Terri Wangard’s first Girl Scout badge was the Writer, the result of scribbling stories in a notebook. Reading such books as the Revolutionary War tale, The Hornet’s Nest by Sally Watson, during her school days, whetted her appetite for history. An interest in genealogy led to her being the recipient of old family letters, which led to an idea for a historical novel.
A batch of forgotten letters was found in my grandmother’s house. Written in 1947 and 1948, they came from distant cousins in Germany. My grandparents and other relatives had been sending them care packages. My great-great-grandfather immigrated to Wisconsin in the 1870s, as did two brothers. A fourth brother remained in Germany, and these letters came from his grandchildren.
When I revived a dream to write in 2008, I decided the family in the letters would be the perfect subject around which to craft a story. Research revealed life in Nazi Germany as increasingly grim before the war even started. While the letters provide a fascinating glimpse of life in postwar-torn Germany, but nothing was mentioned about the war years. How had the family coped? I turned to the internet and searched on the family’s factory name. I found it all right, in a list of German companies that used slave labor. I wanted my family to be the good guys, but that hope grew shaky.
Contact with the German relatives ceased in 1948 after the German currency reform, and with their silence in the letters, many questions couldn’t be answered. Why had they refrained from any mention of their thoughts and activities during Hitler’s regime? Desire to forget? Shame of the vanquished? Concern the American family wouldn’t help if they knew the truth?
Circumstances of their postwar life offer a few facts. The family consisted of a brother, his wife, and three young children, and a sister and her husband, and their “old gray mother,” who turned 66 in 1947. Another brother languished as a prisoner of war in Russia, not returning home until 1949, I learned from the German department for the notification of next of kin. The sister and her bridegroom had lived in Canada for five years, returning to Germany in 1937 because she was homesick. They were bombed out of their homes and lived in their former offices, temporarily fixed up as a residence. Before the war, they employed about one hundred men, but in 1947, had fewer than forty-five, with no coal, electricity, or raw materials to work with.
My imagination took over. The family, not the newlyweds, came to Wisconsin in the thirties. Because a critique partner scorned someone returning to Hitler’s Germany due to homesickness, I gave them a more compelling reason when I rewrote the story. The grandfather had died and the father had to return to take over the factory, much to the daughters’ dismay, who loved their new life in America.
They did not support Hitler. Because their factory had to produce armaments and meet quotas imposed on them, they had no choice in accepting Eastern European forced laborers, Russian POWs, and Italian military internees.
The older daughter (my main character) took pride in committing acts of passive resistance. Now a war widow, she hid a downed American airman she had known in Wisconsin, an act punishable by execution. When they were betrayed, a dangerous escape from Germany ensued.
Maybe the family did support Hitler. Many did before realizing his true colors. My version probably doesn’t come close to the truth, especially concerning the daughter. The real daughter was twelve years old in 1947. No matter. This is fiction, and I created a family I can be proud of.
I hadn’t planned on continuing to write historical novels, but an editor informed me that I likely would receive a contract only if I had a series. Okay, I wrote two more. All three feature B-17 navigators at Ridgewell Air Base in England. In the second book, the plane had to land in neutral Sweden. How many World War II stories have you read based in Sweden? Finding unusual settings is part of my fun.
I was a history major in college, so I obviously enjoy history. Writing in a past era allows me the opportunity to step into years before my lifetime. I live vicariously through my heroines. They have talents I wish I had. In the series, one is a seamstress, one an artist, and one an outgoing Red Cross Clubmobile doughnut girl.
My new series, Unsung Stories of World War II, again turns to the unexpected. Seashells in My Pocket, my seventh novel which released in March, takes place in Brazil. Next year’s No Leaves in Autumn is set in Iceland. The challenge of these locations is finding research materials to write accurate stories. I’ve been blessed to discover three out-of-print memoirs that allowed me to step back in time and join my characters in their adventures. It’s the closest I’ll come to time travel.
Find out more about Terri's books at: www.terriwangard.com
Blog host Helena P. Schrader is an award-winning novelist and author of six non-fiction and twenty historical fiction books. Her current project in a three-part series about the Berlin Airlift.
The first two volumes of the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy are now available.
The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin....
Berlin 1948. In the ruins of
Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian
brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course
with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War
Three is only a misstep away. Buy Now
Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.
USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight
Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin.
They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile,
two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and
abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the
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Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing.
Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!
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