Witnesses Of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis

Description

A major and original work of history - acclaimed in hardback - which investigates the lives of children under the Nazis. Witnesses of War is the first work to show how children experienced the Second World War under the Nazis. Children were often the victims in this most terrible of European conflicts, falling prey to bombing, mechanised warfare, starvation policies, mass flight and genocide. But children also became active participants, going out to smuggle food, ply the black market, and care for sick parents and siblings. As they absorbed the brutal new realities of German occupation, Polish boys played at being Gestapo interrogators, and Jewish children at being ghetto guards or the SS. Within days of Germany's own surrender, German children were playing at being Russian soldiers. As they imagined themselves in the roles of their all-powerful enemies, children expressed their hopes and fears, as well as their humiliation and envy. This is the first account of the Second World War which brings together the opposing perspectives and contrasting experiences of those drawn into the new colonial empire of the Third Reich. German and Jewish, Polish and Czech, Sinti and disabled children were all to be separated along racial lines, between those fit to rule and those destined to serve; ultimately between those who were to live and those who were to die. Because the Nazis measured their success in terms of Germany's racial future, children lay at the heart of their war. Drawing on a wide range of new sources, from welfare and medical files to private diaries, letters and pictures, Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. By bringing their experiences of the war together for the first time, he offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of the Nazi social order as a whole.

Nicholas Stargardt, the son of a German-Jewish father and Australian mother, was born in Melbourne and brought up in Australia, Japan and Britain. He teaches modern European history at Magdalen College, Oxford.

"Magnificent ...His concluding chapter contains some of the best historical writing about the aftermath of the war I have ever read...Stunning" -- David Cesarani Guardian "Unbearably sad though it is, Witnesses of War is utterly compelling. This is clearly a work of expiation...as well as being one of profound historical substance, probably the most genuinely challenging book on the Nazis in a long while" -- Allan Mallinson The Times "Harrowing...The 21st century promises to be as full of wars as the 20th, which is why we need books like Stargardt's that remind us and our leaders what war really means" -- John Carey Sunday Times "Superb...Stargardt makes extensive use of letters, diaries and drawings to tell gripping individual stories... A tremendous achievement, guaranteed to stimulate, move and enrich anyone that opens its pages" -- Matthew J. Reisz Independent on Sunday "Nicholas Stargardt's harrowing account of the lives of children - both Jewish and non-Jewish - in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories is an essential document. The author builds a detailed picture of juvenile life under the Third Reich... Throughout this powerful book, Stargardt conveys the horrors of Nazism and the dangers of blind adherence to ideology... In this vitally important work, Stargardt turns an appalled eye on the destruction of innocence in wartime" -- Ian Thomson Daily Telegraph