The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt: War through a Woman's Eyes, 1939–1940

The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt, Rulka Langer's personal account of the opening chapter of World War II, covers the six-month period from August 1939 to February 1940 – from the end of the last peacetime summer, through the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Siege of Warsaw and the first few months of the Nazi occupation. Writing from personal experience, the author gives us the civilian's war through a close-up lens. When The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt was first published in 1942, World War II was raging across the globe. Mrs. Langer had recently fled from occupied Poland to the United States with her two children. The major events chronicled in this book were current affairs for its original audience–reported on the radio, appearing as front-page copy in newspapers and featured in the newsreels that preceded movies in theaters.