Interview: Jo Ann Bender, Author of Lebensborn

Last week, I reviewed Lebensborn by Jo Ann Bender, a novel set during World War II about a young girl with the French Resistance who is seduced by the Waffen SS officer who takes charge of the village where she lives (Villepente) and is moved to a Lebensborn home in Germany when she becomes pregnant.  Bender’s novel is about the resilience of the people living in Nazi-occupied countries, the secret breeding program instituted by the Nazis, and changes people undergo when forced to survive in wartime.

I’m thrilled to have Jo Ann Bender as a guest on Diary of an Eccentric today.  After reading Lebensborn, I was very curious about the origins of the story and how much was based on fact and how much was fiction.  Jo Ann agreed to answer some questions, and I want to thank her for taking time out of her busy schedule to share her thoughts with my readers and me.

[This is a bit different that other author interviews I’ve conducted, as Jo Ann reworked my questions and provided additional information, making it a combination interview/guest post. At any rate, I found her answers fascinating.] Please give a warm welcome to Jo Ann Bender.

Why did you let Antoinette be seduced?

It’s not surprising that some readers are frustrated when Antoinette, the seventeen-year-old girl in Lebensborn, succumbs so easily to the Waffen SS major Reinhard Hurst’s advances.

One reader told me, “Here she is, a strong, virgin, mature, level-headed girl, falling so fast for the Major. However, when I started comparing her to my own teenage daughter and realized that at that age, the great majority of women are a pendulum of feelings, attitudes, interests, strengths, insecurities, I realized that a traumatic experience, like trying to survive a war could certainly confuse anyone, let alone a young girl who hasn’t experienced life to its fullest.”

At this time in history around the world, if a woman had a baby out of wedlock, she would be forced to leave the community. There was no way out, no birth control or abortion. So this was a horrendous decision for Antoinette but she chose it because of her role in the Resistance and her love of country.

Is Villepente based upon fact or fiction?

At the time the novel was written, the Internet was in its infancy. My research was found in books about WWII and by flying twice to Europe, once to France to finalize the setting of the fictional French village which later becomes a suburb of Paris, and later to Germany as Part Two was being written to better understand the thinking and feeling of Germans and Germany as a country. Although the village is fictional, it is typical.

What was your biggest challenge?

During my career as a journalist, I have interviewed people from all walks of life. None was more frightening than the Washington State man who was a former Nazi sentenced to two years of hard labor following the Nuremburg trials after the war.

That interview took place over the tea served by his wife in his apartment. After explaining the geographical situation Antoinette finds herself in Part Two, I asked, ‘How can she find her way out of Germany?’ The reality of what I was writing presented a startling revelation! I sat there, frozen as a scared grouse, listening and unbelieving that this story now felt as real as if I actually was there witnessing this little sliver of WWII history.

What did you like best about writing Lebensborn?

Himmler’s castle is one of my finest pieces of writing in the book. The fictional chapter was included because Lebensborn is Himmler’s program. To understand Himmler and his occult ideas it is interesting to know how the man came up with the social eugenics idea of producing a Master Race. The first involved were his SS officers and Gestapo and later the regular troops, especially in Norway, who were encouraged to mate with Nordic Goddesses.

How did you develop this premise?

The research and conclusions I came to during the ten long years it took to write Lebensborn continues to be collaborated for their accuracy. The fictional castle chapter is based upon Himmler’s character, shows what he was wearing, what he says, details the artifacts in the castle and what the “knights,” the SS were expected to take part in. Those invited to this special weekend by invitation included Duke Peter, the SS officer who is first introduced here in Part One and later in Part Two as a talented illusionist.

Peter is the centerpiece for Nazi propaganda and its illusions: the colorful banners, the night parades, their stunning officer uniforms, the most glorious and best the world has ever seen, the weekly meetings with the same message told over and over: that the enemy was out to get you and the Fuhrer is there to save you because you are the most educated and cultured race on the earth.

As a former public relations person, I know and appreciate the powerful effect these excellent German plans brought about. Their no-questions-asked programs produced fanatical people who truly believed that there was glory for the fittest to serve their country by producing as many children as possible. It did end the high rate of abortions (800,000 a year) and by the time the war ended was on the way to adding battalions of soldiers.

In the walled city of Rottenburg, I witnessed an example of such passion. There in an antique shop, where I was searching for the exact wording on an SS officer’s dagger, a man came into the shop and was silently given permission to go behind the counter and through a curtain. Always curious, I asked if I could do this, too. The proprietor parted the curtain and followed me.

The hidden room was filled with Nazi artifacts. I explained what I was seeking. The middle-aged woman, who was wearing a black dress and who had her dark hair in a tight bun at the back of her head, placed a purple cloth upon one of the counters and from the case below removed the knife and placed it upon the cloth with as much reverence as a priest holding a sacred host. It was a moment never to be forgotten.

You’re writing a novel now about a Montana cowboy.

In the late 1990’s when Lebensborn was finished, there was little interest in WWII fiction. I went on to write the non-fiction Snowbirds, about a humorous RV trip; Cries in the Desert, a story set in the shadow of the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, and Rusty Springs, a contemporary story of a blackjack dealer who is being stalked set in Nevada and Montana. Both Snowbirds and Rusty Springs were agent submissions without promise.

Why will your Montana cowboy be different?

Authors, like sangria, become more seasoned as time passes and their writing skills improve. In this story, there are fewer characters, each shown in more depth, the chapters longer. In Lebensborn, there were over sixty characters, the chapters fast and punchy to quicken the plot. Fortunately, novels take a long time to write and rewrite. Now I mainly must be an author who sells books, not an author who writes books. And that’s a whole different interview topic.

What are you currently reading?

It just happens that I’m reading two books considered by Germans to be among the top ten novels written about WWII. Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, praised by historians for its historical accuracy, places a gross but cultivated SS officer among top Nazis. It makes almost one thousand pages of the ugliest and toughest reading as he documents in precise detail the Nazi purges of Jews in Russia, his work within the bulging bureaucracy to place “foreign” workers in German industry and follows his own sick personal life. However, it was as detailed as any I’ve ever read.

The other I can enjoy is Berlin Noir Series by Phillip Kerr. It centers around a Berlin private detective solving crimes during 1936-38 and 1947 when Berlin was a dark place full of corruption and moral ambiguity but with less horror than the Kindly Ones.

Sounds like you’ve had some fascinating and memorable experiences.  I wish you much success with your writing career, and I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts here.

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