• Surviving the Fatherland

  • A True Coming of Age Love Story Set in WWII Germany
  • By: Annette Oppenlander
  • Narrated by: Naomi Jacobson
  • Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (167 ratings)

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Surviving the Fatherland  By  cover art

Surviving the Fatherland

By: Annette Oppenlander
Narrated by: Naomi Jacobson
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Publisher's summary

Winner 2017 National Indie Excellence Award

Winner Chill with a Book Readers' Award

Winner Readers' Favorite Book Award

Indie B.R.A.G.Award Honoree

Finalist 2017 Kindle Book Awards

An IWIC Hall of Fame Novel

Surviving the Fatherland tells the true and heart-wrenching stories of Lilly and Günter struggling with the terror-filled reality of life in the Third Reich, each embarking on their own dangerous path toward survival, freedom, and ultimately each other. Based on the author's own family and anchored in historical facts, this story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the strength of war children.

When her father goes off to war, seven-year-old Lilly is left with an unkind mother who favors her brother and chooses to ignore the lecherous pedophile next door. A few blocks away, 12-year-old Günter also loses his father to the draft and quickly takes charge of supplementing his family's ever-dwindling rations by any means necessary.

As the war escalates and bombs begin to rain, Lilly and Günter's lives spiral out of control. Every day is a fight for survival. On a quest for firewood, Lilly encounters a dying soldier and steals her father's last suit to help the man escape. Barely 16, Günter ignores his draft call and embarks as a fugitive on a harrowing 47-day ordeal - always just one step away from execution.

When at last the war ends, Günter grapples with his brother's severe PTSD and the fact that none of his classmates survived. Welcoming denazification, Lilly takes a desperate step to rid herself once and for all of her disgusting neighbor's grip. When Lilly and Günter meet in 1949, their love affair is like any other. Or so it seems. But old wounds and secrets have a way of rising to the surface once more.

©2017 Annette Oppenlander (P)2017 Annette Oppenlander

What listeners say about Surviving the Fatherland

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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Not worth my time

I am a huge WW2 historical fiction and non fiction reader and thought this book, which I assume is based on real people, would give an interesting look at Germany during and after the war. It was very tedious, without a story arc just sort of lurching along year after year. The characters don't come alive and toward the end of the book the love story turns it into a sort of breathless teenage romance. Some of the facts of post war life in Germany were interesting but certainly not worth slogging through 13 hours - which felt like 20. The narrator is terrible - overly dramatic and sonorous. I can't recommend this book if you are a fan of good WW2 stories.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Narrator

I think the storyline would have been captivating but I couldn't get past the narrator.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

The performance almost stopped me from moving to chapter 2

The fact that this was a true story kept me going onto chapter2 and beyond. I learned much about what life was like for non-Jewish Germans living in small towns. Many men were conscripted while others believed it was their duty to blindly follow the crazed orders of Hitler. The main characters were children when their fathers left. They and their families experienced years of starvation even after the war in Europe ended .Stalin continued to obliterate millions in Russia, including Germans stuck in the hundreds of different gulag death camps. The performance improved toward the end third of the novel. Thank goodness for small mercies. This book deserved a top notch performance.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • DB
  • 04-26-18

Interesting perspective of WWII

So to call this a coming of age love story is a bit of a stretch. It is a compelling narrative on the conditions of war and unseen consequences. It is a compelling character study. It is a heartfelt examination of family life and relationships. The storytelling is amazing and the authors work is tremendous.

The narrator is inconsistent. At times she is mesmerizing and other times stiff and monotone. If you can get through that it is a tremendous story well worth the listen.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Breathtaking

Love love love this book! A perspective by German citizens who were caught up in Hitlers reign! Makes you think! Hopefully, it will speak to others who are caught up with a dictator to not stand for evilness! This book explains in great detail how the German people, along with children were terribly affected by this evil dictator! Nothing compared to the Jews, but still a perspective that sheds light on both the struggle and survival of mankind along with the love of strangers! A must read!

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

A great book if it had not been for....

A great story line, however I do not think it necessary to detail sexuality in such a erotic way....I will delete the book and not finish it.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Long..

second half of book seemed unnecessary to the story. I was disappointed usually like these stories.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

WARNING!!!! Sexual violence against a child w Explicit details

I thought places were draggy and wordy so I fast forwarded.

I was repulsed by the details of explicit sexual acts including the rape. I felt it was not necessary for a reader to visualize the erotic behavior of lovers or that s grown man raped (fully penetrated) a young girl.)

I was needlessly traumatized due to my own childhood and a warning should be placed about these types of atrocities being so graphically described in this book. Readers do not need to be driving down the road and suddenly find themselves hearing every detail about every part of the attack.

I skipped great parts but learned just how dark and ugly war was described in this book was. Other places now are quite the same.

Thanks, JInn-A

War is ugly.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Most moving book I ever red

amazing deep love and survival describing the war from the view of the German civilians.
toped off by an amazing narrator.
highly recommend!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

History Buffs May Be Disappointed

I had to stop listening, with 3 hours and 30 minutes left to go, and it's my fault. I was hoping to get an appreciation for what German civilians went through back home during WWII, and what their thoughts were about Hitler, their family members who went to war, the sacrifices they had to make, and their recovery after peace returned. Up to the point where I bailed out, "Surviving the Fatherland" provided that. But I guess I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the book's title, "A true coming of age love story set in WWII Germany." Instead, as a history (read non-fiction) buff, I was attracted to the book because of "true" and "set in WWII Germany." Now, for those who like romance novels, with covers showing bare-chested men wrapping their muscled arms around a sweet, nearly-bare-chested young woman, the last half of the book will be to your liking. But when I started hearing the detailed description of desperate love-making, typical of romance novels and seemingly gratuitous after the earlier part of the book, which described the desperate hunger and deprivations they suffered, I was done. While the narration was fine, and successfully portrayed the perspective of a very young German girl and her brothers as they suffered on the home-front, I kept asking myself if they or the adults in the story ever wondered what was happening with their Jewish neighbors and others who were being taken from their homes in the middle of the night? Also, why wasn't the full-force of their anger directed at the one man who utterly destroyed their nation and their families?

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