Customer Reviews

German Boy: A Child in War

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I knew a man once who had served as a Sergeant in the British occupation forces in Germany after World War II. As one who majored for a time in German Literature and studied in Munich in the mid-Seventies, I had imagined this would have been an interesting time to be in Germany and was surprised when he spoke of it as a very depressing experience for him personally. After reading "German Boy" I understand why he felt that way. Until I read this book I never really understood what immediate post-war Germany was like for the natives.

Before reading "German Boy" my images of post-war Germany were mostly formed from reading Heinrich Boell novels and watching German film productions such as "Heimat" and "Wir Wunderkinder". I had imagined somehow that as soon as even the Russians and certainly the British and Americans came to liberate the German people, the war was over for them, and prosperity followed rapidly. Samuels shows in detail why for him and many people like him, the war did not end until really the Berlin Airlift and currency reform in 1949 brought a relative prosperity to at least his area of Germany. For example, for about three years, from age 9 to 12, he basically wore the same clothes. During this time he did not wear underwear until his Mother's future husband, an American GI, gave him a pair in 1949.

This is a very adult book written from the point-of-view of a pre-teen. One of the major themes of the story is how his mother was forced to sell her body to feed her family. He tells the story from the point of view of a boy who does not really understand exactly what sex is. That understood, I think this would be an inspirational book for any 12-year-old boy, and I am going to encourage my own son to read it next.

Review: German Boy is a beautifully written and moving story about life in Germany during the period 1945-1949. From the very beginning, I felt like I waa part of the ten year old German boy's world. His photographic memory retained the details of events and conversations which he relates in a pleasing and exciting manner. There is a universal message to be learned from the way the author saw the war, dictatorship and the goodness and badness in people. We are reminded that all human beings have the same hopes and fears. The reader will be surprised to discover how the author was influenced in 1948 by the United States humanitarian effort, - "The Berlin Airlift". I highly recommend this book, and predict that it will one of the top ten this year. A must Read Book

Very well written page-turner memoir that reads like a novel about a German refugee from East Germany making his way with his mother to West Germany and finally the United States. Innumerable books have been written against Germans since World War II, which unfortunately have equated Germans with supporters of the political establishment during the war. This account shows that many Germans living in Germany (especially East Germany) suffered during the war and did not support the government at that time. The horrid living conditions, lack of food, and the falling of Wolfgang's mother into periodic prostitution to save her family, combined with the author's gradual realization that God had a part in his survival, can bring tears to even the most stoic readers. Another memoir, by Elizabeth Walter called "Barefoot in the Rubble", although not as well written, presents and even more moving account of displaced Germans living in Yugoslavia following World War II.

Five Stars. Bottom line up front, dear Amazon.com buyer, this book is worth every penny.

This book reenforces a fact this reviewer already knew in life. The jerks who cause a war are not the people who pay the price. It is often the little children and women who do the post war suffering.

For a child a war is the worst of times. Your very world is crumbling. Your parents may die. Your home can be destroyed. Finding food can be a day to day struggle. Starving is actually worse than death.

Author Samuel's book can be broken down into four parts. The first part is the losing of the war. His true memories don't start until the war is post-1943. While most Germans thought they could win the war most Germans didn't think they would win the war in the post Stalingrad era. That reality hits the children most hard. The second part of the book about Soviet occupation. For this reviewer it was very difficult to read. I did not like Samuel's grim reality of his mother having to sleep with a Soviet officer for a milk can full of salty soup nor for Samuel's grandfather losing his life over keeping Soviet prisoners in early 1945 from a bin of potatos. The third part of the book deals with escape from East Germany and life in the West until 1949. The forth part of the book is the rebirth of (West) Germany. Samuel's mother meets a G.I. enlisted man and his life then continues to advance. Note, in Germany all Samuel's could be was a baker. When Samuel is about 14 years old he is adopted by his G.I. father and moves with the family to the U.S.A. Samuel's escaping the drudgery of working in a bakery is nearly as joyful as escaping from East Germany, though far less dangerous. Samuels attends high school in the USA and eventually joins the USAF to fly against his hated foe: the Soviet Union. That is the subject of another book.

Samuel's still speaks with a little bit of a German accent dispite the fact of living in the USA since about 1950. However, his command of the writing language is surperb. I quite enjoyed his story telling style. Also, I enjoyed his plain bias of enjoying positive about the USA and his being a citizen of this nation. It's quite refreshing to read in this day and age of anti-USA revisionist history.

Post WWII West Germany is nearly as dreary as East Germany. However, the "Wessies" had the luck of being under mostly American occupation. Thus there is some food. In 1949, the time of the Berlin airlift, Germany changes. The USA builds up NATO and allows the West German government to form. The re-issue of the Germany currency, the Mark, allows commerce to form. I'm looking forward to reading Samuel's next book where he returns to a remade Germany as a USAF officer.

Personally, I think if our school systems worked this book would be required reading in high school.

Searching for a good read on my recent trip to Dresden, the book jacket first drew me in. When I scanned the synopsis I KNEW it was the perfect book to take on my way to long suffering Dresden. I could not put the book down and read one half Boston to Dresden, and the rest Munich to Boston. I thought of the excavations I had witnessed in front of the Frauenkirche..the cellars of destroyed buildings, all carefully excavated, ready to be built on again in historically acurate reconstruction. Fifty-some years later and the vestiges of war still visible. How so must it be for someone like Wolfgang Samuel who was a child so long ago. He excavates the long mulled over memories of his experiences which form the basis of his current adulthood; the death, the want, the sacrifices of a mother making sure her children were fed, the sufferings under first animal-like Red Army "liberators," the hypocrisy of Communist indoctrinators, and the welcome attention of gum-chewing Yankee soldiers who had chocolate,hot water,and coca-cola. You will recommend this book again and again once you have read it!

In light of some of the other readers' comments, I will not cast doubt on the accuracy of Mr. Samuel's memory, and trust it and his sincerity. As an American of German ancestry (second generation born) I find it refreshing that a native born German has written a book in which not ALL Germans are Nazis. This debate will rage for years, but seriously, does anyone really believe that all Germans were Nazis and committing atrocities? Oh, as if the Japanese have nothing to apologize for: the Rape of Nanking and China in general, beheading and cannibalism of Allied captured pilots, biological torture, comfort women, etc. Well, they never have apologized as the Germans have had to with their defeat. As for Mr. Samuel's experiences during the war and under Soviet occupation, does anyone believe the Soviets were an improvement over a Nazi Germany. Let's debate which was worse: Nazism or Soviet communism? Does it matter? Both systems were evil and killed millions. Who cares what his family felt when they heard Hitler was dead? This is Samuel's story, not Hitler's. I thoroughly enjoyed this book of survival and chronicle of a boy's growth into a man under very difficult circumstances. This is a book of love and respect for his mother. Not some political diatribe about the evils of Nazism. We know about the evils of Nazism ad nauseum. There were good Germans as there were good Japanese and Mr. Samuels succeeds in capturing and describing how one good German family survived. A powerful and inspiring autobiography.

This book has filled an important void I have been longing to quell. A book portraying the view of Germans and what they endured once WWII was finished. This by far, has to be one of the best WWII-related books I have ever read. The poignent brutal honesty and testiment of Wolfgang Samuel as a boy in post war Germany is absolutely rivetting and eye-opening. Not only do we hear what it was like being a victim of WWII from the German perspective, but we get to hear it from a boy who or more less lost his innocence and childhood to the ravages of the war...

This wonderful book gives you vivid details of what it meant to be a German refugee escaping death, destruction, rape and atrocities commited after the war. For once, we are given a perspective so hardly discussed in books on WWII. I truly learned that the German people were also victims just like those in France, Poland, Russia etc. Wolfgang Samuel paints a picture in which you gain extreme respect for the courage and tenacity he and his family displayed to simply stay alive and get through Soviet barbarism, poverty, humiliation and overall death and destruction...

What I really liked about the book was Wolfgang's ability to show both the evil and good of mankind through his descriptive writings and personal experiences. All and all, I highly recommend this book to people who not only enjoy WWII history, but enjoy reading about the triumph of the human spirit...

"German Boy, a Child in War"
Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
ISBN 0-7679-0824-4
2000

This autobiography of childhood by Wolfgang Samuel is the story of a German boy growing up during World War II. When the momentum of the war turned against Germany, the Russians attacked from the east and routed the German army and civilian population as well. The book recounts how Samuel and his family abandoned their home and possessions and fled for their lives. In the following years, they survived under circumstances that most of us can hardly imagine. This is a very touching story, largely about the writer‘s mother, who did whatever was necessary and paid any price for the survival of her children, the author and his younger sister. Although it is a story of deprivation and terror, it is also about acts of incredible courage and noble behavior under terrible circumstances by ordinary people.

This book is admirable in its originality and all the more powerful in having been written by the person who lived it. Above all, it is a remarkable story of courage and tenacity of the human spirit.

"German Boy" is one of the best books I have ever read. From the moment the story began, I was compelled to keep turning the page. The story is exciting, suspenseful, and most of all, real. This book presents something often lost in the modern day re-enactments of ww2 and postww2 accounts. It provides truth. As the reader progresses through the story, he finds himself in the action of the events as if he were also there. He learns that history is not so simple as to declare that 'Germans' are evil, or that 'Russians' are evil.

The author and main character of the book takes you through his journey of post ww2 Germany in his flight to escape the ploundering, rape and torment of most of the Russian occupiers. Suffering untold horrors, he finally reaches west Germany and American occupation. Throughout the story, however, we watch as the main character analyses the choices made by individuals of all races, genders, and creeds. We learn that a man is good or evil based on his individual decisions, not on his race or even his upbringing. The main character meets people in his journey that would take his life just for a chance to cower to their new overlords, and he meets people, that despite their past, take the sacrifice to offer that one ounce of kindness that ended up granting him life.

This is a powerful book. It deals with post ww2 Germany, but offers much more than just history. It provides a painfully vivid picture of what it meant to be an American Soldier. The contrast between the American army and Russian army is astounding, and inspiring for those who wish to uphold the level of mercy and justice that the American army so heavily depicted in conrtrast to the rest of the world in this book. Most importantly, this book provides truths many of us have long forgotten today. The young boy in this book, with no real chance for survival, no real 'reason' for hope, remains without a single ounce of pity for himself.

The young boy does not feel sorry for himself. He does not curse his enemies. He remains, instead, unwaveringly devote to what he knows as 'good', and he endures. He displays more strength and inspiration than many grown men today. He shuns the communist regime thrown upon him in life and in school. At an age younger than many of us today, he refused to do what he knew in his heart to be wrong, even at the threat of death. And in the end... well... I'll leave you with a quote, but finding out what happens is up to you. "The meek shall inherit the earth."

"The German Boy." A book by Wolfgang Samuel.

As a 12 year as boy, I also experienced the collapse of Germany in 1945. My family joined the endless caravans of refugees who fled before the advancing Red Army in their treck wagons. When we arrived in the British occupation zone, we encountered catastrophic living conditions. Due to massive bombings of all major German cities and the inflow of millions of refugees, housing, food, and the basic necessities for life were so scarce, that my elder brother and I were sent back to a farm in the Soviet occupation zone. - At least, we did not starve there.

Millions of refugees shared similar fates as the author of this book. - Since many German men had died in battle or had become POWs, most trecks were headed by women. - Even today, they remain the unsung heroes - unrecognized and forgotten.

The author guides us from his tranquil, orderly life as a child into a sudden uprooting - full of hardship and danger.

Some 20 thousand civilians drowned in the Baltic sea when four rescue ships were torpedoed during the winter of 1945. Hundreds of thousands burned alive during allied bombing raids. In total, some 14 Million Germans were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes within 2 years after WWII. -

Lacking a viable currency and forbidden to engage in manufacturing or trade by the Allies, Germany's economy had been pounded back into the stone age. - In 1948, the western Allies needed German support for the emerging cold war effort. Only then, repressive measures were relaxed, and the `German Economic Miracle' began. - Again, German women accomplished near-impossible tasks.

A final thought: We seem incapable of learning from the past. - May this book help educate mankind about the immorality and foolishness of war. (See also the book "I Can't Forget" by Gudrun Koppe Everett, ( ISBN 1-4196-5070-X )

-------------------------


Die Flucht 1945: Auch humorvolles gab's ... Der Geldschein.

Im Spaetherbst 1945, damals 12jaehrig, machte sich unsere Familie strafbar weil wir unser "Erntesoll" auf unserem kleinen Hoefchen in Kuehlungsborn (Mecklenburg) nicht erfuellt haetten. - Wir sollten nun im Internierungslager in Ruegen dafuer buessen.

Kurz vor unserer Festnahme konnten wir noch fluechten. - In Luebeck angekommen, wurden wir eine Woche lang im Lager Poeppendorf in Quarantaene gesteckt. Wir hausten in Wellblechbuden (Nissenhuetten).

Unser "Klo" war ein "Donnerbalken" fuer zwei Personen unter freiem Himmel. - Es ergab sich, dass ich "donnern" musste. Mit Beinen baumelnd erledigte ich mein Geschaeft als sich ein aelterer Herr sich neben mich gesellte. Scheinbar in Eile, hatte er kein Papier mitgebracht, und sass nun ratlos da. - Er sprach mich an: "Junge, hast du noch ein Stueck Papier?". - Ich hatte keins .. Daraufhin zueckte er sein Portmonnaie, nahm einen Geldschein heraus, und beendete somit die Sitzung.

In der Grube hinter mir lag er nun - der Geldschein. Es kam mir der Gedanke ihn zu "retten". Aber nein ....