Being Present: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany [Paperback]

Willy Schumann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

"Professor Schumann, of Smith College, was six years old when Hitler came to power in Germany. He grew up in a smallish, very ship-minded town on the approach to the Kiel Canal. The place was far from the centers of power and corruption, and devoid of concentration camps. Young Willy became a devoted Nazi believer. Professor Schumann's intention in writing this understated and not self-defensive memoir is `to show young Americans how easy it is, given the right historical and political circumstances, to form, control, and manipulate a whole nation--especially its young people.' He does that effectively--provided young people read his book."--The Atlantic

"Born in 1927, Schumann scrupulously relates and analyzes his life in Nazi Germany and his post-1945 experiences that finally brought him to the U.S. Eschewing self-pity, he successfully demonstrates how and why he was an ardent supporter of the Nazi regime to its end and describes its values, inculcated by Hitler Youth meetings and newspaper and radio propaganda, and undergirded by an adventurousness of youth....The chapters of life after 1945 show how some Germans were gradually transformed into supporters of democracy."--Choice

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book is written from a perspective unfamiliar to us, that of a child growing up in mainstream middle-class German soci ety during the Nazi regime. A small child in an anti-Nazi but silent family during the 1930s, Schumann is frank about the aspects of life which appealed to a young boy: uniforms, songs, camping. Instead of finding these things in scouting, he found them in the Hitler Jugend. At 16, in 1944, he was drafted into the helfer forces, doing basic military jobs at home to free mature soldiers for combat. Still only 17 at war's end, he addresses his "re-education" process as a student in the United States. Now a U.S. citizen, Schumann teaches at Smith College. His book does not purport to be political or military history; it is an examination of a lost world in microcosm. It neither celebrates nor laments the past but tells simply and eloquently of the formative years of one person's life under extraordinary circumstances. Recommended for general collections.
- Linda Smith, Mobil Corp. , Fairfax, Va.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Kent State Univ Pr (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873384938
• ISBN-13: 978-0873384933
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,484,550 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gives you a different impression of what life was like.., April 9, 2000

By 

Uzma Burney - See all my reviews

This review is from: Being Present: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany (Paperback)

This is a good, balanced version of events that took place in Nazi Germany. Willy Schumann writes about his own experience as a young German boy living at the time. I read the book for a research paper on the youth experience in Nazi Germany and what made this book stand out was that it did not take an extreme stand-point. The author was a Hitler youth member but he seems, even under the effects of indoctrination, to be able to do some thinking on his own -- he did not oppose the regime but he was not a rabid follower of the Hitler youth either. The book continues after the war and gives us a good insight into the plight of the Germans after the war. The book reads like a novel (which is not always the case in history books) and the author is smart and witty -- above all he is human.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Find out what Germany was really like for the average person, June 2, 2009

By 

S. Van de Motter (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Being Present: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany (Paperback)

This is a very well written book, easy to read with many interesting personal stories. The Author does a great job of explaining what it was like for the average person living in Germany at the time. As the byline suggests, this book chonicles what life was like for a school age kid growing up in Hiter's Germany. Autor provides geat insight into the life of children in the Hitler Youth. The latter parts of the book decribe what Germany was like during the war, it does not go over every battle, but he does mention the larger scale operations. This books strength lies in the Author's ability to humanize the German people at a time when gross crimes against humanity were being committed, unbeknownst to most, at the higher levels. I highly recomend this to anyone interested in WWII history.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story Of A State In Control, April 22, 2008

By 

John P. Rooney "John" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Being Present: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany (Paperback)

"Being Present" by Willy Schumann. Subtitled: "Growing Up In Hitler's Germany" Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. 1991.

In 1927, Willy Schumann was born in northern Germany, up by the Kiel Canal and the border with Denmark. Due to this location, Willy Schumann, the author of this autobiographic book, had a great interest in the German Navy, (the Kriegsmarine), German warships and seamanship. His father was one of the pilots whose job was to guide large vessels through the Kiel Canal and its locks.

The book is an account of how the Nazi Party took over all facets of life in the
Third Reich, but most interestingly, it is an account of how the Nazi Party ran almost every aspect of the education system: teachers, curriculum and even the students' expected responses. At an early age, each German boy was required to join the Hitler Youth Hitler Youth compulsory participation (see page 104) took up more and more of a boy's time, as he grew older and older, until, for teenagers, the organization consumed even summer vacations with war games.

Willy Schumann recounts his experiences in the Hitler Youth, his indoctrination by Nazi concepts, and his belief in the Third Reich, reinforced, in 1939 through 1940, as the German army won victory after victory. He tells of the joy as the conquests of Poland, Norway, Denmark, and so on, are reported to the German people. In the early years, the only setback that he recalls is the sorrow with the sinking of the Bismark, their "darling ship", by the Royal Navy.

The Nazi Party held close control over the German people. Schumann records that the teachers found it wise not to disagree with Nazi propaganda. Religion was ignored in favor of Nazi events, so "...we grew up `like small heathens'". (Page 81.) No one dared to speak out against Adolf Hitler and his actions, and this really became dangerous after the July 20 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler. I could go on, but you ought to read his book yourself to get one man's story of a society that, at first, was grateful for better economic conditions but then became more and more fearful as the Nazis took more and more control.

To sum up, this is one man's study of how the State consumed every aspect of life until the State, itself, was consumed by outside forces. Schumann tells of his trip through the ruins of the city of Hamburg, which had been consumed by a firestorm, (July 1943), caused by RAF bombing.