Review Essay 
After Words: Reflections on World War II Childhoods

Helen Brown
Malaspina University College

Robert Calder. A Richer Dust: Family, Memory and the Second World War. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004.

Jost Hermand. A Hitler Youth in Poland: The Nazis Program for Evacuating Children during World War II. First published in German, 1993. Translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997.

Tom Mathews. Our Fathers’ War: Growing Up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation. New York: Broadway Books, 2005.

Frank Oberle. Finding Home: A War Child’s Journey to Peace. Surrey, British Columbia: Heritage House, 2004.

Tom Mathews and Robert Calder have something in common.[1] Their childhoods and families were fundamentally changed by World War II, but neither realized the dimensions of its impact until, as middle-aged adults, they began to explore the past. Frank Oberle and Jost Hermand also have something in common.[2] Unlike Mathews and Calder, they did not have to wait decades to understand that the war changed their lives in traumatic ways and forever altered their families. Collectively, their compelling autobiographical narratives of childhood, youth, and war illuminate a series of issues of concern to historians of childhood.

Frank Oberle and Jost Hermand were born in Germany, but spent much of World War II in Poland. Oberle, born in 1932, moved with his family to Poznań in 1940 when his father’s factory was relocated away from the Rhine. After Poznań was bombed in 1942, Oberle was evacuated to a Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) school where he remained until January 1945 when, with his classmates and teacher, he became part of the ‘great trek’ by wagon, train, and foot back to Germany. Hermand, born in 1930, grew up in Berlin and was evacuated with his class in October 1940 to a KLV camp in what was then the Warthegau.[3] In all, he attended five KLV camps until, in January 1945, with the Russians advancing, he too found himself part of the general exodus from Poland to the west. Aspects of these two stories are strikingly similar and it is perhaps because of this that both authors believe they were part of a unique generation. Yet their accounts are very different in purpose and conclusions.

Oberle wrote his book for his children and grandchildren. In his introduction he states:

I have no illusion that the passage of time can ever erase the heavy burden of guilt the world has placed on the shoulders of those German people who perpetrated or sought to benefit from the horrors Hitler’s racist policies inflicted on the world. Perhaps by writing about my experiences during the 20th century’s darkest days I can afford those who are born into my family the comfort of knowing that their ancestors were not among them. Instead, like the vast majority of the German people and other Europeans, they themselves were innocent victims. (15)

Oberle seeks to situate the German experience of the war in what he sees as the broader context of the era.[4] He decries the strafing of civilians by Allied fighter planes, something he personally witnessed and experienced, and devotes a chapter to the horror of being part of the stream of refugees arriving in Dresden in mid-February 1945. (78, 82-3, 75-80) After the war, Oberle writes, ‘I invested my trust and loyalty in people my own age…. Our generation turned to each other because we had been betrayed, not just by the individuals in whose care we had grown up, but by society as a whole.’ (149)

Hermand considers those like himself, born between 1927 and 1934 and involved in the KLV evacuations, to have been victims. (x) For him, though, this resulted directly from the unique nature of Nazi doctrine and practices. He has written about his childhood specifically to create greater awareness of the KLV program noting that few participants will discuss it and few academics have written about it. ‘As a result … we are faced with the singular fact that one of the largest population movements of the twentieth century….’ is virtually unknown. (x) Around 3,000,000 children were evacuated with ten-to-fourteen-year-olds being dispersed among 5,000 camps. (ix-x, xxv, xxiv) Hermand’s goal is to reveal the fanaticism, brutality, and sadism he considers inherent in the KLV
program.[5]

There are a variety of reasons for the divergence in the ways Oberle and Hermand assign responsibility for their childhood experiences. There were significant differences in their family situations and relationships, in the length of time they were separated from their parents, in their characters and physical abilities, and in their journeys back to Germany. Also, their books were published eleven years apart during which time debate about Allied bombing campaigns intensified. The most important factor, though, appears to be their KLV experiences. Both authors describe camp or school conditions as Spartan and isolated; they report similar daily activities and a complete absence of news about the war; and they agree that the education program and emphasis on physical activity derived from Hitler Youth ideology. In spite of these commonalities, they had very different experiences of the KLV.

Oberle describes the KLV as, ‘… an innocent enough program to remove children from harm’s way to a safe and wholesome environment in the countryside.’ (46) At his school, one person functioned as both administrator and teacher. Oberle describes him as, ‘… a gifted teacher and a Prussian army officer in the finest tradition.’ (81-2) The boys were not subject to corporal punishment and, Oberle adds, ‘as we were cut off from any ties to family, the school quickly became a substitute to which we transferred our reliance and trust.’ (50, 49)

Hermand views the KLV program as anything but innocent. Although teachers from his high school in Berlin traveled with the class to Poland, once there, camp squad leaders from the Hitler Youth dominated daily life. Academic education quickly became irrelevant in the face of increasing emphasis on ‘brutal field exercises’ that gave stronger boys ‘… carte blanche to mercilessly beat up the smaller and weaker ones among us, and to derive sadistic pleasure from such acts.’ (17) Hermand describes ‘… various punishments invented by the camp squad leader’ that might better be described as torture. (50) Worse than the days were the nights when sexual chaos and physical brutality ran rampant among the boys. (54-6) The goal of the program was to produce the ‘… brutal, domineering, fearless, and cruel youth’ Hitler sought. (xvi) The limited success of the KLV socialization effort, at least in Hermand’s case, is evident in his response to a military questionnaire asking how he wished to serve the fatherland: he responded ‘as medical orderly with an air force ground crew.’ (45) In a broader sense, as the Nazi regime imploded, both Hermand and Oberle explicitly rejected the socialization that had governed their young lives. (Hermand, 88, 96; Oberle, 97-8)

Tom Mathews grew up in postwar America. In August 1945, when he was two, his father returned to Salt Lake City after fighting with the American forces in Italy. Mathew’s book opens with a description of their disastrous father-son reunion, followed over the years with one failure to communicate after another. Then, in 1998, he saw Saving Private Ryan and the film set off a train of increasingly urgent questions in his mind:

By the civilian hourglass, the sand had run out on the war a long time ago. But were we missing something crucial …. If I was right and my father’s war had never come to an end, was it possible that he shared this fate with others among the 16 million Americans who served in World War II? Could it be that among the veterans, men in their seventies, eighties, and nineties—now dying at the rate of more than a thousand a day—the war was still ticking as relentlessly as it had when they were young men…. And if the war was still seething somewhere inside them, how much collateral damage could be detected among their sons? (28-9)

Mathews set out to find answers. ‘No one knew more about soldiers than soldiers; the same could be said of fathers and sons. All you had to do to see how World War II was still coursing through their lives was ask them.’ (34) And that is what Mathews did: including his father and himself, his book details the war experiences of ten fathers and the postwar relationships between them and their sons. His purpose was not ‘… to question the nobility or sacrifice of the Greatest Generation, but to look for something hidden in the afterglow.’ (34)

In A Richer Dust, Robert Calder, who was born in 1941, describes the childhood he and his brother, Ken, shared growing up in Saskatchewan after the Second World War. Although their parents were divorced the impact was mitigated by the boys’ close relationship with their devoted paternal grandparents. They saw nothing of their father, Earle Calder, and knew his brother, their uncle Ken, had died immediately after the war—thus effectively removing the men of that generation from their lives. In spite of a family situation that was somewhat unusual for the time both boys had relatively normal, happy childhoods. They did well in school, completed graduate degrees, and pursued successful careers.

Then, in 1996, Ken Calder received a letter from a stranger asking if he was related to a Capt. Ken Calder. The author, who had fought with Ken in Italy and northern Europe, had a letter he had kept for fifty years and wanted to give to the family. Robert Calder describes his reaction when his brother called to tell him about the letter: ‘I was stunned. It was over fifty years since Ken had killed himself, and we had long ago concluded that we had learned all we would ever know about him and the circumstances of his death—and it was precious little.’(28) What followed was a long search to uncover what had happened to their uncle and father. In concluding his book, Calder writes, ‘if, on the day before John Gardiner’s letter arrived in Ottawa, someone had asked me how my uncle’s death had affected three generations of my family, I would have had a simple reply.’ (264) He continues, ‘it is now seven years since John Gardiner’s unexpected appearance shone a new light into hidden corners of Calder family history, and I have come to realize my answer would have been too simple.’ (265) The war, it turned out, had been at the root of a complex and dramatic series of events that engulfed their whole family.

In Our Fathers’ War, Tom Mathews makes clear at the outset that he is aware of the tricks memory plays.[6] He describes how his father, arriving home, came out to the backyard, found ‘Tommy 2’, sitting on the garage, and ordered him to jump. He refused, his father slammed back into the house, exploded at his wife ‘YOU’VE SPOILED MY SON,’ and the die for their father-son relationship was cast. (10) When Mathews, after watching Private Ryan, began to question the past he flew back to Salt Lake City to revisit the home his family had left fifty years before. ‘It was dusk when I arrived. … I parked and walked around to the backyard. Even in the fading light, the silhouette of the roof to which I had clung as a small boy was unmistakable. But I was not looking a garage. In front of me, roughly at the level of my knees, stood a squat little doghouse. A doghouse?’ The discrepancy between the memory and the reality dumbfounded me.’ (29-30) Nevertheless, memories form the basis of his book albeit in the context of surviving family documents, pictures, artifacts, and a journey with his father to retrace his route in the final months of the Italian campaign. Mathews explicitly rejected a scientific or systematic approach based on the methods of either sociology or psychology. (34) The result is a book that is thoughtful rather than academic. It argues forcefully that when fathers experience combat, their relationship with their sons will be negatively affected.

Robert Calder, in his efforts to recover the story of his family, made full use of his skills as an academic researcher. His text refers to the oral interviews, searches through multiple sets of institutional records, reading of contemporary newspapers, and visit to Italy that combined to provide the basis for A Richer Dust. He constantly tests memories—his, his brother’s, and others—against the many documentary sources he has accessed. Calder’s book, which is both thoughtful and academic, reaches a conclusion that is strikingly similar to Mathews’: the war set in motion a series of events that changed the lives of his father and uncle and ultimately destroyed the relationship Robert and Ken might have had with both men.

Frank Oberle notes in his introduction that ‘time may have eroded my memory of some of the details I have described, which may therefore be at variance with the recollection others may have of the same events.’ (14) He also observes, ‘I knew from the beginning that a journey back to the early days of my youth and childhood would be painful…. I would be reminded of the pain and of the suffering that for all the years of my adult life I have been trying to shut out of my mind—so many bad memories that I felt best to be denied or forgotten.’ (14) These memories serve as the basis for his book.

The bulk of Hermand’s account is also based on his memory contextualized by a wide reading of secondary sources as attested by extensive footnotes. He asks complex questions about the nature of memory. ‘How can I remember … what I “really” felt as a thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old in response to [things I experienced and saw]? … And even if I were to succeed in retrieving such feelings from the deep well of memory, how can impressions of this sort be rendered in words without taking them out of the realm of youthful experience and transposing them to a level of awareness beyond that of the child I was then?’ (xxx) After finishing the first draft of the book, Hermand revisited Germany and Poland, attempted to make contact with his former classmates, and sought relevant archival information: little came of this. Later, suddenly remembering the name of a boy from his school, he used the Berlin phone book to contact him, and through him five other boys and one of the camp leaders. Having collected their recollections of the KLV years, he faced the problem of inserting this information into his existing draft: the solution was a separate epilogue. The epilogue format facilitates a fascinating interweaving of variegated memories and generates illuminating insights into patterns of remembrance.

It is significant that the four books included in this review are autobiographical. Jeremy D. Popkin has argued that, ‘… history can and should contest the literary theorists’ bid to annex autobiography to the realm of fiction.’[7] While this review provides only a brief introduction to the accounts by Calder, Hermand, Mathews, and Oberle, it indicates that for historians of childhood, autobiographies provide ample material for discussion of a multiplicity of issues. These include, among others, assessing the reliability of autobiography as historical evidence; the need to evaluate filters created by translation; identifying diverse sources for recovering the experience of childhood and the strengths and limitations of using adult memories for this purpose; the relationship between complex, unique individual experiences and general national and transnational patterns; the possibilities for situating accounts of childhood in relation to contested historiographical perspectives; the tensions between adult efforts to socialize children and children’s roles as active agents; the complex interactions of family and state; the viability and usefulness of the concept of ‘a generation’; the ways age, gender, and national identity intersect with war; and the degree to which established ideological norms of ‘modern’ childhood collapsed in World War II—and by extension in other wars.

The authors whose work is discussed here collectively demonstrate that children who are touched by war are affected by it all their lives, whether they were in the war zone or far away from it. These four books can be read as an invitation to academic historians to continue to use their broad knowledge of sources, methodologies, historiographical paradigms, and historical context to develop a greater awareness of what Tom Mathews refers to as the things hidden in the afterglow.

Notes
1.  Tom Mathews won awards as a journalist and held various editorial positions at Newsweek. Robert Calder, an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan, has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction.
2.  Frank Oberle left Germany at nineteen: he built a successful business and political career in Canada, becoming a Cabinet Minister in the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. Jost Hermand became Research Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin.
3.  Jost Hermand’s Hitler Youth in Poland, is translated from German. I am indebted to Katharina Rout for sharing with me her insights into some issues involved in translating an account of a childhood. Galsan Tschinag, The Blue Sky, first published in German, 1997, translated by Katharina Rout (Lantzville, Canada: Oolichan Books, 2006).
4.  For example, Oberle suggests parallels between German treatment of Polish people and American treatment of African-Americans, and between Hitler Youth and the Boy Scouts. (40, 39)
5.  It is not clear from Hermand’s text whether any of the KLV camps were for girls. Oberle suggests they were for boys. Finding Home, 46.
6.  For a discussion of issues surrounding the recovery of the experience of childhood from adult memories see, Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada from the Great War to the Age of Television (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) pgs. vii-23. For a discussion of memory specifically related to childhood and war see, Deborah Gorham, ‘“They Use Real Bullets”: an American Family’s Experience of the Second World War. A Fragment of a Memoir,’ Women’s History Review 6, 1 (1997): 5-28.
7.  Jeremy D. Popkin, ‘Historians on the Autobiographical Frontier,’ The American Historical Review June 1999, par. 48 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/104.3/ah000725.html >