Book Review: ENDLESS ORDEAL by Marion Kummerow

Today I am featuring 

Endless Ordeal 

(War Girls ~ Book 10)
by Marion Kummerow

About Endless Ordeal 

The war is over, but he is stuck in in a perpetual nightmare

Surrendering to the Russians is Wehrmacht Leutnant Johann Hauser’s only option. Then he hopes for a fast end of World War II.

But once the war ends, his ordeal doesn’t.

Whisked away into the vast lands of the Soviet Union, he and his comrades cling to life by a thin thread. The fighting never stops, but their new enemies are hunger, cold, and exhaustion.

Every passing day is a cycle of hope and disappointment with one single goal in mind: staying alive.

When fate in form of the Soviet system throws him one drawback after another, can Johann maintain enough strength to survive and ultimately return home?

 

Excerpt:

My Book Review of Endless Ordeal:

My initial reaction after reading this book was – Wow! I have read enough of the author’s notes on the research she put into this story to realize she did her research and brought out the truth of conditions German prisoners of war under the Russians faced. Based on the detail she gave, my guess is she waded through several eye-witness and personal accounts written by those who endured imprisonment.

Russia may not have been the only nation to hang onto prisoners of war and force them into work gangs to help rebuild what was destroyed by war. However, there was a date in 1948, agreed to by all the Allied powers, where all prisoners would be released to return to their homes. The Soviets circumvented this requirement by devising criminal charges for the healthiest of their prisoners in order to justify incarcerating them in their work prisons for twenty-five years. You’ll have to read the book to learn how they went about it.

This book is also a romance. Lotte and Johann met and fell in love months before his capture by the Russians. Lotte waited years without hearing from Johann. In spite of advice from well-meaning friends to accept that he was dead and she needed to socialize and meet living men, she refused to give up on him. Eventually, they were able to make contact through the International Red Cross. His plea to her once he knew he had been sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment, and her response, reveals a depth of character and devotion on both their parts.

Besides being an excellent story, Endless Ordeal was a real eye-opener for me. This whole series has been great, but this last book, in particular, is a must-read.

This book prompted me to investigate what happened to the Axis prisoners of war after the close of World War Two. Although the most brutal treatment overall appears to have been at the hands of the Soviet Union, after reading about the treatment given to Disarmed Enemy Forces (US) and Surrendered Enemy Personnel (Britian), I realized the treatment of these prisoners by allied forces were far from lily white and humane. We were NOT taught about this in school. Hmm—I wonder why?

 

  Endless Ordeal is now available on Amazon. 

PLEASE CLICK HERE for the purchase link.

 

About the Author:

Marion Kummerow was born and raised in Germany, before she set out to "discover the world" and lived in various countries. In 1999 she returned to Germany and settled down in Munich where she's now living with her family. She has written about her German ancestors who resisted the growth and influence of the Nazi party and paid for it with their lives.

Visit her blog at kummerow.info or her facebook page at facebook.com/autorinkummerow