The End and the Beginning
The End and the Beginning is set in Germany during the brutal final months of World War II, between January and May 1945. In this period, 1.1 million Wehrmacht soldiers perished—over a third of all German military casualties—while hundreds of thousands of civilians died from Allied bombing and the brutal “final phase” in concentration and prison camps. Millions more were displaced.
Into this landscape, Holdom thrusts Marguerite, a French woman living in Saarland, on the border of Germany and France, and her thirteen-year-old son, Max, who is conscripted into the Hitler Youth to serve in the Volkssturm, Himmler’s Home Guard. Through them, we experience the last days of the Nazi regime: a countdown to “Hour Zero” and the “turning of the page” to the post-Nazi era.
Holdom skillfully portrays the immense cost of this fresh start to the German people, many of whom had supported or been complicit in Nazi rule. She delves into the complexities of the choices they faced, particularly as the war reached their towns and villages, and public sentiment swung between false hopes of victory and an almost overwhelming fear of defeat.
While many novels focus on World War II, few explore these final days, perhaps because of the atrocities that preceded them. However, Holdom draws readers into Marguerite and Max’s story so deeply that we stay with them as their world collapses. By narrowing the focus to these two characters and compressing the timeline, Holdom highlights the human cost of war and displacement, themes that remain relevant today.
