A Backward Look: Germans Remember

by Daniel Lang

Book by Lang, Daniel

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Daniel Lang (1913–1981) was an award-winning journalist and author. He was a staff writer for the New Yorker for forty years, covering World War II in North Africa, Italy, and France. After the war he reported extensively on nuclear weapons and the morality of military science, and his articles were collected into several books, beginning with Early Tales of the Atomic Age. Casualties of War, the account of the brutal rape and murder of a South Vietnamese girl by US soldiers and the obstacles Private First Class Sven Eriksson faced in bringing his platoon mates to justice, won a Hillman Prize and was adapted into a Brian De Palma film of the same name. In addition to his journalistic work, Lang wrote poetry, children’s literature, and the libretto for an opera, Minutes to Midnight.

Reviews

[Shelley Alongi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago. I was looking through a list of books and I found this title and said this looks familiar. I opened it up and said I read this so I decided to re-read it. When I first read the book I was just investigating the third Reich and more seriously although I have been reading about it since a child. I have been curious about things such as German reparations and when I read this book a second time I found chapter 7 deals with the program put into place to compensate survivors of sorts. This book is probably where I first received that information because I haven’t read anything about it sense and the program wasn’t covered in any of the history classes that I have taken since the publication of this book in the 1970s. This book covers some issues that you don’t read much about all the looking at it from a 21st-century perspective I wonder how much has changed. I think from other readings I have found that Germans are dealing with this differently good at them some may differ with you on that. I always wonder why the Russians don’t get the same attention. This book was written when I was 12 years old and so the war was a lot closer then obviously. I think this book which consists of interviews people who took part in the war who covers issues that will haunt us for years to come. At the same time this book is a good place to start because it does not deal with the third Reich in language that is so academic that One cannot grasp its concepts. The inception of this book is bringing from a high school class assignment is only one small step in the attempt to understand the third right in all of its vast consequences.

[Steve Coscia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought a used copy of this book at a Philadelphia bookstore. Very insightful investigative reporting about German psyche and guilt after WWII.