The Enemy Above, by Michael P. Spradlin, is a historical fiction novel that takes place during Hitler’s rule. The novel illustrates the theme of maturing and coming of age. The book is about a boy named Anton, who is Jewish. He lives with his grandmother and his Uncles, Pavel and Dimitri. His father went to serve in the military and fight Hitler and his army, and his mother had died of a fever when he was a baby. The Gestapo, who are the police that arrests the jews and brings them to concentration camps, arrives at Anton’s village, and Anton and his family must try to escape them. The book is entertaining at times but at times it is also boring. There are not many moments that surprised me by what he did or made me feel very anxious to find out what will happen next in the book. Overall, there was no wow factor in the book. In the book, Pavel says that the only way to defeat Hitler was to fight him, and the grandmother is strongly against that because she does not want to lose another one of her sons to war. I agree with Pavel and think that he should go fight in the war because he is right, the only way to stop Hitler would be to fight him. You are not going to be able to work out a deal with a madman like him, especially when he is already dominating a large portion of the world and has a lot of confidence because of it. In addition, if you were to stay in hiding, the Gestapo would most likely find you because there are so many of them and their equipment such as their explosives and their militia power is unmatched. The book suggests the possibility of the Gestapo coming to your village and arresting people, and you having to escape quickly and start to live in hiding and no one knows for how long. Anne Frank and her family stayed in hiding for a very long time, and they also had a very good hiding spot, which was the Secret Annex. They also followed a strict schedule of when they could make noise
when they could shower, and they also never left that Annex. Despite all of this, the Gestapo still managed to find them which shows how good the Gestapo were at hunting the Jews. If Anton and his family were to stay inside of their house in the village, they probably would have suffered the same fate. The book really showed me how much terror the Jews felt during this time. The Nazis could have shown up at their village at any time and arrested every single Jew there and their whole life would have changed in an instant. In conclusion, The Enemy Above, by Michael P. Spradlin was a good book, but nothing crazy.
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