This could have been a great book. Much needs to be said both in fictional and non-fictional form about the terrible plight of the Germans in eastern Europe at the end of WWII and in the years immediately following it. Most of the Germans who were victimized I am certain were innocent of the crimes of the Nazis. The problem with this book is that through her characters the author makes it clear that she sympathizes with the very criminal behavior on the part of the Nazis that made something like the terrible fate of the East Prussians et al. all but inevitable.

This is a most spiritually unedifying book because it fails in its most fundamental moral assumptions, one of which seems to be that the Golden Rule is valueless. Its very hard for me to work up a lot of sympathy for genocidal haters when the tables are turned on them.

As a very conservative person of German and other Northern European descent I most forcefully condemn the anti-semitic and racial venom obviously underlying the author's world-view as it is exhibited in this book.

For valuable books on the plight of German civilians during and after WWII, I recommend De Zayas' "A Terrible Revenge" and Bacque's "Crimes and Mercies".

Highly readable and engrossing. While some of the anti-semitic undertones are bothersome (as a German-American whose parents were children in NAZI Germany I am particularly sensitve to this), Dr. Rimland tells a compelling story how ordinary German peasants cope with the political changes in Imperial Prussia & Russia - through the Stalinist USSR and NAZI Germany, and the families' relations with American relatives who emigrated to the US in the 1870's and how eventually they come to war with each other. Dr. Rimland approaches this as a tragedy in that its the world geo-political situation that forces relative to fight relative. The brutality of the war in the east as experienced by a young German girl is particularly heart-wrenching -- and again hit home because of my own mother's experiences at the hands of the Soviet army in East Prussia. The fact that the book doesn't portray ordinary Germans as mindless millitaristic beasts, and dares to tell the story of their tragedy no doubt makes many WWII traditionalists uncomfortable. Somehow all we ever see in the US is film of American solidiers being welcomed by German children, who get candy, gum and cigarettes. The books dare to show the reality of rape and brutalization by the Soviet soldiers - and the ordinary peasant person's general ignorance of the political situation (they only saw Hitler as a savior from the terrors of Stalinist communism ----> a real terror to these people). As I said, the anti-semitic undertones are bothersome at times - but this was the reality of how the charaters thought. You couldn't write a historical novel about a Southern slaveholding family and not include their racism. The difference here is that Dr. Rimland moves beyond one-dimmensionalism and finds the sympathetic aspects of the characters as well --- and that undoubtedly leaves discomfort.

I thank Dr. Rimland for providing a persective of the other side which is often ignored - a picture of how German families coped on both sides of the Atlantic and that they were people -- not obscene caricatures.

Ingrid Rimland's powerful tale of Mennonites in Russia and the United States is a long overdue contribution to the saga of the German experience. Though some, such as the reviewer below, find her characters two-dimensional and the plot boring, this is undoubtedly the result of decades of anti-German propaganda from Hollywood. It's really too bad for those who have come to expect a "Hogan's Heroes" portrayal of goose-stepping Nazis that Rimland has given us a heart-rending account of what pacificists had to endure at the hands of American redneck yahoos, Russo-Ukrainian anarchists and an assorted cast... The climax, occurring in Volume III as the Wehrmacht and the Bolsheviks struggle to the death for the fate of the world, is drawn from Rimland's own childhood memories of her family being forced to seek protection with the German soldiers. The Germans as saviors and heroes - now there's a thought worth pursuing! After decades of melodramatic miniseries featuring Hollywood's favorite tribe, Ingrid Rimland's story of German industriousness and honor is a breath of fresh air.