I was a teen ager during WWII. I only knew the headline "stuff" and none of the details. I am finding this very interesting and plan to read the rest of it. It`s amazing how shallow teens can be. WWII was a time when we could always find jobs in the summer and after school since everyone was short of help. I live in a resort town 90 miles or so from Chicago. People could get here by train, or save enough gas coupons to drive, so there was plenty of work for all of us.
Like the other posters, I had only a dim memory of these times and all I knew of this story was what I had read in the Los Angeles Times as a 10-year old. Just like a time machine, this book took me back to a time I thought I knew well. I was mistaken. I never knew that the scarcity of rubber was the reason for gas rationing in America. I hadn't realized that there were consumer shortages in Germany during the 1940s; I had thought the civilians were living comfortably (lavishly?) off the spoils of the European conquests. To read that both sides appeared to be fumbling in the dark as each coped with poor information, inept military decisions and half-baked planning was news to me. But for me the most revealing part of the book was to see that the debate over the saboteurs' access to the American courts after their capture exactly mirrors the current national arguments about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I have been reading a chapter-a-night to my husband who is enthralled. He had been drafted at 17 straight out of high school into the Navy. Without Suzanne and her selection of The Saboteurs, we both might have missed out on this amazing experience to revisit the past -- this time as grown ups.
