Member Reviews
sue k, Bookseller
Another rate 5 star from me.
Max Steiner grew up in Regensburg Germany. He had a great life with friend, family and school. Then Hitler came to power. We follow Max as his family flees to Amsterdam and then he goes to America. He falls in love in Amsterdam, makes new friends and finds a father figure that means the world to him.
2 years into his life in Chicago, he gets word of his parents who he left behind in Amsterdam. He decides to enlist in the US Army. Because of his ability to speak multiple languages he is sent to a training base in Virginia, home of the Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys were a special battalion trained in intelligence and interrogation. Many of them were German and many of them were Jewish.
Max is sent to Europe to help coordinate and lead missions. We follow Max to the end of the war.
Action packed with great characters, loved it.
Shirley W, Reviewer
Max Steiner was twelve years old when Hitler began his reign of terror. He was fifteen when he and his parents fled Germany for safety in Holland. For a brief time, they had an almost normal life, until Hitler’s troops marched into Amsterdam.
He was able to make it to the United States, reluctantly leaving his parents behind. He was twenty-two when devastating news came from Holland, and he knew it was time to fight back against the man and the regime that had taken away everything and everyone he loved. He joined the United States Army, and in December 1942 he was recruited into the Army’s first intelligence training program, training at Fort Ritchie, Maryland.
The Ritchie Boys were native German speakers, many of them Jewish. Their primary task was to interrogate German prisoners of war, but they did much more than that. Max was on the scene at several pivotal points in the war. The contributions of those brave men were invaluable to the war effort.
Through Max’s eyes the reader sees the personal cost of a worldwide tragedy. The historical details are meticulously researched and skillfully intertwined into the story. Max’s War is a powerful tale of what has happened when nationalism rears its ugly head. It is a cautionary story of what could happen again. Highly recommended.
