Your Loyal and Loving Son: The Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs, 1937-1941
This is a typically grim World War II story, assembled from the letters of a fine young man who was killed in action near Moscow before he ever saw his son. If there is any atypical grimness, it lies in Wehrmacht tanker Fuchs' having been the son of a devout Nazi and a subscriber to every bit of ideologicalscheissthat made him and his comrades a scourge to civilization. In between effusions of hatred, however, one finds in his letters complaints about lousy food and trying to live on a student's stipend in the face of a housing shortage. Fuchs loved his wife and the son he never saw (who is the editor-translator of the letters), wondered if he was ever going to get into the war and if his superiors were really on his side, and quarreled with his father, who seems to have been an old-style Teutonic paterfamilias. After reading the letters and Showalter's invaluable commentary, one is glad Fuchs' side lost but regrets that he did not survive.Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved