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3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Boy Soldier: A German Teenager at the Nazi Twilight

Boy Soldier: A German Teenager at the Nazi Twilight

Paperback

Military BiographiesGerman HistoryWorld War II

ISBN10: 0786431113
ISBN13: 9780786431113
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Published: Feb 28 2007
Pages: 188
Weight: 0.58
Height: 0.42 Width: 6.35 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

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.

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Military Biographies