Recounts the experiences of a typical childhood during World War II, including work, play, and educational activities, and identifies the struggles felt with regard to the war.

History from life experience. The OTHER side of World War II through the eyes and ears of an Aryan child, who cheered Hitler before he ruined her life. A collection of short stories about a child from Kiel who suffered the ravages of war on her home, school, and, most of all, her family. Vintage photos by the Blum family.

“Stunning photographs” and firsthand accounts propel a book that “brings together the memories of more than 200 child survivors of the Blitz” (Daily Mail). It was not just the upheaval caused by evacuation and the blitzes that changed a generation’s childhood, it was how war pervaded every aspect of life. From dodging bombs by bicycle and patrolling the parish with the vicar’s WWI pistol, to post air raid naps in school and being carried out of the rubble as the family’s sole survivor, children experienced life in the war zone that was Britain. This reality, the reality of a life spent growing up during the Second World War, is best told through the eyes of the children who experienced it firsthand. Children in the Second World War unites the memories of over two hundred child veterans to tell the tragic and the remarkable stories of life, and of youth, during the war. Each veteran gives a unique insight into a childhood that was unlike any that came before or after. This book poignantly illustrates the presence of death and perseverance in the lives of children through this tumultuous period. Each account enlightens and touches the reader, shedding light on what it was really like on the home front during the Second World War.

Author Hartmut Wegner was born in 1933 near Berlin, Germany, the same year Adolf Hitler took control and built the country into a strong economic and military stronghold. In Growing Up German, Wegner shares his story from the viewpoint of a young boy growing up under the Nazi regime. This memoir follows the boy from the beginning of World War II in 1939, when the Nazis and Adolf Hitler started their march to conquer the world; through to the war's end in 1945 and the recovery afterward; to the development in his teens in Berlin; and then to his immigration with his family to United States in 1954 at age twenty. He narrates the numerous shocking experiences that had an emotional impact on his young life. In addition to sharing his recollections, Wegner offers his opinions on World War II from his perspective later in life. Offering a straightforward firsthand account of the events in Germany during World War II, Growing Up German gives keen insight into what life was like for one boy and his family during a tumultuous and tragic time in world history.

The Heider family huddles together in the basement, wondering if this is the last day they will be together, if this is the last day of their lives. Its Munich, Germany, in 1945, the day American tanks are rolling in. Annelieses father finds a white sheet, ready to hang it from the attic window, hoping he times it right. Too early, and German SS forces could open fire. Too late, and the Allied forces could shoot. Thank god, its not the Russians. And so begins the memoir of Anneliese Heider Tisdale, who grew up in Germany during World War II. Hers is a universal and timeless tale of war and death, of fear and deprivation, of the inventiveness of children who want to dance and wear new clothes but instead have childhoods filled with bandages and bombs, who return to school one fall to find the crucifix in their classroom replaced with a picture of the Fhrer.

In the Western world, the modern view of childhood as a space protected from broader adult society first became a dominant social vision during the nineteenth century. Many of the West's sharpest portrayals of children in literature and the arts emerged at that time in both Europe and the United States and continue to organize our perceptions and sensibilities to this day. But that childhood is now being recreated. Many social and political developments since the end of the World War II have fundamentally altered the lives children lead and are now beginning to transform conceptions of childhood. Reinventing Childhood After World War II brings together seven prominent historians of modern childhood to identify precisely what has changed in children's lives and why. Topics range from youth culture to children's rights; from changing definitions of age to nontraditional families; from parenting styles to how American experiences compare with those of the rest of the Western world. Taken together, the essays argue that children's experiences have changed in such dramatic and important ways since 1945 that parents, other adults, and girls and boys themselves have had to reinvent almost every aspect of childhood. Reinventing Childhood After World War II presents a striking interpretation of the nature and status of childhood that will be essential to students and scholars of childhood, as well as policy makers, educators, parents, and all those concerned with the lives of children in the world today.