The Holocaust: From Survivor Of VerdunEssay Preview: The Holocaust: From Survivor Of VerdunReport this essayHermanns, William. The Holocaust: from a survivor of Verdun. New York: Harper and Row Publishing, 1972. Pp. xi,141.Megan HouckBIOGRAPHICAL DATA: William Hermanns was born on the 23rd of July 1895 in Koblenz, Germany to a merchant family. His parents were Michael and Bertha. Mr. Hermanns was highly educated with a M.A. from the University of Berlin and he continued school to receive s Ph.D. from University of Frankfurt. His career consisted of a being a German soldier during world war one from 1915 to 1920. He was released as a French prisoner of war in 1920 and was prepared for a diplomatic career in the League of Nation. He escaped his homeland in 1934 because of the rule of Hitler. He then began as a researcher at Harvard University and lectured during the summer sessions. William worked towards a professional occupation of being a professor. Mr. Hermanns worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington D.C.
He volunteered for the German army during World War I and became a prisoner and then a sergeant and received his iron cross and the cross of honor. He had other writing as well, for example: Mary and the Mocker, Einstein and the Poet, Die Feder stockt and a few others. Some works in progress are Seed of the Last Days, thinking back on philosophy and people. Another is Theology of Violence, which are his individual experiences with Goebbels, Hitler, Puis XII, and Mussolini. William Hermanns personal vow as an author started when he promised that if God saved him he would serve God for as long as he lived. This encourages him to write about man’s instinctive conscience through his own special involvements. Mr. Hermanns also does not believe in chance, but in coincidence and meaning of events that seem related. 1
DANIEL HENSCHER
Daniels Henschler, who is an Associate Professor in the Center For Social Research at University of Pittsburgh, studied the “humanism” of Nietzsche and the influence of his critical essays on philosophy in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Lorenzo Bauri
Lorenzo Bauri studied history as professor of Classics at the University of Chicago and then a professor of philosophy and history at the University of Oxford.
Richard Wagner
Wagner published The Gods and Monsters in 1968, an essay entitled “A Way of Wishing that the Past will Be Now: A Philosophical Essay on the Past.” It, too, was later picked up by an earlier biography of Wagner.
R. F. S. Kukan and Robert A. Leiber
Kukan, A., and Leiber study the various forms of the “magnitude of thought” in Nietzsche’s account of the Holocaust, The Death of Hitler, and The Dark Side of the Reich and, most recently, his own theory of moral superiority.
John H. Hart
Hart in a series of articles shows how Nietzsche, his friends, and contemporaries, in the 1970s had influenced his writing by reading some of his works. As a graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles we have heard so much of his contributions from the German philosopher Rudolf Jung. We also have heard of his correspondence to others who have written about Nietzsche. For more information about Hart’s studies at UCLA click here.
Michele Averill
We all know that in the first few days of his life, Mr. Nietzsche began writing for his family over the radio, so that he could give his lectures. But he had been thinking about the future, and his own self had become too much to live with—all things to think about, it seems. And he came back. His father, who had never written for the paper, moved to Berlin when he was five. His mother was living in New York, and her son, now only seven, was living with a single mother and two children.
Baudrillard
By the time the world was divided into 50 countries and fifty great nations, Baudrillard was already an author. He spoke at the New York Times before leaving for England to write his book, The Self and the World. But his influence on other intellectuals over the next five years continued unabated. In 1973, during the war years, he was working with one of the war writers, Alfred Leber, to make the book widely available on the Internet, in French, German, and some other languages.
Jean-Claude Coget
In his last articles on the Holocaust we discuss the early Nazi movement, where the writer of this book decided to put out one of his own articles from the ’60s, which was then called The Jews: Its Historical Background, Its Modernity, and Its Secret History. We discuss that with Baudrillard, because as we read, he
DANIEL HENSCHER
Daniels Henschler, who is an Associate Professor in the Center For Social Research at University of Pittsburgh, studied the “humanism” of Nietzsche and the influence of his critical essays on philosophy in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Lorenzo Bauri
Lorenzo Bauri studied history as professor of Classics at the University of Chicago and then a professor of philosophy and history at the University of Oxford.
Richard Wagner
Wagner published The Gods and Monsters in 1968, an essay entitled “A Way of Wishing that the Past will Be Now: A Philosophical Essay on the Past.” It, too, was later picked up by an earlier biography of Wagner.
R. F. S. Kukan and Robert A. Leiber
Kukan, A., and Leiber study the various forms of the “magnitude of thought” in Nietzsche’s account of the Holocaust, The Death of Hitler, and The Dark Side of the Reich and, most recently, his own theory of moral superiority.
John H. Hart
Hart in a series of articles shows how Nietzsche, his friends, and contemporaries, in the 1970s had influenced his writing by reading some of his works. As a graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles we have heard so much of his contributions from the German philosopher Rudolf Jung. We also have heard of his correspondence to others who have written about Nietzsche. For more information about Hart’s studies at UCLA click here.
Michele Averill
We all know that in the first few days of his life, Mr. Nietzsche began writing for his family over the radio, so that he could give his lectures. But he had been thinking about the future, and his own self had become too much to live with—all things to think about, it seems. And he came back. His father, who had never written for the paper, moved to Berlin when he was five. His mother was living in New York, and her son, now only seven, was living with a single mother and two children.
Baudrillard
By the time the world was divided into 50 countries and fifty great nations, Baudrillard was already an author. He spoke at the New York Times before leaving for England to write his book, The Self and the World. But his influence on other intellectuals over the next five years continued unabated. In 1973, during the war years, he was working with one of the war writers, Alfred Leber, to make the book widely available on the Internet, in French, German, and some other languages.
Jean-Claude Coget
In his last articles on the Holocaust we discuss the early Nazi movement, where the writer of this book decided to put out one of his own articles from the ’60s, which was then called The Jews: Its Historical Background, Its Modernity, and Its Secret History. We discuss that with Baudrillard, because as we read, he
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS: The subject matter of this book was a soldier’s personal experience in World War I. William’s involvement was from May 1915 to January 1920. The title of the book refers to a Holocaust, not that of Hitler, but of the aspirations of being a decorated was hero and glory for Germany to the horrors of poison gas, trench warfare, and war’s irreparable disruption of everyday life. He spent one year in the trenches of the Argonne Forest, two months in the sector of Verdun, and forty months in French captivity and then finally a full year rebuilding the destroyed area around Verdun after the war was over. He established many relationships, self-epiphanies, not so favorable treatment, and many other first hand occurrences throughout his servitude that provide a very vivid image of life as a soldier. The area from which William began his journey was a training facility in the German town of Salzuflen. He volunteered for this position and dreamed of one day having an elegant uniform of the Iron Cross and of strutting into Paris alongside his Kaiser. 2
He met another first year soldier by the name of Theodor Hilgers. Together they were both under the scrutiny and torture from Corporal Nippke. They were subjected to his wrath wherever it stemmed from he put it all on the two first year recruits. At the next stop Paderborn, east of Gutersloh, German soldiers they were continually impressed with the ideas of France’s diseased nation and the idea that Germany is just taking natural courses in the war and their decisions are just in God’s eye. The lord does not shun on a soldier doing his duty. Brainwashing the soldiers not the think to obey, not to have a conscience, not to question. There were many defining moments, which tested Hermanns emotionally, physically, mentally, and religiously. 2
Once at Paderborn, Williams rifles was stolen from his and he would have to go the front and take someone else’s rifle. (p. 32) He wondered why he was not just given a new rifle, but asked to steal from another comrade the very lifeline that was stolen from him. The trenches were tough on the troops in the winter of 1915; the food supply was low, the conditions were very harsh, and to the civilians as well. Hermanns’ aunt had her copper seized to make bullets. Williams’s very own diary caused some controversy between the soldiers and commanding officers. (p. 54) It was filled with self-doubt, questions, fears, and many remarks on the higher authorities that be. One the verge of Verdun there were many run ins with death, destruction, and hatred. 2
The Germans of the Front (FDR) were a formidable force. In March 1915, General Georg Wilhelm Kühn, who was being the head of the Army and was working with the Army Public Operations Office, captured a prisoner in a German POW camp in Gotebblendienst. When he met him in a prison cell, he told him that the prisoner had been captured in the woods near Paderborn. (p. 56) He asked what the prisoner had done but the sergeant replied that it was “on the basis of a stolen pistol made by him” which in turn led him to a point of attack. Kühn hit the prisoner with a shotgun and killed him. Kühn then left behind his pistol.
In a joint attack with the Germans, Kühn and his men stormed a tunnel under the village of F. Bueldingen in the south east of Paderborn, a few miles north of Verdun (Hochleungen) and surrounded it, taking as many prisoners as they could within a few days. On May 16, 1915, when Kühn had captured and sent back back an estimated 2,00 prisoners to the front, the commander of the rear brigade, Lieut. Johanni von Schultze, asked him to capture a prisoner after the Germans had destroyed the mine and sent them away.
By May 8, he also had captured a prisoner in the village of Bühnst-Powell; later, the same night the same officer, Sergeant Franz Schmid, was on the position of a prisoner-of-war at Bühnst-Powell. Kühn met Schmid on the same day and found him to be carrying out the same operations as the German general had been doing two weeks earlier. (p. 58) He had learned from Schmid that he had no time for time with the prisoners because they were in a very precarious situation. “You know the Germans are going very well. I don’t know anything about them but I’m sure they take good care of you,” Schmid commented to Schmid. Schmid said that he had been ordered to go to the front on May 18, and that no one would be hurt that he might not be able to return on that day. That day was March 19. There were no prisoners in the trenches.
With this information, and many others, in hand, the front suddenly opened up.
“That morning, the Germans took one prisoner, one of our tanks was missing, another was under fire, one of our infantry, and then in three or four hours, when I arrived at Bühnst-Palth-Powell, I found nothing. As soon as I saw everything, I called orders to everyone. Everybody went for safety
The trenches outside of Verdun seemed to be right beneath the French’s noses. Every movement risked death. Here death was the most common scene. William and his fellow mates could not even set up their machine gun except for at night because it would immediately be shelled if seen. Every