Michael Witt is the author of the new historical novel I Am Germany. He is a retired attorney.
Q: What inspired you to write I Am Germany?
A: My grandfather emigrated from Germany to America as a teenager shortly after World War I, and he taught me to have the highest regard for centuries-old German culture, especially the music. I have always been interested in World War II and the Holocaust. From junior high on, it seemed incredible to me that a people who traveled so high in the arts and sciences could fall so low during the modern times of the Nazis.
More specifically, in 2019 I was searching the web for Holocaust sites and stopped when I saw a photograph of a little girl who was maybe 5 or 6. She was smiling in a way that left little doubt that she was feeling genuine happiness.
Then I read the accompanying article. It seems her parents took her to the Nazi-controlled Hartheim Castle in 1940 after their family doctor told them that the little girl could be treated there for her mental deficits. A month later, an urn of ashes was delivered to the shocked parents, who were told that the girl had developed tuberculosis and had to be cremated on a rush basis, before the parents’ consent could be obtained, to prevent the TB germs from spreading to other patients.
It was all a lie. There was no TB. The little girl was among the first to be gassed and cremated as part of Hitler’s secret new “Action T4” euthanasia program. I sobbed. Never in my life had I sobbed so hard.
The little girl was a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a friend; that night, I had a nightmare of her being thrown in an oven the way a farmer throws a bale of hay in the back of his pickup. I had always had an intellectual understanding of the horrors committed by the Nazis, but that day, for the first time, I had a deep visceral understanding. (So too Henry, a protagonist in the novel, on the day he went to the castle.) I got up in the middle of the night after the nightmare and started writing the book.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title comes from a logical deduction Anna (the leading protagonist) makes to her mother at age 4 (and recounted early in the book). The 4-year-old is playing the national anthem on her violin, a bittersweet melody composed by Franz Joseph Haydn in the 1790s. It is titled “Song of Germany” and is the most honored song of the nation. Afterwards, Anna tells her mother, “[M]y violin plays the song. So my violin is Germany. And I play my violin [which, to Anna, is part of her]. So I am Germany.”
The logic is all wrong, of course, but it does demonstrate Anna’s conception of herself and of Germany. She thinks she embodies the art and culture of Germany. To her, the nation is its art and culture. She is too young and naïve to think that such a people could do something evil.
To me, the title signifies a childlike and idealistic side of Germany, the best of Germany. What would the nation and indeed the entire world be like if it were ruled by cultured children—people not yet corrupted—and if idealism were reality?
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn the especially surprised you?
A: Because most of my research was conducted during Covid, I used the internet heavily. Generally, I began researching a topic by reading a Wikipedia article. After getting a general understanding from there, I started reading online the source materials cited in the footnotes.
After I recovered from the initial surprise and shock of murder and cremation being practiced in a Renaissance-era castle, nothing surprised me. Nothing.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from I Am Germany?
A: Different readers, depending on their existing knowledge and their life experiences, will take away different things from the book, and that’s okay. Certainly every reader, when finished, will have a better understanding of Hitler’s rise to power during the 1930s and, separately, his Action T4 euthanasia program.
I hope the reader also ends with the understanding that the lowest evil can exist side by side with, and even grow out of, the highest and most advanced culture. Also, there is a huge disconnect between, on the one hand, a mere intellectual knowledge of evil and, on the other, an experiential knowledge.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A sequel to I Am Germany, about Henry’s travels around Germany talking about Anna’s life.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Writing a novel, I have discovered, can be cathartic in ways readers can’t understand.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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