Author: Wilhelm Gehlen Publisher: Casemate ISBN: 1935149644 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
“An extraordinary account of a young boy caught up in the middle of a war . . . frank and even funny at times . . . utterly absorbing” (Books Monthly). This is the wartime memoir of a boy named Will, who happened to be the nephew of the head of Nazi Germany’s intelligence agency. The author, only ten years old when the war began, became a helper at the local Luftwaffe flak battery, fetching ammunition. It was exciting work for Will, a member of the “Jungvolk,” and by the end of the war, he had become expert at judging attacks. As fighter raids increased in frequency, he noted that the pilots became less skilled. Gehlen’s town was repeatedly bombed, and he often had to help with the wreckage or to pull survivors from basements. He witnessed more death than a child ever should; nevertheless, his flak battery continued firing until US tanks were almost on top of the position. In this book, Gehlen provides an intimate glimpse of the chaos, horror, and black humor of life just behind the front lines. As seen through the eyes of a child who was expert in aircraft identification and bomb weights, food-rationing and tank types, one encounters a view of life inside Hitler’s wartime Reich that is both fascinating and rare. “Although the memories Gehlen shares are narrow, and offer little insight into the Reich itself, they’re remarkable for the child’s perspective they bring to bear on a warring country’s ferocious struggle.” —Publishers Weekly “A real gem, a quiet tour de force . . . Despite its serious subject matter the book reads as an adventure story from start to finish.” —Military Modelling
Author: Jean-Denis G.G. Lepage Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786452811 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 185
Book Description
During the Nazi regime's swift rise to power, no single target of nazification took higher priority than Germany's young people. Well aware that the Nazi party could thrive only through the support of future generations, Hitler instituted a youth movement, the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), which indoctrinated the easily malleable students of Germany's schools and universities. Along with its female counterpart, the Bund deutscher Madel (League of German Girls), the Hitler Youth produced many thousands of young Germans who were deeply and fanatically imbued with the Nazi racist ideology. This heavily illustrated book outlines the history and development of the Hitler Youth from its origins in 1922 until it was disbanded by the allied powers in 1945.
Author: Jost Hermand Publisher: Northwestern University Press ISBN: 9780810112926 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
Between 1933 and 1945, more than three million children between the ages of seven and sixteen were taken from their homes and sent to Hitler Youth paramilitary camps to be toughened up and taught how to be obedient Germans. Separated from their families, these children often endured abuse by the adults in charge. This mass phenomenon that affected a whole generation of Germans remains almost undocumented. In this memoir, Jost Hermand, a German cultural critic and historian who spent much of his youth in five different camps, writes about his experiences during this period. Hermand also gives background into the camp's creation and development.
Author: Greg Procknow Publisher: Francis & Bernard Publishing ISBN: 0986837407 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
Delving into genocidal governments of the past, the work covered in this book explores how these genocidal belligerents had recruited and trained their nation's citizenry into killing machines. Paramilitaries are often employed by these government heads to carry out with such precision the systematic slaughtering of innocents, doing so without resembling compunction. Largely enticing their recruits to join with the promise of wealth and revenge. Training these recruits through political ideological indoctrination sessions, and subjecting the trainees to a demanding training schedule, these trainees eventually get their chance to enact what they have so long been training for. No other work has compiled such an accurate and comprehensive account of the recruitment/selection, and training/development policies of Serbia's Arkan's Tigers, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, The Third Reich's Hitler Youth/SS, Sudan's Janjaweed, Al-Qaeda, and Rwanda's Interahamwe.
Author: Christine Leunens Publisher: Abrams ISBN: 1683356926 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
The inspiration for the major film Jojo Rabbit by Taika Waititi An avid member of the Hitler Youth in 1940s Vienna, Johannes Betzler discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa behind a false wall in their home. His initial horror turns to interest—then love and obsession. After his parents disappear, Johannes is the only one aware of Elsa’s existence in the house and he alone is responsible for her fate. Drawing strength from his daydreams about Hitler, Johannes plans for the end of the war and what it might mean for him and Elsa. The inspiration for the major film Jojo Rabbit by Taika Waititi, Caging Skies, sold in over twenty countries, is a work of rare power; a stylistic and storytelling triumph. Startling, blackly comic, and written in Christine Leunens’s gorgeous, muscular prose, this novel, her U.S. debut, is singular and unforgettable.
Author: Jurgen Herbst Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press ISBN: 0299164136 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
Jurgen Herbst s account of growing up in Nazi Germany from 1928 to 1948 is a boy s experience of anti-Semitism and militarism from the inside. Herbst was a middle-class boy in a Lutheran family that saw value in Prussian military ideals and a mythic German past. His memoir is a compelling, understated tale of moral awakening.
Author: Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi ISBN: 9781604738919 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
!-- Oskar Eder was born near Nuremberg in 1925. His youth was influenced by Germany's xenophobic patriotism and Nazi politics. Suffering teenage angst and falling under the sway of the Jungvolk, the younger branch of the Hitler Youth, he was suspicious of his socialist parents' loyalties. He admired older, tougher boys and went on to become a member of the Luftwaffe. During pilot training he discovered that his sheltered small-town life and Nazi propaganda had hidden the fact that something was fundamentally wrong with Germany. After the war he acquired a law degree and began practicing law but was spiritually destitute. Inspired by the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and by Indian spiritualism, he began a search for his own spirit. He delved into the philosophies of the Middle East and Asia, first as a Sufi student and then among yogic Hindus, Sikhs, and Ahmadiyyan Muslims. In his quest he found his way to the gates of Jerusalem and joined a circle that included Jerusalem's foremost thinkers and philosophers. In Israel he worked the land on a kibbutz, studied Hebrew, read the Bible, and came face to face both with his own guilt and with German Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. This haunting biography recounts how he found a personal spirituality that eased the pain of his past. After the struggle to assimilate himself with Jewish people and adapt to their culture, he converted to Judaism and took a new name, Asher. Today, welcomed into a society that had many reasons to reject him, he is married to an Israeli Holocaust survivor whom he met at an international peace conference. They live as observant Jews in Jerusalem. David E. Feldman lives in Long Beach, New York.
Author: Eugene Davidson Publisher: University of Missouri Press ISBN: 9780826211392 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1402
Book Description
Examines each of the defendants in the Nuremberg Trials, during which charges were brought against members of Hitler's Third Reich for wartime atrocities, and considers questions of whether the trials were necessary and just.
Author: W. John Koch Publisher: BOOKS by W. JOHN KOCH PUBLISHING ISBN: 9780973157925 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
58 years after Hitler's demise, controversy continues to reign. Attitudes towards Hitler among his contemporaries and their descendants range from adulation to hatred. They are influenced by ideological stance, personal memories, guilt, and denial. Born into a German middle class family, John Koch remembers the world around him from Hitler's ascent to power to the end of World War II, which John Koch experienced as a soldier and a prisoner of war. He reports on the horrific post-war years and the birth of a democratic Germany. From hundreds of remembered events, discussions, arguments, and episodes of risk and danger, John Koch creates a mosaic that blends into a composite picture of a country hurtling towards the twelve years of Hitler's dictatorship over Germany and much of Europe. John Koch was blessed with growing up in a family that saw Hitler as the destroyer of Germany. It was a Germany from which there was NO ESCAPE until Hitler's suicide. At a time when the history of Hitler and his Third Reich is once more questioned, revised, or romanticized, John Koch presents his reminiscences as an autobiographical narrative that serves the reader well in understanding what happened i