When the Allies invaded Germany and liberated the concentration camps in 1945, Berthold Durchdenwald and his wife Sofie, who had been hiding in the German countryside miraculously avoiding detection by the Nazis, quickly discovered they had little reason to celebrate. While the Allies released many prisoners, those identified as inverts, transvestites, and other antisocials – the queer and trans prisoners – were sent back to serve sentences for their crimes of homosexuality and sodomy. Berthold is a trans man formerly employed at Institute for Sexual Science by Magnus Hirschfeld and, with a trans escapee from Dachau, he and Sofie plan to flee to the United States before the Allies discover their true identities. Milo Todd’s debut novel, The Lilac People, captures a darkly familiar moment in history seen through an acutely queer lens. Focusing on the moments leading up to and immediately after the war, the novel depicts the violent pendulum swing of social politics as Bertie works to expand queer rights and visibility in Germany just as the Nazis begin to seize power, then retreats to a life in hiding, only to be forced to flee to the homeland of his so-called liberators. Expertly plotted and rendered in lush detail, every heartbreak of Bertie’s journey is balanced with the hope and resilience so essential to every queer struggle.

Milo is co-editor in chief of Foglifter so I’m no stranger to the cheerful force of his passion for queer history and literature. When we met to discuss The Lilac People in the weeks before his debut, the depth of his knowledge and the amount of research he’d done on queers in Weimar era Germany was like a presence hovering over us. In addition to his grueling research process (if you know Milo it is no surprise that he learned German to write this book), we managed to touch on survivor’s guilt, passing privilege, and Nintendo’s queer icon, Kirby. 

Stephen Patrick Bell:  You mentioned that you were working on this book for years. Could you just talk a little bit about the life cycle of this book, where it first came from, and how you got it from an idea to this tangible object?

Milo Todd:  I can't remember the specific year but it was around 2016-2017, back when social media was not as terrible as it is now. I was scrolling through my feed, and I don't remember who posted this, otherwise I would thank them. This little meme-like post popped up and it said something like, “did you know that when the Allied Forces liberated the concentration camps, they sent the queer and trans people to jail to start the sentence for their crimes of being queer and trans.” I thought that can't be true. Who would do that? And, of all people, to a concentration camp survivor? So, me being me, I looked it up and it was true. I was so mad that I just started researching more and more and it just kept uncovering more and more stuff. So I thought, you know what I need? This needs to be a book. How did I – someone who loves queer and trans history – not know this? That started this whole multiyear journey. I'm very much like an outliner and a planner and all that stuff so I ended up researching for maybe three years while also starting to outline the book and considering the historical accuracy of the content. It took a long time. I'm grateful that it just so happens that this book is coming out at the same time as more and more stuff about queer and trans folks during the Weimar Republic era and Institut für Sexualwissenschaft or the Institute for Sexual Science. Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld has been popping up more and more, and so I'm so grateful for that. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else other folks have uncovered. When I started out, it didn't seem like there was much out there at all. I had to learn German to do this.

SBP: That explains the shout out to Duolingo in your acknowledgments. 

MT: Shout out to Duolingo, because they really did help me. Originally, I was going to be taking bona fide German classes and then the pandemic hit. Then it turned out Duolingo was pretty great. That got me through. But yes, I had to learn German and I don't regret any of it but, man, this was a project, and I never want to do something this difficult ever again. This is the hardest historical fiction I've ever researched and written and happens to be the first that got published. I don't know what that says about me, but I don't want to put in this level of effort ever again.

SPB: It is very cool to see all the new media on this period. I couldn’t help but think of Justin Torres’ Blackouts during the Hirschfeld scenes. The timing of all these books seems unfortunately perfect for our current moment.

MT: I'm really grateful to see what else is going to be popping up soon and I'm so excited to see it. Some folks asked, are you mad? Because you spent years researching this on your own and had to learn a language and toil like this, and then all of a sudden, everyone's talking about it before your book came out. No, I'm not mad about it. I'm glad that people are talking about this. What's most important is – especially when it comes to recovering history that's been actively erased by multiple parties over decades – it's a community effort. No one person's going to have the definitive work on, for example, the Weimar Republic. Everyone is going to be finding all sorts of little bits and pieces and putting them together and building off other people's work. That's the short version of the long journey and how difficult it was. And you know, this book may be published, but the journey of uncovering this history is ongoing, and I'm excited to see what else people find as they dig deeper and deeper.

SPB: So, in this — the hardest and most difficult research experience of yours — were there any things that surprised you in this process? 

MT:  There was never anything that surprised me – well, there's one exception. But, before I get to that, for the most part, what surprised me was the extent to which how awful things were. It wasn't exactly surprising in the sense that I couldn’t believe it. When you stop and think about it you might say, yeah that tracks, yeah the United States did these things. For example, Paragraph 175, which is the classic, infamous, anti-sodomy, anti-homosexual law in Germany at the time. If you got arrested for that you could spend up to six months in jail. When the Nazis took over, they extended that jail sentence from six months to five years. Then the United States comes in and decides to uphold the five-year law versus the six-month law. It wasn't even presented as, we're going to send you to jail because that's just what Germany stands for. Rather they said, we're actually going to uphold the Nazi law. That was surprising initially to me, but then I stop and think and, yeah, that tracks. There’s no reason I should be surprised by that. There was a lot of not-cool stuff happening. One thing that surprised me, though – it kind of tracks, but not really. I mentioned it briefly in this book that some of the concentration camps, such as Dachau, had brothels. They weren't just brothels for the SS officers. These were brothels for non-Jewish prisoners, male prisoners, cis-male prisoners especially, probably exclusively. For “good behavior” they would get to go to the brothels. The brothels were [staffed by] people forced to be there, usually AFAB, non-Jewish prisoners. I thought, what the hell is this? It was one of those things that made me ask, who would do that to someone else, especially when everyone's suffering so horrifically? How much of it was, like this desperate need for companionship, these weird power dynamics that persist? It just kind of broke my brain open a little bit, just trying to figure out what in the world that must have been like. That was one particular piece I just did not see coming. We, at least in the United States, among other things, never have talked about that publicly in history books in the context of World War II and the Holocaust. I was baffled by that.

SPB: Considering what a well-researched book this is – and it does often feel like an artifact or a document – how did you find spaces to insert the characters that you built? 

MT: It was something that did take time. I decided I wasn’t going to write the draft until I had it pretty much outlined scene by scene. I let the narrative be shaped based off the information I uncovered. I determined: what are the most important pieces to make sure are in this book and made sure some sort of human element was brought back into them. It's not just statistics or numbers; these were real people who suffered. The three main characters really got shaped based off the historical accuracy and how they might be able to fit within the truth of all this while still making a coherent narrative. Piece by piece, it came together based on that. Then I also wondered, alright, well, this isn't just a book about the history of the time. Otherwise, I would just do a nonfiction book. So, what are these folks actually dealing with and what do I want to highlight here that is relevant to today?

Some of the things were highlighting the concept of passing and passing privilege versus the amount of energy that it can take, either in the moment, doing it or prepping for it, or what have you. Sometimes passing, especially when it's a survival technique, is, ironically, not presenting the person that you want to be. You're kind of there, but not fully there. I wanted to highlight that a little bit. That fed into the book very easily because of the whole concept of being a “transvestite.” There was another thing I wanted to highlight in there that I don't feel gets a lot of attention: the passing white transmasculine struggle. If you're passing as a cis-man, especially if you're passing as a white cis-man, sometimes there's a blame there as far as, well now you are the enemy. We get into this weird bio-essentialism sometimes where either you are a femme identifying person, an AFAB person, or what have you, and you are therefore the victim for lack of a better word, or you are an AMAB, masculine presenting or what have you, and therefore the enemy. And so, it's like this weird bioessentialism that we sometimes still find ourselves getting caught up in regarding masculinity, femininity, gender identity, cis and trans, all this stuff. I touch on that a little bit in the book too, because, for example, Bertie is passing as a cis white man, and he does that as a survival technique, but that automatically pegs him as a Nazi. He denies it which makes the Allied antagonist ask, well, then what are you hiding? So, he gets stuck between this rock and a hard place where he's going to be in trouble either way. It's just kind of like, masculinity equals enemy, without the nuance. 

SPB: That was something you handled well throughout the book. All the characters are essentially powerless, but Bertie was especially interesting because his privileges were constantly changing. There’s a breathtaking moment where the group is shielded from danger because of Bertie’s privilege that managed to flood me with relief even as it broke my heart.

MT: And you feel guilty, yeah? At least I do. That was another thing I really wanted to put in the book: survivor's guilt. All three of the main characters each went through an individual thing that caused them to deal with survivor's guilt and, in the present, they are dealing with their guilt in these different ways while trying to support each other. I feel like that echoes a lot in marginalized identities: I'm still alive, I need to be something amazing [to justify] that. It's this understandable but unfair burden that we sometimes put on ourselves, the sense that I'm still alive and I've got to make that count because other folks were not this lucky. Going back into how I can use my privilege to make things better, what do you do with that? To reject it is a death sentence, right? It comes down to that question of, when is survival noble and when is it lucky? And what do you do with it, regardless of why you're still standing.

SPB: I love how these three characters take the time, even when they're mired in their own pain, to care for each other. It's almost easier for them to care for each other than it is for them to deal with the things they’re beating themselves up for. In that sense, they are essential to each other, not just because they might need each other to navigate the world, but because they need each other to look at each other and show perspectives that they no longer have because of the traumas that they've survived.

MT: Yeah, absolutely. They really do lean on each other for support even though each of them is suffering. That also really shows what our various marginalized communities are all about. A lot of the time, all we have is each other and supporting one another. As a collective that can be very meaningful and strong, but also we sometimes can struggle to help ourselves. It's so much easier, even just mentally, for us to help someone else. I'm sure there's some psychological thing there about, you know, I'm not worthy enough, but this other person, I really want to help them, so we just kind of lean on one another, as opposed to engaging in an each for themselves kind of thing.

SPB: There are passages scattered throughout the book that sound like helpful voices in the void, reaching out for one another. I was curious when those came to you, when you decided to employ them, how you decided to employ them, and what you based them on.

MT: You’re talking about the passages that almost always start with “We've received word.” Those were essentially there from the beginning. I technically made those up. It's all factual stuff and they were planned because I'm someone that wants to get to the meat of the story as soon as possible. But it can be a struggle, especially in historical fiction, to comprehend the meat of a problem if you don't have the context first. So, this was pretty much planned from the beginning, because it was my shortcut. We get one of those little announcements as the very first piece of information before the plot itself technically begins. Right up front it says: Allied forces have come in. The war is over. Queer people, you're still not safe, because now they're rounding us up and putting us in jail. If you survived this far, you're going to have to keep hiding. 

I feel like that was a quick way of getting a decent idea of the situation before we've even begun. I put in a couple of those throughout, because I just thought that was the, the quickest way to get this information in without bloating the book. Originally, I wrote them as radio broadcasts. When Hitler came to power, he made sure every single citizen had a radio and this was specifically so that they could all hear his speeches and propaganda. People were forbidden from listening to anything else. Of course, there were pirate broadcasts that would talk about information that otherwise wasn't allowed into Germany – things like they lost this battle instead of saying the Nazis were always fantastic, always winning, and yay us or whatever. My original concept was [the main characters] were listening to a pirate broadcast. That ended up not panning out, because it wasn't necessary for the book, and by the time my editor picked it up – shout out to Dan Lopez of Counterpoint – he preferred that these instead be kind of like these disembodied voices, a Greek chorus type thing. I thought on that and I like how it fits with the whole ghosts of history concept in the book.

SPB: It sounds like you and your editor have a good relationship. Who do you freak out to when something isn't working? Your editor or your agent? Friends, family, or loved ones? Or is it just you by yourself with your feelings – 

MT: Screaming into the void. So, one thing is – and I am proud of myself for this – I really worked on educating myself about the industry before getting my hands dirty with publication and stuff. For anyone you know out there who wants to get published, educating yourself on the industry is a great way to lessen your anxiety, jealousy or other feelings. Once you see how things work and really understand that, [it becomes easier to] accept it. There hasn't been much that has made me mad but, when I start feeling anxious, I don't necessarily want to take that to my editor or my agent or my publicist or any of those folks. They're already working super hard in general, and I know they're working really hard for me. I want to respect their time and energy, and also, they are not therapists. I will sometimes just kind of vent to loved ones. As I've told multiple folks who ask, how did you get through all this research and stuff mental health wise, if you look to the acknowledgements, you'll see that I thanked both of my therapists. There was legit therapy happening through this process. And the third thing, honestly, I love video games. I have been playing video games since the original NES. I have quite the collection these days that I've accumulated over the years, and it is very cathartic to play a video game and just yell at it. I love doing that. I'm not a first-person shooter type person but, I'll be playing Mario and he'll fall down a hole, and I'm like, Mario, what the hell? So, it's video games, but also therapy and some loved ones.

SPB: The Bertie character comforts himself in another kind of fantastical or mythological space, one that takes the shape of the American Midwest. Was his awareness or conception of that part of America as a place where a trans person could safely exist something that was widely known in that time or did it just feel helpful for the character?

MT: I'm sure I played it up a bit at least, but it was based on plenty of factual evidence based off court records, international newspaper clippings, all this stuff where, in the late 1800s early 1900s there was this surge of coverage in both the UK and the United States of what were called female husbands. These were AFAB people who presented as men and were marrying cis women – whether it was a sexual orientation thing or a gender identity thing – because being a husband was like the epitome of proving you were a man. On occasion, folks were being “found out” and a lot of it seemed to be coming from places like the Midwest. Theoretically, it was easier to, not necessarily disappear there, but you just weren't bothered as much. I found this fascinating, and it was international news [at the time]. So, folks knew about this. Of course, I'm sure other trans people or gender non-conforming people heard about this, and thought, I could do this too. Despite the several that were “found out” or made headlines, that means that there were plenty of others that were under the radar and stayed under the radar. That was actually a little bit of the inspiration for the fact that Bertie and, by extension, Sophie, survived the war by hiding in plain sight as a married couple. So, he has a sense that, if we go to the Midwest, it'll be safer there. By this point, his information is outdated, but he's got this kind of idea stuck in his head, because it was true at one point. It also seemed to merge nicely because plenty of German immigrants ended up in the Midwest as farmers. For Bertie, it's a match made in heaven, like we should just go there, and it'll be better, or at least not as bad as Nazi Germany. He’s someone who kids himself in a lot of ways, because he needs that hope to get himself through.

SPB: I do want to talk a bit about how it felt using the language of the era in the text, because that was a choice. The book takes place in a time period when queer and trans people were called inverts and transvestites. Was there ever a time when you thought, maybe I should change the language into something that makes more sense for a 21st century reader?

MT I was all in from day one. Something I love is watching the evolutions and changes of language – especially when it comes to a marginalized identity – the specific slang of a given time, how things change, and where a word or phrase came from. The queer community, in general, was just chock full of that stuff in any given time or place. So, trying to uncover some of that was fun. So, they called themselves transvestites. They called themselves and/or were referred to as inverts. One of my favorites, I slipped in there at the very last minute: stepchildren of nature. I was like, we gotta reclaim that. I love stepchildren of nature! And they said it lovingly for themselves. They also said people with the souls of women or people with the souls of men – these were all things that they used to refer to themselves. Early versions had much more German. My agent suggested we need to pull this back and I said, okay, but I'm still spelling America with a K.

SPB: Well, after writing all this you clearly need a break. I can’t stop thinking about your video game habit. What sorts of games will you be playing as you prepare for a launch?

MT: I mean, I do love my platformers. I love Metroidvanias. I'm one of those people. I think Hollow Knight is the best Metroidvania that was ever created to date. It is about as close to perfection as you can get. But, you know, I do love the world of Kirby. He is this pink little puffball. First of all, he’s male identified but he's pink. He's this round little thing and he looks all cute and everything but he can destroy worlds and basically Eldritch gods and then wander off happily and eat a piece of cake. He's very, very queer. I could choose a world to live in, video game wise, I would want to live with Kirby.