Your Loyal & Loving Son: Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs, 1937-41 Book

? Illuminates the everyday concerns of a German soldier at peace and war ? Offers a rare and invaluable primary source document for scholars and those interested in the Third Reich ? Provides a contemporary account of life under National Socialism during the years of victory These are the compelling letters of Karl Fuchs, an ordinary German soldier completely convinced of the righteousness of his cause and who wrote them free of the recriminations and hindsight arising from the bitterness of defeat. Combining enthusiastic expressions of loyalty to the Führer and the Fatherland with messages of love for his family and requests for necessities from home, they provide a personal look at a youth typical of his time, one whose fervent and naive nationalism was of the very sort that later fanned the flames of the Holocaust. Throughout Your Loyal and Loving Son, young Fuchs remains an idealist, confident in his concept of duty. Yet his letters clearly support the general assertion that many Germans who backed the Third Reich did so neither out of opportunistic self-interest nor nihilistic delight in destruction, but instead in the hope for a better future. Killed on the Eastern Front, Fuchs did not live to see his son, the infant to whom he wrote and who as an adult compiled these letters for publication. With an introduction and annotations by eminent historian Dennis Showalter, this collection will help make those early war years more comprehensible to contemporary readers.Read More