Boy Soldier : A German Teenager at the Nazi Twilight

Thamm, Gerhardt B.

McFarland & Co Inc（2007/02発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 188 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780786431113
• DDC分類 943.086092

Full Description

"As a 15-year-old boy I fought briefly in a war. My fight was neither noble nor heroic. I saw the horrors that no 15-year-old boy should ever see. I came into war purely by happenstance, and survived it purely by luck."

Gerhardt B. Thamm grew up on his grandfather's farm in Lower Silesia, the hinterlands of Germany. In early 1945 this land, near the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders, became a battleground. The Soviets captured Lower Silesia in February, and Thamm, like many of his Hitler Youth high school classmates, was conscripted to fight on the Eastern Front until the last few days of World War II, experiencing firsthand fearsome barbarity and atrocity. Thamm's family was deported from Silesia in 1946 to West Germany. Gerhardt Thamm arrived in the United States in 1948. The 17-year-old Thamm joined the U.S. Army the same year and served more than 20 years as an enlisted man.

"Maybe, just maybe, I fought in this war to escape the barbarity. Maybe I wrote this book to still the memories."

Contents

Table of Contents

Preface     

Prologue     

PART ONE : THEWAY IT HAD BEEN     

PART TWO : ON THE HOME FRONT     

1. 1939     

2. 1940     

3. 1941     

4. 1942     

5. 1943     

6. 1944     

7. 1945     

PART THREE : GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG (APOCALYPSE)     

8. The Omen     

9. Distant Thunder     

10. Flight     

11. Retreat into the Sudeten Mountains     

PART FOUR : BOY SOLDIERS     

12. Oh, to Be a Soldier     

13. Sergeant "One-Eye"     

14. Frontline Duty     

15. The "Forgotten Front"     

16. The Russian Boy     

17. "Routine" Patrol     

18. Ah, Natascha     

19. To the Bitter End     

Postscript: Strangers in Their Own Land     

Notes     

Index