Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War

Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War is a newly published book written by author and historian Giles Milton.
It recounts the wartime experiences of the author’s German father-in-law, the celebrated artist, Wolfram Aichele (usually known by his given name, Wolfram) .
The wider subject matter of the book is concerned with the plight of ordinary Germans who did not support Adolf Hitler.
Chapters 1-3: The Family Background
The book’s opening chapters recount Wolfram Aichele’s idyllic childhood in the tumultuous twilight years of the Weimar Republic.
Wolfram was born in Southern Germany in 1924 and lived in a small village near Pforzheim, a conservative town in South West Germany.
The family were eccentric and idiosyncratic. Wolfram’s father, Erwin Aichele, was an animal artist who kept a private menagerie in the garden of the family’s substantial villa. He was also a freemason who counted many wealthy Jews among his clients.
Wolfram’s mother, Marie Charlotte (nee Boedecker) was deeply implicated in the Rudolf Steiner movement.
This combination of factors made them suspect in the eyes of Nazi Party functionaries.
Chapters 4-7: The Nazi Regime
This section of the book recounts how the family was increasingly ensnared by the Nazi regime. They were subjected to regular visits from the Gestapo, who came in search of books banned by the regime.
Wolfram Aichele’s mother was particularly suspected on account of her affiliations with the banned anthroposophy movement.
Erwin Aichele managed to avoid joining the Nazi party, despite being a state-employed art teacher: at the war’s end, the occupying American forces would ask him to be a judge in the people’s courts set up to investigate all who had been implicated in the Nazi regime.
Chapters 8-12: Wolfram’s Story
The overwhelming part of Giles Milton’s book concerns Wolfram himself, who was conscripted into the Reich Labour Service in 1942 and sent to the Crimea. After falling critically ill, he recuperated in a military hospital in Marienbad, today Marianske Lazne. When he had convalesced, he was sent to Normandy in time for the D-Day landings.
He narrowly escaped death in June 1944 when, as a battlefield communications operator serving with the 77th Infantry Division, he became trapped in the American beachhead on Utah Beach.
He and his men were heavily bombed and strafed from the air. Wolfram eventually surrendered to the Americans; he was a prisoner of war, first in England and then in America.
Chapter 13-16: Prisoner and the Pforzheim Raid
While Wolfram was a prisoner of war, his home town of Pforzheim was completely destroyed during a devastating incendiary bombing raid - called Operation Yellowfin - that was undertaken by RAF Bomber Command.
Some 17,000 lost their lives, including family and friends of the Aichele family.
The Research
Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War is based upon 60 hours of recorded interviews with Wolfram Aichele, as well as letters, diaries and other manuscripts in the possession of the Aichele family. The author also interviewed many of Wolfram’s surviving contemporaries.

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