer makes the reader ponder whether Germans such as the von Meyer Rhodes family were victims of Hitler's regime or complicit in the horrors it inflicted on millions.

Rating:

Sofie's story ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lizzie's story ⭐⭐⭐