Book description
During the last months of Hitler's Berlin, an estimated 30,000 German
teenagers perished defending their beloved Fhrer in the Russian
onslaught. Armin Lehmann was one of the few boy soldiers who escaped the
bloodbath. Like every other member of the Hitler Youth, Armin would have
given his life gladly for his leader, but he was not to be sacrificed to
the enemy at the gate. Instead, he was chosen to serve in the German
High Command's bunker complex. It was a stroke of fate that brought him
into the company of the most notorious Nazis of Hitler's hated Reich,
including Martin Bormann, Goebbels and, of course, the Fhrer himself.
When Hitler greeted Armin, the 16-year-old boy knew he had been granted
a unique part in history. In Hitler's Bunker is Armin's eyewitness
account of the Nazi apocalypse. It is also the story of how his
unquestioning fanaticism won him that role in the final act of the Third
Reich. It takes us back to his boyhood and the brutal SS father who
instilled the Nazi's hateful creed in his son. It follows Armin's
odyssey through the ranks of the Hitler Youth and shares his teenage
anguish over his doomed love for a beautiful German nurse. It is the
story of Armin's gradual realisation of the full horror of what he had
been part of, and recounts his quest for the truth, which took him in
the footsteps of Mahatma Ghandi and to a meeting with Albert Schweitzer,
the missionary and theologian. Above all, In Hitler's Bunker is the
story of how one man, instead of running away from his past, confronted
it and found peace, at last.
Armin D Lehmann became an active and outspoken pacifist and
peacemaker in his adult life. He lived in Oregon until his death in
2012.
Tim Carroll is a national newspaper journalist and television
producer. His last book was a critically acclaimed biography of the
director Woody Allen. He is married with two children and lives in London.
