When I Was a German, 1934-1945

Introducer Klemens von Klemperer is the author of several books, including German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938–1945.

"Among the flood of war memoirs . . . there has emerged one very different account. This is the story of a young Englishwoman who married a young German law student and went to live in Germany in 1935 and stayed there, witnessing the rise of Hitler and enduring the horrors of war as a wife and mother struggling to keep her family alive. Her experiences were those of a German . . . [but] of course she was not a German. Her judgment remained cooler and more compassionate than that of her husband and friends—Germans who were filled with revulsion and despair at the crimes their own countrymen were committing. . . . Peter Bielenberg was arrested in 1944, suspected of being involved in the July Plot. His wife . . . may have saved his life by her brave confrontation with his interrogator."—Times Literary Supplement "Her survival is miraculous. . . But even more miraculous is the tale she spins. . . . What makes When I Was a German such a stunning memoir is the fact that Christabel Bielenberg comes across as a fine, thoughtful, sometimes funny, always questioning person. . . . This kind of story-telling seems to be almost unheard of in the modern-day book biz. I know of maybe twenty-five works that have come to us over the years that have such a stunning story to tell, told so stunningly. Now it's twenty-six."—Lolita Lark, The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosphy, and the Humanities