Boy Soldier: A German Teenager at the Nazi Twilight

"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...