Announcing TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY: A COLD WAR MEMOIR Now on Wattpad

I have been very pleased with my experiment of writing chapters of my dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE on the free site Wattpad. This experience has encouraged me to simultaneously try the experiment for a nonfiction telling of the historical past — TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY: A COLD WAR MEMOIR.

I have all the original documents from when my husband Mitch and I were stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich, Germany, from September 1970 to May 1972. In the future I will be sharing some of these documents on my author website at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

And while many of the true tales I will be telling in my Cold War memoir are humorous, underlying everything is the very real concern that, without American troops stationed in Germany, the Soviets could have marched over the border between East and West Germany to expand their sphere of Communism.

Click here to read the beginning of TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY.

P.S. Thanks to Yael K. Miller for creating the terrific cover for TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY.

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinalist MRS. LIEUTENANT and the co-author of the Navy thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. Phyllis is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic LLC, which works with clients to attract more business. Read her book-related posts at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

Pentagon Pulls 10,000 Troops From Europe

Reprinted from the blog at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com:


While for the last several years news of U.S. troops in Iran and Afghanistan may have taken the lion’s share of U.S. troop news, U.S. troops are stationed in many places throughout the world.

One such place that I am personally familiar with is Germany. Yes, the United States has been part of an occupying force in Germany since the end of World War II.

The February 18th Wall Street Journal article “U.S. to Cut Europe Forces in Remake” by Julian E. Barnes began:

The Pentagon will pull some 10,000 troops out of Europe in a broad reorganization that will shrink the number of Army and Air Force personnel stationed in Germany and close a number of bases.

Why is this news of troop reduction in Germany of such interest to me?

Here is the end of a blog post about how Facebook unexpectedly provided historical information for my work-in-progress novel CIA FALL GUY:

I originally thought that I would write a sequel to my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT, which is partly based on my experiences as a new Mrs. Lieutenant in the spring of 1970 right after the Kent State shootings. I wanted to write about being part of the occupying force in Germany only 25 years after the end of World War II.

Recently, though, my younger daughter has recommended that I write a memoir instead of fiction. I have all the official documents from that time and many other documents, including a copy of the letter I wrote to the Anne Frank House donating money from the very small Jewish military community in Munich when the memorial was in danger of closing from lack of funds.

I agree with my younger daughter, who has suggested the memoir’s title as IF IT IS SEPTEMBER, IT MUST BE OKTOBERFEST. (My husband and I arrived at the train station in Munich on a Sunday in September in the midst of Oktoberfest and did not even know where we were supposed to go.)

I believe it is important that Americans with no connection to the U.S. military know that U.S. troops and their families stationed abroad are part of the global effort to protect the U.S. And although 10,000 troops and their families may be coming home from Europe, the U.S. continues to have a presence where needed.

As this Wall Street Journal article stated:

Pentagon officials took pains to emphasize that despite the cuts, the U.S. will have approximately 70,000 troops stationed in Europe, including those in Germany.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and the co-author of the eBook technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. Phyllis is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic LLC, which works with clients to attract more business. Read her posts at the company's social media marketing blog.

A True Story of the Humorous Side of the Army Circa 1970-1972

Those of you who have read my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT know that the American army in the spring and summer of 1970 was a serious place. The Vietnam War pervaded the nine weeks my husband and I spent at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.

When I wrote MRS. LIEUTENANT I fictionalized our experiences to more dramatically portray the seriousness.

Yet there was a humorous side to the army, which we discovered upon our arrival in Munich, Germany, in September 1970 during the drunkenness of the annual Oktoberfest. Yes, Oktoberfest starts in September in Munich.)

Here then is a true story of that humorous side, or at least the truth as I can recall it after so many years.

Read now “A True Army Story: Whistle While You (Try to) Work”
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and the co-author of the eBook technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. Phyllis is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company Miller Mosaic LLC, which works with clients to attract more business. Read her posts at the company's social media marketing blog.

Revisiting U.S. Military History: "Mrs. Lieutenant" and Frankfurt, Germany

I'm very excited that my Vietnam-era novel "Mrs. Lieutenant," which was a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semi-finalist, is the first featured month in the newly launched BestArmyWives.com book club

I received the nicest email from author George Polley (www.geogepolleyauthor.com), who said:

"Mrs. Lieutenant" is the kind of novel that invites you in, engages you and keeps you until you've read the last word.

An absolutely wonderful read that brought back so many memories of the Vietnam War, student unrest, ugly prejudices, the Civil Rights movement and the draft counseling I did when teaching and counseling at one of Minnesota's state universities.

Compassionate and powerful, "Mrs. Lieutenant" is a book that will linger in your memory and keep you thinking and talking about it for a long time.

But what is slightly unnerving to me is that, at the same time I received this email, part of my personal Mrs. Lieutenant history was brought back into sharp focus.

This week's shooting and killing of two U.S. military personnel in Frankfurt, Germany, reminded me that on May 11, 1972, the day that my husband and I took a 1400 military charter flight from Frankfurt back to the U.S., the Frankfurt Officers' Club was bombed by the Baader-Meinhof gang -- one officer was killed and several others wounded.

The next day back in the U.S. I read about the bombing in The Wall Street Journal -- and I remember how shaken I was at the time. Now U.S. military personnel have again been killed in Frankfurt.

Thanks today to the Internet, I found a 33-minute video of an interview of a man who was a 15-year-old student at the U.S. military's high school in Frankfurt at the time of the 1972 bombing. You can listen to the interview to learn more about this period of the U.S. military in Germany.

As some of you know, I have written a partial draft of a sequel to "Mrs. Lieutenant." This sequel focuses on being part of a military occupation in Germany only 25 years after the end of World War II.

My husband and I ended up leaving Germany that May, although we had tickets for the September 1972 Munich Summer Olympic Games. I have just read that Munich is now bidding for the 2018 Winter Olympics. I wonder how many people think that perhaps this is not a chapter of Germany history that should be lived again.

P.S. If you are interested in military stories, do join the BestArmyWives.com/book-club -- and I look forward to speaking with you during the four webinars we've having this month for "Mrs. Lieutenant."
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and her social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing works with clients to use social media to attract more business. Read her social media marketing blog.

A Return to the Personal: A Kick in the Pants From Books to Help Preserve History

For those of you who regularly read this blog, you may remember that I started out writing posts related to my 2008 novel MRS. LIEUTENANT that takes place in the spring of 1970 during the Vietnam War. But in the past two years I’ve almost written entirely on topics supporting our troops now.

Now I’m reading David Meerman Scott’s 2007 nonfiction book THE NEW RULES OF MARKETING & PR” and he talks about how he “blogged the book, section by section.”

Suddenly I realized that this could be the commitment I need to finish MRS. LIEUTENANT IN EUROPE, the sequel to MRS. LT.

Here is my dilemma:

The story of MRS. LT IN EUROPE is missing a compelling element that is provided in MRS. LT by the point of view of four different women. In MRS. LT IN EUROPE there is only one viewpoint.

A few days ago I read Joseph Kanon’s 1998 novel THE PRODIGAL SPY that takes place mainly in Prague and Washington D.C. The book begins in 1950 during the U.S. government’s Communist witch hunts.

Then the book quickly moves on to April of 1969, when I was a few months away from marrying Mitch, who had orders to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, in October for Infantry Officers Basic training before having an “unaccompanied” tour to Vietnam.

Kanon’s novel harps on the theme that people do not remember history, and I know this to be true.

After all, less than 20 years after the Germans had suffered heavy losses during the trench warfare of World War I, they were eagerly gearing up to start another world war, albeit one this time they intended on winning.

Because of the outcome of that Second World War, in September 1970 Mitch and I arrived in Munich to be part of the American occupying forces in West Germany.

This was only 25 years after the end of the war, and we came in contact with army personnel and army civilians who had their own experiences of this war.

It happens that here are the other books connected to WWII that I read during the last few weeks:

• Alan Furst’s 2008 novel THE SPIES OF WARSAW that takes place in 1937, mainly in Warsaw and Paris.

• Helen MacInnes’ 1941 novel ABOVE SUSPICION that takes place in 1939 mainly in England, Germany and Austria.

• Alan Furst’s 1991 novel DARK STAR that takes place in 1937 and 1938 in Prague, Berlin, Paris and other European locations.

• Tatiana de Rosnay’s 2007 novel SARAH’S KEY that takes place mainly in Paris in two parallel stories – in 1942 starting with the French police roundup and subsequent deportation to their deaths at Auschwitz of Parisian Jews and in 2002 and 2005.

And I also read two Young Adult novels that in their own ways are very connected to my reading about WWII:

• Eric P. Kelly’s 1928 novel THE TRUMPETER OF KRAKOW that (except for the first chapter in the year 1241) takes place in 1461 in the city we know today as Cracow, Poland.

(The marauding bands that threatened Cracow in these early years are paralleled by the forces of destruction amassed on the border of Poland in the years leading up to WWII.)

• David Kherdian’s 1979 novel THE ROAD FROM HOME: THE STORY OF AN ARMENIAN GIRL that takes place in 1907-1924, focusing on the years including the First World War during which the Armenians living in Turkey were subject to massacres and then forced on a horrendous death march.

(The Germans had a hand in what happened to the Armenians and, from hindsight of what happened, this should have been a HUGE warning to the future Allies that the Nazis meant to carry out their announced intention to slaughter all Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, undesirable clerics, Communists, and anyone else the Nazis could get their hands on who they considered untermenschen.)

What I plan to do now on this blog:

A lot of recent news events – including the re-discovery of the original copies of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws – connect to the story I’m telling in MRS. LT IN EUROPE.

Therefore, I plan to write blog posts about these news events that are happening now in 2010 and connect them to the first-hand experiences of people during WWII and the time that Mitch and I were stationed in Munich in the early ‘70s.

I will still use the fictional character of Sharon Gold, although she may be closer to me in these 2010 chapters than she is in MRS. LT. Then I’ll revise the posts and see if I can fit them into the mostly completed first draft of MRS. LT IN EUROPE.

My goal is to help prevent history from being forgotten, and there are many true stories that live within me.

These include:

• The first-hand accounts written by Holocaust survivors I published in the 1970s as editor of the literary supplement of a weekly Jewish newspaper in Philadelphia.

• The story of the dangerous work behind enemy lines in WWII that my husband’s civilian boss at the 18th had done for the Americans after his release as a German political prisoner from Dachau.

• Meeting Tuviah Friedman here in Beverly Hills, California – the Nazi hunter whose obsession lead to the capture of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution.

• Knowing here in Los Angeles the Czech Jew who incredibly survived WWII through a series of incidents of which action movies are made, entered Prague on the first tank to reach the liberated city, and only a few years later was warned by a righteous gentile that the Communists were coming for him and once more he had to escape.

I hope you will read the coming blog posts (now I just have to write them) and do give me feedback in the blog post comments section.

The history I plan to share belongs to all of us.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of the novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and her social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing works with clients to use social media to attract more business. Read her social media marketing blog.

Reflections on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – in 1970 Germany

In the sequel to MRS. LIEUTENANT – MRS. LIEUTENANT IN EUROPE – when Sharon and Robert are stationed with the U.S. Army in Munich, Sharon is on a German train traveling north from Munich when she reflects on a Yom Kippur experience in Munich:

Once more being on a German train made Sharon think about the German trains that had carried so many Jews to their deaths. For those Jews the answer to their Yom Kippur prayers had not been a long life.

The chaplain had asked Sharon and Robert if an enlisted man and his wife stationed in Oberammergau where there was no Jewish chaplain could stay with Sharon and Robert for the High Holidays. Sharon had said, “If they bring their own sheets.”

Although the couple had not come up to Munich for Rosh Hashanah, they had come up last weekend for Yom Kippur. For the meal before the start of the 25-hour total fast Sharon had only two plastic soup bowls loaned her by their sponsor’s wife. They had used two pots for the additional soup bowls.

The wife, Greta, had been born in Germany after the end of World War II in a DP (Displaced Persons) camp. Her Holocaust-survivor parents spoke German to her as her first language. This stood her in good stead when her husband Paul had to find housing for her “on the economy.” They had rented rooms in the home of an Oberammergau family who did not know they were Jews.

The summer of 1970 had been the every-10-year summer-long Passion Play pageant in Oberammergau. The town had put on this pageant for hundreds of years, and through the years different versions of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus had been used. In recent years the pageant had been charged with anti-Semitism. Thus this past summer surveys had been handed out to attendees to gauge the level of anti-Semitism.

“We had to move out of the family home for the entire time of the pageant,” Greta said. “The family could rent those rooms for much more money.”

“We found rooms in a nearby hunting lodge,” Paul said, “and we returned to our original rented rooms at the end of the summer.”

And that’s when the family offered to show Greta and Paul the surveys. “The surveys said that the Oberammergau Passion Play wasn’t anti-Semitic because it was true. The Jews killed Jesus.” Greta’s hands twisted together when she said this falsehood.

“And that’s why I wore my uniform up here for Yom Kippur services,” Paul said. “The head of the motor pool is a German whose daughter is Greta’s friend. If he had seen me in civilian clothes going to Munich, he would have figured out we were Jews going to Yom Kippur services.”

Greta nodded. “Then his daughter might have stopped speaking to me and I wouldn’t have any friends.”

Now from her seat in the train Sharon can consider this story in its entirety. She realizes that, because Yom Kippur this year had been a Friday night and Saturday, the motor pool German would not have thought it strange for Greta and Paul to be going away for the weekend. And as Rosh Hashanah this year had been a Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday, Greta and Paul probably didn’t come up to Munich because it would have been a giveaway, even with Paul in uniform, to be going up to Munich mid-week the same days as the Jewish New Year.

Sharon glances out the window at the seemingly peaceful German villages as the train rushes past. How terrible for Greta and Paul to feel persecuted in Germany 25 years after the end of WWII.

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