The Mark of the Swastika
New York, N.Y. Bantam Books, 1965. Presumed First Bantam Edition, First printing. Mass market paperback. xi, [1], [4] pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. Includes Foreword and Final Conclusion. Chapters include Fritz Muehlebach; Fritz Muehlebach; Erich Dressler; Alfred Voss; Werner Harz; Tassilo von Bogenhardt; Hildegard Trutz (nee Koch); Claus Furmann; and Baroness Mausi von Westerode. Also includes Final Conclusion. Gestapo, Storm Troopers, Hitler's Maidens--The True Life Story of Nine Germans, Then...and Now! The author of this book lived in Germany at the time the Nazis came to power. The nine people in this book are people he know. The stories they tell in their own words, from Hitler's rise to the present time, are as incredible as the the concentration camps of twenty years ago. Louis Hagen was a teenage German Jewish refugee, a British army glider pilot at Arnhem, a journalist, writer and children's film producer. He had a spectacular life. His childhood was shattered in 1934 when, aged 15, he was thrown into Schloss Lichtenburg concentration camp. In the camp, Büdi was beaten, starved and forced into hard labor. The guards would strip him naked and force him to crawl, saying, "Cry for your Jewish mamma." He witnessed the murder of fellow prisoners. But the father of one of Büdi's school-friends, a high-ranking Nazi judge, rescued him after four months. He left immediately for England, joining his youngest sister. The other three siblings went to the United States. Their parents escaped in 1941, via the trans-Siberian railway to Japan and thence to America. When war broke out, Büdi joined the Pioneer Regiment, and, renamed "Lewis Haig", became a glider pilot. In September 1944, as part of the doomed allied operation to leapfrog the German frontline, his regiment landed its gliders at Arnhem, in Holland. He got back to Britain and was awarded the military medal by George VI. With the help of his friend, Dido Milroy, he wrote Arnhem Lift (1945), which became a bestseller and was translated into nine languages. Arnhem Lift formed the basis for Brian Desmond Hurst's film Theirs Is The Glory (1946), which re-enacted the battle with some of the participants. In early 1945 the army transferred Büdi to a glider squadron in India. He chanced upon a job as a journalist for the Allied South-East Asia Command's newspaper. Armed with a camera he had no idea how to use, he followed his curiosity, filing reports ranging from the life and times of a Calcutta brothel to colonial racism. His book Indian Route March (1946), followed. He reported from Burma, and had adventures in Bangkok. In Vietnam, he was apparently the first western journalist to interview its communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Back in Europe after the war, Büdi returned to a Berlin in rubble, its citizens scrabbling amidst the ruins. He wrote Follow My Leader [published in paperback as The Mark of the Swastika], which comprised intriguing biographies of nine Germans, most of whom collaborated with the Nazi regime. This was followed by The Secret War For Europe (1969), an account of Germany's role in international espionage. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Nazis, Concentration Camps, Fritz Muehlebach, Franz Wertheim, Erich Dressler, Alfred Voss, Werner Harz, Tassilo von Bogenhardt, Hildegard Trutz, Claus Fuhrmann, Baroness Mausi von Westerode
[Book #81991]
Price: $15.00