Few of the veterans of D-Day are still alive, but we remember them and honor them for their bravery.
Eighty years ago, the Allied Forces began the largest amphibious military invasion in human history. On June 6, 1944, more than 130 battleships, cruisers, and destroyers bombarded the French coast while 277 minesweepers cleared the water. Behind them, about 7,000 vessels, packed with nearly 200,000 soldiers from eight Allied nations, crossed the channel, ready to storm the beaches of Normandy. Overhead, over 1,200 aircraft delivered paratroopers behind enemy lines. It was feat the size and scope of had never been seen. It still remains singularly large and impressive today. More than 2 million Allied personnel took part in Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy that began with the D-Day invasion and continued on through August. During the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943, the Allies appointed U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower to command the Expeditionary Force and put British General Bernard Montgomery in charge of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces. The allies chose the Normandy coast for the landings, assigning Americans the sectors codenamed Utah and Omaha, while the British were to land at Sword and Gold, and the Canadians were to land at Juno. The Allies needed to develop special technology to meet the conditions expected on the Normandy beachhead. They invented artificial ports, called Mulberry harbors, to provide deep water jetties and places where the invasion force could download reinforcements and supplies before major French ports were recaptured from the Germans and their damage repaired. Two Mulberry harbors were created: Mulberry "A" at Omaha Beach and Mulberry "B" at Gold Beach. The harbor at Omaha Beach was damaged by a violent storm before it was ever completed, and the Americans abandoned it, landing their men and material over the open beaches. However, the harbor at Gold Beach was a great success. Over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies used Mulberry “B” during the 10 months it was in use. Another technology developed for the D-Day landings were the Hobart's Funnies,a group of specialized armoured fighting vehicles based on the British Churchill tank, and American M4 Sherman, but equipped with bulldozers, flamethrowers, demolition charges, reels of canvas that could be unrolled to form paths for other vehicles, assault bridges, ramps, and other modifications to help take the beach and destroy German fortifications. Hobart's Funnies were named for Major-General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart, a British Engineer. All the while that Allied forces were developing their plans and technologies, Resistance groups were active throughout German-occupied France. Their contributions to the invasion of Normandy included the gathering of intelligence on German defences and the carrying out of sabotage missions to disrupt the German war effort, including the destruction of rail lines and train engines and the cutting of telegraph and telephone lines. Because there were many different Resistance organizations that operated independently and often had different goals, coordinating them with the Allied forces was difficult. Many, however, listened to the secret messages from the Free French that were broadcast over the BBC. On the first of May, and again on June 1, such messages warned that the invasion would be soon and encouraged Allied secret agents and resistance fighters to carry out their acts of sabotage as soon as possible. Although the Allies failed to accomplish their objectives for the first day of the invasion, they were able to gain a tenuous foothold on the land that Germany had held since taking France. They captured the port at Cherbourg on June 26, and the city of Caen on July 21. By August 25, the Allies had liberated Paris. Five days later, the Germans retreated east across the Seine marking the close of Operation Overlord and the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime. Few of the veterans of D-Day are still alive, but we remember them and honor them for their bravery. Code: Elephants on the Moon is author Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel about Eponine Lambaol, a girl who senses that strange things are going on in her Nazi-held village in Normandy. As D-Day nears, she joins with others to resist the Germans and prepare for the Allied invasion. Written for middle school readers, adults have also found this an informative and entertaining read.
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Thanks to The Diary of Anne Frank, which is taught in middle and high schools throughout the United States, just about everyone knows that Jewish children in the Netherlands were hidden away from the Nazis during World War II. Hidden Like Anne Frank make it evident that hiding children away was more common than some of us might have imagined. This book, by Netherlanders Marcel Prinz and Peter Henk and translated into English by Laura Watkinson, allows 14 people to pass on their experiences as Jewish children in the Netherlands during World War II. Now adults, each narrator recounts being moved from house to house and city to city. Some were kept by family members and relatives. Others, by complete strangers. They endured boredom and terror, hunger and cramped quarters. Some were just three or four years old. Others were teenagers. But they survived because of a secret network of brave people who were determined to protect them. Less well known or understood by Americans is the story of Jewish children in France. One of the reasons for this was that the situation in France was much more complex than in the Netherlands. France was a divided nation during World War II. After France surrendered to Germans on June 24, 1940, three fifths of France, including Northern France and the entire French Atlantic Coast, was occupied by the German army. Henri Philippe Pétain, a World War I General who had become a national hero, helped form a goverment commonly known as Vichy France in the remaining two fifths of French territory which was called the Southern Zone. The senior leaders of the Vichy goverment, in the hopes of preserving a modicum of French sovereignty, turned a blind eye to the plunder of French resources and the sending of French forced labor to Nazi Germany. They also allowed and sometimes aided anti-semite parties in the concentration and persecution of Jews, particularly those of foreign citizenship. Vichy France sent 76,000 Jews to death camps. 11,000 of them were children. Not all Frenchmen agreed with the anti-semite policies of the Vichy regime or their Nazi allies. The Children of Chabannes tells the story of Felix Chevrier, who housed Jewish children, many of them German or Polish by birth, in Chateau Chabannes, his school in Chabannes, Creuse. In a series of interviews, these children, now adults, speak about how Chevrier integrated them into classes with the local children. They believe that the rigorous athletic programs he developed were intended to strengthen them for the physical and mental hardships that they would face if ever sent to Drancy, the closest Jewish Concentration Camp, or to Germany. When the Germans occupied the Southern Zone in November 1942, the Chateau began dispersing children to protect them from round-up. When the round-ups came, Chevrier was able to stall and obfuscate records. His deceit and planning saved the lives of hundreds of children. My novel, Code: Elephants on the Moon, takes place in Normandy during World War II. Normandy was part of Occupied France. As such, then Germans had the ability to round up all Jews, even those who were French citizens. As in the Netherlands and elsewhere, not everyone agreed with this policy. Many Frenchmen, including the fictional ones in my novel, hid their Jewish neighbors or helped them establish false identities or helped smuggle them out of the country. It is estimated that three-quarters of France's Jewish population survived the war because of the efforts of others. However, just as not all stories of children hidden in the Netherlands end happily (Anne Frank's, for instance), not all French stories conclude with hundreds of children saved by brave and defiant action. Steven Schnur's The Shadow Children tells the fictional story of Etienne, an eleven year old boy who visits his grandfather during post WWII in the French village of Mount Brulant. When Etienne sees the ghosts of hundreds of starving, emaciated, raggedy, forlorn children hiding in the woods, he asks his grandfather and other adults about them. Eventually he learns the sad, tragic, terrible truth: Jewish children who were sent into the country to seek refuge arrived in Mount Brulant, where the people helped them for a time. Yet, when the Nazis hunted the children down, the townspeople allowed the Nazis to herd them into trains and ship them to concentration camps. The true focus of the story in neither Etienne nor the children, but the grief and guilt of the townspeople, who buckled under the threats of the the Nazis. While this story may be fiction, many Frenchmen feel grief and guilt when recounting this dark period in their history. 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. 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. 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 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! Everyone knows the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover." Everyone also knows that everyone does exactly that. Mark Coker, the guy behind Smashwords, one of the premier sites for self-pubed ebooks, says "your cover image is the first impression you make on a prospective reader. A great cover image makes a promise to the reader. It tells the reader, “I’m the book you’re looking for.” So how do you decide what images will make readers decide that your book is the one they're looking for? Tricky question. Just how tricky this question is to answer becomes obvious when you look at the five different covers that have graced Elizabeth Wein's new YA historical fiction Code Name Verity. Wein's novel is about what happens to two women whose plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, and it's told in first person through the writings of the two women. The cover on the left pictures a plane trailing blood-red smoke as it goes down, a dark silhouette of a woman, and a rose, and I can say without giving too much away that all three images are appropriate, although I am not enough of an airplane enthusiast to tell you if the plane on the cover is the right kind or not. The next cover shows two women's arms bound together, and while it does show how the two characters are emotionally bound to one another, I first wondered if this novel was about lesbian lovers or bondage rituals. The middle cover shows two old bicycles against a stone wall, with bombers in the background and is, like the first cover, appropriate although not as mysterious or dark as the first cover. The remaining two covers have women's faces and the suggestion of imprisonment: one with high strung barbed wire and the other with the shadow of fencing. One features a red gash across the woman's face; the other, the bombers again. Two of the women seem to have dark hair and eyes. The third looks like a blue-eyed blonde, which is what the woman whose code name was Verity was. I've added a little more about this book to my web page on Code: Elephants on the Moon, in the for further reading section. I first came across this novel when I was looking specifically for cover ideas for Code: Elephants on the Moon, and at that point the only cover I saw was the center one. I liked the bombers and, since bombers also feature in my novel, I decided to include them in my cover design. So what do you think? If you had to judge Code Name Verity by its cover, which would you choose? 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. 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. 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. |
ABout Jennifer BohnhoffI 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. Categories
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