Ablaze in Germany

I have a story idea set in 1942 Germany, it's about a lady who is French getting it on with a nazi. What do you think? I will change it if people think the idea is offensive enough. I have some ideas about making it a romance novel but i'm not sure. The basic principal is that the two of them (the german and the French girl) can't be together, yet they decide to get together anyway because they want to be happy in a time of perpetual conflict. I think the tale has some merit, but i'm just looking for feedback from the initial idea, the backdrop of my tale.

Romeo and Juliet!

I think it's a fine idea. I am sure it happened during the war!

KC

For romance, make the German politically neutral, not a Nazi true-believer creep. He's just another cog of the war machine, unenthusiastic but duty-bound. Readers may not be sympathetic for a rabid Nazi protagonist.

Their backstories will give the tale its flavor. Is he an enlisted draftee? Is he a foot-soldier, a clerk, a motorcycle messenger, an aircraft mechanic? Is he a low-or mid-rank officer from a traditional Junker family, the kind that has supplied Prussian cadre for centuries? And what is the French girl's background? Is she the Mayor's or a shopkeeper's daughter, or a seamstress or teacher or nurse? Is she a widow, her husband dead or missing in the French military, leaving her with two small children? Is she an agent of the Resistance?

Anyway, it's called "consorting with the enemy" or maybe "collaboration" and it's not uncommon at all. Contrast the Romeo+Juliet romance with other couplings where occupying troops just take whichever local women they want, or those women give themselves to the occupiers for status and survival. Story-wise, the trick will be avoiding a tragic ending.

Maybe the French girl is a spy, and she is only pretending to be in love with Fritz so that she can learn war secrets or somehow sabotage the Nazi plans. But that's no reason she can't have some epic sex along the way.

And maybe, she ends up really falling in love with him, and either she converts to Nazi-ism, or she converts him to being a traitor to the Reich. There's your happy ending!

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Seems more likely to be set in France than Germany. Otherwise, I don't see anything in what you have described about it that would be offensive to most. There's always someone volunteering to be offended by almost anything.

sr71plt said:

Seems more likely to be set in France than Germany.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I initially misread the OP and visualized the story set in occupied France. Only about 1.5 million plotlines exist with that scenario.