Hitler's Boy Soldiers: How My Father's Generation Was Trained to Kill and Sent to Die for Germany

 

Today's nonfiction post is on Hitler's Boy Soldiers: How My Father's Generation Was Trained to Kill and Sent to Die for Germany by Helene Munson. It is 366 pages long and is was published by The Experiment. The cover is two pictures of boy soldiers and the author's father. The intended reader is someone who is interested in War World 2 history. There is some mild foul language, no sex, and some violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- The true, untold story of how Germany's children fought in WWII.
Helene Munson resurrects her father's WWII journals and embarks on a meticulous investigation, exposing how the Nazis trained 300,000 impressionable children as soldiers.
In 1937, Munson's father, Hans was enrolled in an elite German school whose students were destined to take leadership roles in the Reich. At fifteen, he was drafted as an antiaircraft gunner- along with the rest of the Hilter Youth- and assigned to an SS unit. As the was was being lost, Hans and his schoolmates were ordered to the front lines. Few returned.
A personal lens into a nation's shameful past, Hitler's Boy Soldiers documents the history of the largest army of child soldiers in recent memory. Munson explores the lifelong effects on brainwashed children coerced to join a party they didn't understand. Both a modern narrative and an important historical contribution, Hitler's Boy Soldiers grapples with inherited trauma, the nature of being victim or perpetrator, and the burden of guilt. 

Review- A moving story of a boy trying to survive then a daughter trying to understand her father and what made him. Munson did not start investigating into her father's life during the war until after his death. Soon this desire to know her father better became an all consuming quest. She not only read his journals, letters, and other first hand documents; she also sought out others who experienced the same things during the war. If you want to see the war from Germany's perspective but not from a member of the Nazi elite but an innocent child, then you need to read this book. 

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.