Twelve Years

About the Book

In his English grandmother's apartment in Berlin's "Old West" the writer heard Neville Chamberlain's voice coming through the radio, telling the world," Peace in Our Time." Walking with his cousin York along the fashionable "Tauentzienstrasse" the morning after "Crystal Night," York kept him from picking up some jewelry intending to put it back in a store's  broken display: "Don't you see the 'SA' men?  You don't want to mess with those guys." At the railroad station of the Olympic village of Garmisch-Partenkirchen he was part of a contingent welcoming Rudolf Hess, not long before Hitler's deputy flew to Scotland. During the writer's stay in a boarding school, the "Gauleiter" came to "visit." An upperclassman had pasted a Hitler stamp on the wall,  his idea for the recommended Hitler portrait. He and his aunt Lindy were in a review theater on Berlin's "Kurfuerstendamm," when a news bulletin came through that an attempt had been made on the "Fuehrer's" life. But to the author and his friends Lunceford and Basie records were more important, and so was their poker  club.                    

Most wars cannot be comprehended in isolation. The Second World War is a prime example.The author goes back to the First World War and its origins. His father, whose diplomatic career began in 1914 in Japan and America, provided essential information, particularly about Americas entry into the war.The first war cast a very dark shadow across the entire twentieth century and, it is beginning to look like it, the time beyond. Among its immediate consequences was the emergence of extremist parties, leading in Germany to the Hitler government and the critical "Empowerment Law." Even so, there were several opportunities of avoiding the worst, and when the second war did brake out, it was as if it had been preordained. 

About the Author

Born in St. Louis of German parents, the author lived from age four to ten in Mexico. In 1938 the family returned to Germany, in time to watch foreign-policy-affairs approach criticality. The author spent  the war years in Berlin, Bavaria, and, towards the end, Switzerland, attending various schools in the process, ordinary public schools and boarding schools. The latter were of special interest to party-functionaries,  a recipe for disaster, for boys will be boys. The time at a boarding school headed by a well-known educator and onetime public critic of Hitler's completed the author’s political reorientation. A sports accident turned out to be a godsend: the orthopedic surgeon recommended a prolonged stay in a dry, sunny climate, and the local draft-board had no objections to the boy’s finishing school in  Switzerland. The new boarding school turned out to be heavily infiltrated by Nazis. It was a precarious time, but it kept the sixteen-year-old out of the army. However, when the author turned seventeen and graduated, the war was not over yet. This led to an unusual exit from Switzerland.

The author studied physics at Heidelberg and Washington Universities, obtaining a Ph.D. at Washington in 1952. After five years in the aircraft industry in Texas, Georgia, and California, he accepted a professorship  at Georgia Tech. His research is widely published. This includes a book.