Jennifer Bohnhoff
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Quirky Ideas from the WWI History Museum

7/6/2015

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PictureThe reflecting pool at the museum's entrance.
When I went to the National World War I Museum in Kansas City last May, I was delighted by quirky artifacts that really got me thinking.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of them make it into a future novel, because they would add great depth and detail to a narrative.  

 Here are a few of my favorites:

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This projectile from a from a French 58 mm trench mortar was nicknamed the "Flying Pig" because of what it looked like in the air.

The Flying Pig was used by French, Belgian, and U.S. troops and had a range of 490 yards.

The video below isn't of a Flying Pig, but of an Australian trench mortar.  

If I ever write a novel set in the trenches of World War I, I have GOT to have a Flying Pig in it!

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This Austrian helmet was sent home as a souvenir by an American.  Back then, I guess the postal service had less restrictions than now, because no box or packaging was required to get this helmet from Europe to the U.S.  The soldier (I'm assuming it was a soldier.  It could have been a sailor or a relief worker for all I know.)  Simply attached a tag with his mother's (girlfriend's? sisters?) Kansas City address and stuck stamps directly to the helmet.  I hope I find a character with enough spunk and creativity to think about sending home souvenirs like this! 

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This is an Imperial German Border sign.  Made of painted cast iron, a series of these marked the border between Germany and France.


In  August of 1914, an elite French strike force penetrated the border on the southern flank of the engagement, capturing many of these border signs. 


Can you imagine a young Frenchman bringing this home to his maman?

Am I planning to write a book set in World War I?  Not at present.  Right now, I'm finishing a final edit on a young adult novel that has two concurrent settings: Swan Song switches back and forth between a modern high school girl and a girl living in Europe during the Ice Age.  I'm also researching a book which will be set in New Mexico during the Civil War.  But I'm always musing what comes next, especially when I see something quirky that brings the period to life!
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Judging a Book by its cover: Part Two

11/20/2014

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L.M. Elliott's Under a War-Torn Sky is one of my favorite novels.  It is a fast-paced read that really excites middle school boys who are otherwise reluctant readers.  I used it several times when I was a reading intervention teacher, both as a class read and as an individual recommendation, and I've never had a boy not enjoy it.
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The story is about Henry Forester, a young man flying a B-24 in World War II. When his plane is shot down and he is trapped behind enemy lines, kind French citizens, some who are members of the Resistance and some who are just sympathetic to a frightened young man, help him to escape and return home via Switzerland and a treacherous route over the Pyrennes.


As one might expect, there are several plot elements in common between Under a War-Torn Sky and Code: Elephants on the Moon.  My French girl, Eponine, has a very different life from the French girl who helps Elliott's Henry, but the both share some of the same opinions about the callow young aviators they help rescue.   

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Some of the questions I was asked when it came time for me to commision the cover for Code: Elephants on the Moon was if there were any other books whose subject or theme were like mine. Could I suggest any covers that looked like what I wanted my own cover to look like?

I immediately thought of Under a War-Torn Sky.  I googled it to find cover images and was surprised to find not just the one I was familiar with, but three covers. 

I

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I sent all three of these images to the artist who created my cover.  As you can tell, mine came out very different than any of these.  This isn't surprising,  since the focus of the two books is different.  My aviator plays just a small part in my plot, while he is the main character in Elliott's.

I'm curious: which of these covers attracts your attention?  Based on the very sketchy synopsis I've given you, which one best expresses the story?  Would you buy any of these three books?



Knowing how you think might influence me when it's time to commission my next cover!

    Tell me what you think about these covers

Submit
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Religion in Nazi Germany

6/18/2014

4 Comments

 
If you go on the internet and try to research the relationship between the Nazi State and religion you will get opinions that are all over the board.  Some people are still angry about what they view as the collaboration between church and state in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories.  Others are equally adamant about the Church’s opposition to the Nazis.

            In 1933, almost all of the 60 million people living in Germany were Christian.  About 20 million people belonged to the Roman Catholic Church.  Protestant churches had about 40 million members, most of them members of the German Evangelical Church, an association of 28 regional churches that that included Lutheran, Reformed, and United Protestant churches.   Smaller so-called "free" Protestant churches, such as Methodist and Baptist churches also existed, as well as a small representation of Mormon, Jehovah Witness and Seventh Day Adventist Churches.  Less than 1% of the total population of the country was Jewish. 

            It’s pretty clear that, at least at first, many Protestants welcomed the rise of Nazism and were willing to cooperate with it.  They believed the Nazi Party affirmed traditional morals and family values and would protect them from communism.  The German Evangelical Church, which had long considered itself to be one of the pillars of German culture and society, espoused a theologically grounded tradition of loyalty to the state.  By the 1930s, a movement within the German Evangelical Church called the Deutsche Christen, or "German Christians" embraced many of the nationalistic and racial aspects of Nazi ideology.   It should come as no surprise, then, that many were persuaded by the statement on “positive Christianity” in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform that the Nazis believed in freedom of religion:

"We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good."

Once the Nazis came to power, the German Evangelical Church began to change.  In 1936 it was renamed the National Reich Church.  A member of the Nazi party was elected as its Bishop and non-Aryan ministers were suspended.   Church members were said to have "the Swastika on their chest and the Cross in their heart."

One of the Nazi Government’s most effective ways of corrupting religion was through the indoctrination of children.  All children had grown up with the Hitler Youth Movement, which had been created in the 1920's and by 1936 boasted 4 million members, boys and girls ages 10 through 18.  At first, attendance was voluntary.  However, Hitler Youth Meetings were held on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, times which interfered with most church activities, so children had to choose, a circumstance explored in Michael Terrell’s based-on-real-life novel Brothers in Valor.  Later, attendance in the Youth Movement became compulsory and competing activities, such as Boy Scouts and church-based programs, became illegal.  Children indoctrinated by the Nazi education program and Hitler Youth were encouraged to inform their teachers if their parents, priests or pastors made disparaging comments about Hitler.         

Not everyone in Germany was happy to let the Nazis have so much control of religion. The Kreisau Circle, a group of churchmen, scholars and politicians, was one of the most famous groups to oppose Hitler. Rather than plan active resistance against the Nazi government, the Kreisau Circle planned for Germany’s future. When the Gestapo learned of the organization and rounded up and executed its members.

There was also dissent within the National Reich Church.   In 1934 Martin Niemöller convinced 6,000 of the 8,000 ministers in the National Reich Church to split off and form The Confessing Church.  Its founding document, the Barmen Confession of Faith, declared that the church's allegiance was to God and scripture, not a worldly Führer. The Nazis reacted strongly to this challenge.  Niemöller himself was arrested in 1937 and sent to Dachau, then Sachsenhausen.  He wasn’t released until 1945.  Around 800 other ministers were arrested and sent to concentration camps.  

The leaders of the Catholic Church were initially more suspicious of Nazism than their Protestant counterparts. Rabid anti-Catholicism of figures such as Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi ideologue during the Nazi rise to power, raised early concerns among Catholic leaders in Germany and at the Vatican. Some bishops even prohibited their parishioners from joining the Nazi Party.  However, in 1933 Hitler signed an accord with the Pope in which he promised full religious freedom for the Church, which he described as the “foundation” for German values.  The Pope responded by promising that he wouldn’t interfere in political matters.  Soon after, the Nazis began closing Catholic churches and monasteries.  Like the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Youth Organization was abolished. Around 700 priests were arrested and sent to the concentration camps for what the government called “oppositional activities”.

Other, smaller churches suffered under Nazi persecution as well.  The Mormons were forced to give up their extensive youth programs and were monitored for anti-German sentiments because of their connections with America.  About one-third of Jehovah Witnesses were killed in concentration camps because their pacifist stand made them refuse to serve in the German army.  The Salvation Army, The Christian Saints and The Seventh Day Adventist Church disappeared from Germany during the Nazi regime.

The battle between church and state was not only fought in Germany.  Once its forces were defeated, France also fell under the influence of the Nazi Party.  It was divided into two zones, one of which was occupied by the German army.  The Vichy Government, which was sympathetic to the German cause, controlled the other half of France.  Its leader, an aging World War I hero named General Petain, who declared that he had a moral necessity to free France from decadence and corruption.  With sanctions from the Catholic Church and the Nazi Party, he purged the political Left and demoted Jews, communists and Freemasons to second class citizens and enemies of the state.  As in Germany, his task was made easier by the indoctrination of the young in schools and social programs.  By 1942, internment camps throughout France were filled with Jews and others considered to be morally subversive to French culture.

The Nazi State used religion in its war for the hearts and minds of the German people and the world.  They created a church that was racist and anti-Semitic, and they persecuted anyone who chose to defy or deny their vision.  And yet, through all the persecution, people of conscience representing every denomination strived to rescue Jews and other groups which the Nazi state considered undesirable.  In both Germany and France there were individuals who fought, either openly or quietly, to countermand the government and its policies. God bless those people, and those who continue to fight for truth and love amid the chaos of politics and prejudice. 

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The Bicycles of War

5/24/2014

8 Comments

 
PicturePrivate R.O. Potter of The Highland Light Infantry of Canada repairing his bicycle, France, 20 June 1944.

We didn't exactly storm the beaches when my family traveled through Normandy on bicycles.  We tottered along back roads and through the narrow streets of villages.  We were no army; just five Americans doing our best to absorb the sights, sounds and scents of a beautiful land.

Not everyone who's been on a bicycle had such idyllic purposes.

Bicycles were used more extensively during World War Two than I had ever guessed.  In 1939 every  Infantry Division within the Polish Army had a company of bicycle-riding scouts. that included 196 bicycles.  The Jaeger Battalions of the Finnish Army used bicycles to deploy rapidly against the 1941 advances of the Soviet Union, switching to skis when the snow became deep. The Finns were still using bicycles in 1944, when the Germans had destroyed so many Finnish roads that tanks and other heavy equipment had to be abandoned.

Bicycles were used in France by the occupying German forces.  They used bicycle patrols to cover areas quicker than patrols on foot and to send messages.  They were used more often as gas became more difficult to attain. 

The Allies used bicycles in France during World War II also.   Canada's Highland Light Infantry used bicycles to cover the French countryside quickly. You can see pictures of their bikes stacked within the landing craft that took them to the beach on my pinterest board:  http://www.pinterest.com/jbohnhoff/  

Even some of the American forces in France had bicycles.  US forces dropped folding bikes, called "bomber bikes" out of planes behind enemy lines for use by our paratroopers and for messengers and French Resistance fighters who were supporting us.  


I haven't included a single bike in Code: Elephants on the Moon.  Perhaps I should in a future revision of the manuscript.  Maybe by the time this book comes out in print (as opposed to an ebook) Sergeant Johannes Hegel will be leading his patrols through the narrow streets of Amblie and Reviers on bicycle.

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Biking to Amblie

5/18/2014

3 Comments

 
PictureBiking through Normandy, suitcases on our backs.
The Bohnhoff boys laughingly refer to family vacations as death marches.  We routinely try to pack too many adventures into too little time.  Frequently we don't plan adequately for little things like eating and sleeping.

I researched the story known as Code: Elephants on the Moon while on one such vacation with my family in the summer of 2005.  Our plan was to take an overnight flight to Paris, spend one night sleeping and getting over jet lag, then take a train to Caen, and a bus to Ouistreham where we would pick up the bikes I had reserved over the internet, then ride 12 miles to Amblie, a little Norman village where we had rented a house for the week.  While exhausting, this plan seemed doable.  We packed lightly in suitcases that converted to backpacks and headed out with high hopes.

But things seldom go as planned.  We ended up spending our first night in Paris in Dallas after our flight was delayed 24 hours.  Determined to keep on schedule, we got off the plane midmorning and immediately made our way to the St. Lazaire train station, just in time to buy tickets and scramble aboard a train. We had no idea that some seats were reserved and some were not, so of course we sat in seats reserved by others, who happened to be French and not at all entertained by our lack of understanding.  Soon we were on our way.  Without, of course, any provisions for lunch.  But that was okay.  After all, we had gotten a small breakfast on the plane and the train trip was only two hours.  We would be in Caen in time for lunch.

And we were.  But, careful travelers that we are, we decided to first make our way to the bus station and check the schedule before eating.  Of course, we arrived just in time to buy tickets and leap onto an out bound bus.  No problem.  Caen is only 17 km from Ouistreham.  Google maps says it takes 16 minutes.  21 in traffic.  But Google maps didn't account the frequent stops that a bus makes.  I don't remember how long the ride actually took us, but by the time we arrived in Ouistreham we were hungry and tired and jet lag had caught up with us.  Big time.

We must have looked terrible by the time we dragged our sleep deprived bodies into the bike shop; terrible enough that the workers adjusted the heights of the seats, then told us that they would drive us to Amblie in their little car and deliver the bikes the next day  My husband was too proud to accept this offer, but I wasn't.  While he and my two older sons rode through the picturesque countryside my youngest son and I careened through the French countryside in the back of a tiny car being driven by a woman who spoke French as rapidly as she drove. Before she left us she made sure that the proprietess of the property we rented knew that we needed a ride to the nearest market to get supplies.  We were in good hands.







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Americans in Paris

5/9/2014

2 Comments

 
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The author's grandfather in his doughboy days.
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson may have been among the first Americans in France, but they weren't the last.  Americans have been fascinated with France since the very beginning. 

During World War I thousands of young American men arrived in France as part of the AEF, the American Expeditionary Force.  Although the boys who went "Over There" were called "Yanks" or "Sammies" (from 'Uncle Sam'), their most popular nickname was "Doughboys," a name that may have come from the adobe dust that covered marching foot soldiers involved in American military operations on the Mexican border in 1916. My grandfather was one of these doughboys.

There were Americans in France even before America entered the war.  Many adventurous and idealistic young men, among them Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Julian Green, William Seabrook, E. E. Cummings, and Dashiell Hammett, served as ambulance drivers attached to the French forces before the United States entered the war. Many of these men, both adventurers and regular doughboys, became enamored with France.  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast,” Hemingway wrote decades after having discovered the adventure of the city in 1918 at the age of 19.  Some, like a character in Code: Elephants on the Moon, stayed to recuperate from wounds (there are some great photos of them, like the one below, at http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/medical.htm).  

After the war, some of the AEF found that going home and settling down wasn't easy.  A popular song of the period asked "how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?"  It was a valid question.  Many disliked postwar American culture, seeing its social mores as moralistic, standardized, and vulgarized. Others felt that America had become a civilization of businessmen devoted to the worship of materialism. To them France represented ancient wisdom, history and refinement. 

Because it offered a cultural environment free of the racial obsessions of American society, France also appealed to African-Americans. Writer Richard Wright, entertainer Josephine Baker, and jazz musicians Arthur Briggs, Benny Carter, and Dexter Gordon were a few of the prominent African-Americans who found a home in France after World War I.

Eventually, though, Americans began to leave Paris.  Some, like Hemingway, were addicted to the excitement of war and found even postwar France too tame.  They left for other conflicts, most notably the Spanish Civil War, where Americans volunteered as soldiers, technicians, medical personnel and aviators in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  Approximately 2,800 American volunteers fought for the Spanish Republicans against Franco and the Spanish Nationalist.  Between 750 and 800 died. Other Americans in France got homesick, changed their minds about France and returned to the States.

France itself was changing.  In the 1930s France was rocked by the same extreme social tensions and class warfare that brought Hitler to power in January 1933.  A year later, in February 1934, several thousand fascists and Royalists mobilized and brought down the French government.  They accused Jews, communists, and foreigners, including Americans, of being mentally deficient and culturally detrimental to France. As the war drew nearer, Americans fled France.  After the German invasion, a considerable number of the French people backed the Vichy regime and collaborated with the Nazis.

There are no official numbers available for how many Americans live in France today, but estimates near 100,000.  Nearly three million Americans vacation or visit France every year.  My family and I were five of the Americans who visited in 2005, and that visit led to Code: Elephants on the Moon.
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Americans recovering on French soil.
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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places.  But not all of them.  I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.



    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

    ​
    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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