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. His father was a loving parent, a scholar, a man of principle - and a German officer. Herbst was a middle-class boy in a Lutheran family that saw value in Prussian military ideals and a mythic German past. His is a tale of moral awakening. He recalls his confusion as some of his classmates are no longer welcome at his school, and his consternation as he tries to reconcile what he learned from his favourite teachers and what was subsequently taught by their party replacements. His description of walking to school the morning after Kristallnacht is clear and chilling. A Hitler youth in the making, he joined the Jungvolk and slowly became aware of the real nature of the National Socialist regime. The story of that evolution - an insider's view of the Nazi youth movement - is inspired by young Jurgen's deep friendships with his fellow students and their dedicaton to a military code of personal honour and loyalty.
His devotion to those young men allowed him to endure scorn and deprivation and to risk personal well-being, even life, in the face of a brutal evil that demanded unquestioning allegiance.
- ISBN10 0299164101
- ISBN13 9780299164102
- Publish Date September 1999
- Publish Status Unknown
- Out of Print 1 July 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Wisconsin Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English