Children's Lives Under the Nazis

Witnesses Of War

A major and original work of history - acclaimed in hardback - which investigates the lives of children under the Nazis.

Magnificent ...His concluding chapter contains some of the best historical writing about the aftermath of the war I have ever read...Stunning

Unbearably sad though it is, Witnesses of War is utterly compelling. This is clearly a work of expiation...as well as being one of profound historical substance, probably the most genuinely challenging book on the Nazis in a long while

Harrowing...The 21st century promises to be as full of wars as the 20th, which is why we need books like Stargardt's that remind us and our leaders what war really means

Superb...Stargardt makes extensive use of letters, diaries and drawings to tell gripping individual stories... A tremendous achievement, guaranteed to stimulate, move and enrich anyone that opens its pages

Nicholas Stargardt's harrowing account of the lives of children - both Jewish and non-Jewish - in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories is an essential document. The author builds a detailed picture of juvenile life under the Third Reich... Throughout this powerful book, Stargardt conveys the horrors of Nazism and the dangers of blind adherence to ideology... In this vitally important work, Stargardt turns an appalled eye on the destruction of innocence in wartime

Magnificently researched and fluidly written...Witnesses of War is a powerful, unsentimental book, in which Stargardt tries to give all his subjects a fair hearing...This is an ambitious and impressive effort to see Nazi society in the round, which, for all Stargardt's sympathy for suffering across the board, never suggests a moral equivalence, never loses sight of the crucial moral distinctions between those he describes

Nicholas Stargardt's compelling new book tells exactly what was happening to the children of Europe who had been living under the Nazi regime...Stargardt's is, indeed, a terrible story: it is an account of the endless tramp of the innocents across Europe, a saga of cruelty, starvation, separation, loss and abject misery with lives without number ending in death

Children are history's forgotten people; amidst the sound and fury of battle, as commanders decide the fate of empires, they are never seen. Yet as Nicholas Stargardt reveals in his heart-rending account of children's lives under the Nazis, to ignore them is to leave history half-written. This is an excellent book and it tells a terrible story... As Stargardt so eloquently reminds us, the tragedy is that children were part of the equation and suffered accordingly

'Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. In re-creating their wartime experiences, he has produced a challenging new historical interpretation of the Second World War

Nicholas Stargardt, the son of a German-Jewish father and Australian mother, was born in Melbourne and brought up in Australia, Japan and Britain. He teaches modern European history at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Witnesses of War is the first work to show how children experienced the Second World War under the Nazis. Children were often the victims in this most terrible of European conflicts, falling prey to bombing, mechanised warfare, starvation policies, mass flight and genocide. But children also became active participants, going out to smuggle food, ply the black market, and care for sick parents and siblings. As they absorbed the brutal new realities of German occupation, Polish boys played at being Gestapo interrogators, and Jewish children at being ghetto guards or the SS. Within days of Germany's own surrender, German children were playing at being Russian soldiers. As they imagined themselves in the roles of their all-powerful enemies, children expressed their hopes and fears, as well as their humiliation and envy. 
 
This is the first account of the Second World War which brings together the opposing perspectives and contrasting experiences of those drawn into the new colonial empire of the Third Reich. German and Jewish, Polish and Czech, Sinti and disabled children were all to be separated along racial lines, between those fit to rule and those destined to serve; ultimately between those who were to live and those who were to die. 
 
Because the Nazis measured their success in terms of Germany's racial future, children lay at the heart of their war. Drawing on a wide range of new sources, from welfare and medical files to private diaries, letters and pictures, Nicholas Stargardt evokes the individual voices of children under Nazi rule. By bringing their experiences of the war together for the first time, he offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of the Nazi social order as a whole.

Nicholas Stargardt

A terrific book. Nicholas Stargardt brilliantly explores diaries, letters and other previously untapped sources to provide more vivid and nuanced insight than ever before achieved into the motivation of ordinary Germans fighting the most horrific war of all time

A gripping new book…To write like this requires a rare sensitivity and psychological sophistication coupled with a degree of fearlessness…Stargardt impresses not only as a cultural historian. He also has an impressively strong grasp on the military narrative of the war. And this is indispensable…Stargardt has given us a truly profound piece of history

Beautifully written and convincingly argued, this book is a must

Saul Friedlander, author of Nazi Germany and the Jews

Sympathetic and nuanced portraits of German men and women… Intimate account of individual Germans’ experiences of war, Stargardt explores private emotions… Beautifully written… He writes with the correct tone and sensitivity.

Superbly researched and clearly written, The German War is an important and significant book

For the first time, the wartime chronology of German sentiment, of popular hopes and fears, realism and fantasy, becomes truly visible. A powerful and compelling account

Mark Roseman, Professor of History, Indiana University

Insightful, illuminating, complex, and convincing... Seven decades and a mountain of monographs later, I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much more to say about WWII. Stargardt has proven me wrong

Robert Moeller, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine

The German War is an outstanding book by a master historian... a masterpiece of historical writing, blending seamlessly a ‘bird’s eye’ view with intimate micro-history of this calamitous period in twentieth century Europe

Jan Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Stargardt negotiates the considerable risks of writing from inside German experiences of this brutally destructive war with subtlety, humanity, and wisdom. This is a rich and deeply impressive lesson

Jane Caplan, Emeritus Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford

Stargardt’s book is a prodigious accomplishment… The German War [is] essential reading for anyone interested in the Second World War in Europe

This masterly book may well change forever what we thought we knew about response of the German people to the war

[A] riveting account of how these ordinary Germans experienced and sustained the war

Places a flashlight inside the heads of “ordinary” Germans… Thought provoking

well written and human account of a period of madness and how individuals sought to make sense of it

Nicholas Stargardt spotlights the surprising twists and turns in the popular embrace of both the war and Nazi racial extremism. He explains—as few have—why the German people fought to the finish, whereas even the supposedly fanatical Japanese surrendered before an invasion of the homeland

Sheldon Garon, author of Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life

I enjoyed this book immensely…This book fills a vast gap in our knowledge of history and I am glad to have read it.

A Nation Under Arms, 1939–45

WINNER OF THE 2016 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 
 
The Second World War was a German war like no other. The Nazi regime, having started the conflict, turned it into the most horrific war in European history, resorting to genocidal methods well before building the first gas chambers. Over its course, the Third Reich expended and exhausted all its moral and physical reserves, leading to total defeat in 1945. Yet 70 years on – despite whole libraries of books about the war’s origins, course and atrocities – we still do not know what Germans thought they were fighting for and how they experienced and sustained the war until the bitter end. 
 
When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the active participation and commitment of the German people, it could not have continued for almost six years. What, then, was the war Germans thought they were fighting? How did the changing course of the conflict – the victories of the Blitzkrieg, the first defeats in the east, the bombing of Germany’s cities – change their views and expectations? And when did Germans first realise that they were fighting a genocidal war? 
 
Drawing on a wealth of first-hand testimony, The German War is the first foray for many decades into how the German people experienced the Second World War. Told from the perspective of those who lived through it – soldiers, schoolteachers and housewives; Nazis, Christians and Jews – its masterful historical narrative sheds fresh and disturbing light on the beliefs, hopes and fears of a people who embarked on, continued and fought to the end a brutal war of conquest and genocide.

Nicholas Stargardt

Praise for The German War

A terrific book. Nicholas Stargardt brilliantly explores diaries, letters and other previously untapped sources to provide more vivid and nuanced insight than ever before achieved into the motivation o ...

A gripping new book…To write like this requires a rare sensitivity and psychological sophistication coupled with a degree of fearlessness…Stargardt impresses not only as a cultural historian. He also has an i ...

Beautifully written and convincingly argued, this book is a must

A terrific book. Nicholas Stargardt brilliantly explores diaries, letters and other previously untapped sources to provide more vivid and nuanced insight than ever before achieved into the motivation o ...

A gripping new book…To write like this requires a rare sensitivity and psychological sophistication coupled with a degree of fearlessness…Stargardt impresses not only as a cultural historian. He also has an i ...

Beautifully written and convincingly argued, this book is a must

A terrific book. Nicholas Stargardt brilliantly explores diaries, letters and other previously untapped sources to provide more vivid and nuanced insight than ever before achieved into the motivation o ...

A gripping new book…To write like this requires a rare sensitivity and psychological sophistication coupled with a degree of fearlessness…Stargardt impresses not only as a cultural historian. He also has an i ...

Beautifully written and convincingly argued, this book is a must

Books by Nicholas Stargardt

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