The Boy Who Went to War by Giles Milton Read Free Book Online Page A

warning, his contract with the magazine was abruptly terminated. Within days, the publication had disappeared from the news-stands.
    Erwin did not have to wait long to discover the reason why the magazine had been banned. The publisher was a prominent Jewish businessman and Goering had ordered its publication to be suspended.
    This only served to increase Erwin’s hatred of all Nazi politicians. He started referring to them as a disgusting bunch who meddled in other people’s lives.
    In the new Germany there was no possibility for redress and no avenue for complaint. The regime had already warned that anyone who challenged its decisions would be severely, ruthlessly punished.

Chapter Three
A Visit from the Führer
    â€˜So many people…his car could advance only at walking pace.’
    The young Wolfram was fidgeting in his seat in Pforzheim’s picture house. It was spring 1934, and an exciting new film was about to be screened.
    The audience in the auditorium was small, for the movie was not to everyone’s taste. Wolfram, however, was desperate to see it and had spent the previous two days begging his parents to accompany him.
    At long last the curtains went up and the title flickered on to the screen: Man of Aran by Robert Flaherty. It was a documentary chronicling the hardships of daily life in the remote Aran Islands.
    Wolfram was fascinated from the opening scene. The seascapes of western Ireland and the rich local folk traditions left a deep impression on him. The lives of these people seemed so strange and exotic: it was as if they hailed from another planet. Wolfram stored the images in his mind to use them in his pictures.
    A short time after watching the film, he found his own home playing host to a colourful stranger. One morning, his father and an artist friend named Herr Siebert were wandering through Pforzheim when they were struck by an odd-looking tramp slouched on a bench. He had a most quixotic face, craggy and angular, and Herr Siebert expressed a desire to paint him. When the tramp agreed to pose as a model, Erwin suggested that he come and stay in Eutingen for a few days.
    Wolfram was a little surprised when his father arrived home with the tramp and even more taken aback when he was given the guest room. He suspected that such a thing would never have happened, were it not for the fact that his mother was away at the time.
    Yet it was a gesture typical of Erwin. He cared little for what friends and neighbours might think, nor, for that matter, was he in the slightest bit bothered about other people’s opinions, political or otherwise. What mattered for him, above and beyond everything else, was whether individuals looked interesting; whether their unusual faces or unexpected expressions appealed to his artistic eye. The racial conformity of Nazism left him completely cold – indeed, it was a complete anathema to his artistic sensibilities.
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    Adolf Hitler had been chancellor for less than five months when a dramatic event occurred in central Pforzheim. Throughout the morning and afternoon of 17 June, adolescent members of the Hitler Youth had been combing libraries, bookshops and houses, including those of their own parents, in search of literature deemed unsuitable by the Nazi regime. Now, as darkness fell, the mountain of books was to be ceremoniously burned in the Marktplatz.
    The exercise had, according to the local newspaper, been a triumph. ‘The collection of “dirt and shame” was such a huge success,’ said the Pforzheimer Anzeiger , ‘that the Hitler Youth had to use lorries belonging to the municipal authorities [to transport all the books].’
    Not for the first time, the Nazis had turned to the German youth in order to implement their policies. ‘Our young people have been given a mission,’ continued the newspaper, ‘and they have showed themselves worthy of the task…now, the whole nation must be convinced of the