Overview

From winner of Winner of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for Friedrich and for readers of Number the Stars and If I Should Die Before I Wake.  Hans and his friend Gunther, are just trying to get through life with Adolf Hitler being elected in Germany. Gunther's father was against Hitler, but eight-year-olds Hans and Gunther join the SS youth program, and later enter the military, where they are swept away by Hitler's regime.

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9780140322064

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Reviews

From the time the narrator first hears his father praising Hitler's accomplishments to the day he witnesses his boyhood friends killed in battle, the taut dramatic scenes add up to a plausible account of how it was to be an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth. However, between quick fade-ins and fade-outs, there's none of the reflection one would expect of an autobiographical memoir and the story remains as impersonal as its faceless protagonist. Indeed the author seems to identify more with the reluctant Gunther (who participates only to shield his Communist father), and the doubts expressed by the other characters sound more like hindsight than fresh disillusionment. The fervent true believer Heinz, the effeminate blond platoon leader, the pathetic schoolteacher (whose speech of protest is so indirect that few of his students even realize what he is saying) are all too close to stereotypes to yield any new insights, but the exploitation of the boys' military fantasies and idealism - as they collect scrap metal and harvest turnips, graduate from war games into the baiting of Catholic and Jewish youths, and see their dreams of glory shattered in a few days of actual soldiering - is succinctly and often movingly documented. Well constructed action, but too detached to really confront the reader with what he might have believed or done in the same situation. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Hans Peter Richter was a German author,  born in Cologne, Germany. He went to school in Germany, studied at the university of Hannover, and graduated in 1968. He also spent some of his life in the German army. Richter wrote many books for children and young adults. Notable among them is the novel Friedrich, about the persecution of Jews in Germany during The Holocaust.  Friedrich (published in 1970) was the American Library Association 1972 ALSC Batchelder Award.

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