Well it was German thesis not a lit thesis, but it was comparative between Boy in the Striped Pajamas and The Book Thief and a discussion of how theres not enough YA lit about Germans and Germany that isn’t Holocaust focused, and that leads to problematic depictions and lasting impressions of the average German people being ultra complicit in Nazi life when so many were just trying to survive (and also leads to current stereotyping of Germans are always Nazis). And then I complained about BITSP being overly simplified and using bad German pronunciations in its over-simplification and how that’s also problematic.

Basically the idea was that YA lit written about Germany between 1937-1945 is typically oversimplified and doesn’t have much fact basis to it and it’s usually poorly done, but the Book Thief captures a lot of the nuance about German life during the war that’s lost in so many other books.