[2] The story is about a 15-year-old Dutch boy who lives through the last winter of World War II and is based on the author's recollections; Terlouw was eight when the German army invaded the Netherlands.

Jan Terlouw was born in Kamperveen in 1931, but moved to the village of Wezep in the Veluwe region in the last year of World War II.

Due to the fact that Terlouw's father was involved in the local community as a result of being a dominee, he was arrested twice by the Nazi forces, but released each time after a few days.

Terlouw, like the protagonist Michiel, was unable to go to school in the last winter of the war due to ongoing bombardments on bridges over the IJssel river.

On a day in late 1944, 21-year-old Dirk Knopper, who lives opposite to the Van Beusekom house, tells Michiel a secret.

He discovers that Dirk Knopper has been hiding an English pilot called Jack in a self-made burrow in the forest near the village.

Jan Terlouw's primary purpose, he said, was to make it clear to readers that they should not think, after finishing the book, that the war had somehow been a glorious period.

[4] Oorlogswinter shows the grey area between the traditional "good" and "bad" rhetoric many people held towards World War II in the Netherlands.

Shortly after the war, the general perception that Dutch people held was that people morally chose to be either "good": supporting the Dutch Resistance and openly rejecting national socialism; or "bad": collaborating or supporting the Nazi regime and being friends with or having relationships with Nazi soldiers.

[5] In the novel, Michiel's parents are seen clashing over whether the Germans are all to blame for Hitler; and a Nazi soldier saves Jochem.

Mr Posthuma, the head of the Resistance in de Vlank is also nowhere close to the descriptions of a heroic leader, but rather a shy and reserved school teacher.

Terlouw ends his novel by summing up countries in which these conflicts and wars occurred, including Northern Ireland, Indonesia, the Vietnam and "many, many more".