Being Present

Willy Schumann's chronicle of the years 1930 to 1950 gives an eye- and ear-witness account of what it was like to grow up in Germany during the Third Reich. His generation of Germans, born in the 1920s, was shaped in an atmosphere of all-encompassing mind control in a one-party state.

Schumann provides many anecdotes based on his experiences in elementary school and the Gymnasium, Hitler Youth groups, premilitary training camps and, finally, military service. They serve to illustrate the accompanying factual, historical material of how nazism both succeeded and failed in winning the minds of German youth, the attitudes of the young toward the National Socialist party, and why acceptance of military defeat was nearly impossible until Hitler's death.

The reeducation of the Hitler Youth during the postwar years of 1945 to 1950 came slowly. Schumann explains the difficulties they encountered in their adjustment to the Allied occupation and their struggles to accept the fact that they had served such a cruel regime. He also shows the ultimate success of the process to intergrate these by-then young adults into the free and open society of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The late Willy Schumann was professor of German language and literature at Smith College and served as director of Smith College Junior Year at the University of Hamburg. He was the author/editor of several textbooks and wrote numerous essays and book reviews.