BLISSFUL AND BOLD IN THE BATTLEIn this life, I was born in Berlin, about three months before Adolf Hitler decided to attack Poland with his propaganda campaign, “The German army started shooting back at the German-Polish border.”
I remember my mother, my one-and-a-half-year older brother Manfred and I visiting my father in the summer of 1941 in the village of Altheide, splendidly surrounded by beautiful red poppy fields; he was stationed there as a German army commanding officer with his battalion. I also remember that during one visit, low-flying Russian airplanes attacked us on the open field; the soldiers hit the ground faster than us kids, and seemed more afraid than we were…