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A Private’s Life in the Wehrmacht during World War II
Werner Mork, pictured above at age 17, turned 18 (military age) just two months prior to the German Invasion of Poland. Although he did not see it as such at the time, he surrendered his youth to war and to the German army.
When the war broke out he rushed to enlist. He enlisted because he loved his country and felt himself to be a patriot. He enlisted because he admired and respected the country’s leader, Adolf Hitler, who had settled the social unrest in his small town that had manifested itself as almost daily riots in the streets.
He enlisted because he wanted to see Germany regain its rightful place as a respected power in Europe and undo the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles.
Most of all he enlisted because he wanted to help reunite the German populations who found themselves cut off from the Fatherland in Alsace-Lorraine, the Sudetenland, Danzig and East Prussia and put an end to the tales of their persecution that filled the newspapers daily.
His memoirs chronicle the life of a ordinary solder in the German army, but it also reflects the gradual disillusionment of the German people and their eventual awakening to an new understanding of humanity and their place in the world.
