Hitler's Last Courier

Rating:
Summary: The Third Reich through the eyes of a German boy growing up
Review: A unique firsthand account of Nazi, Germany. Lehmann's story is gripping, accessible, and highly interesting.

From the strained relationship with his father, to boyhood friends, to school exploits, to family vacations and holidays, to his movie-going passion, to the Hitler Youth, young love, combat wounds, daring escapes, and culminating in his courier duties for the Fuehrer--Lehmann brings us into his world, sharing fresh perspectives and insights.

This is an excellent case study in how dictatorships manipulate people, and most importantly, how individuals break free of the shackles of indoctrination, and move forward in positive ways.

I've read many books in my life, but this one stands out. It's a story I will never forget.

Rating:
Summary: Inside Nazi Germany, a different world was in ferment ...
Review: Author Armin Lehmann possesses a sole right to this book's title, both now and forever. He most probably was the last surviving courier lad available in the Berlin bunker to serve Adlof Hitler, "the Führer". Moreover, Hitler (together with his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, now his last-moment wife) was about to kill himself even as the youth, ignorant of that fact, departed on his final, almost certainly suicidal mission.
For Russian tanks rumbled up the street behind him as he ran for dear life, their guns firing after him ...
Such is the essentially final, certainly climactic scene, set in mid-1945, of "Hitler's Last Courier"; whereas Lehmann's memoirs begin with also often horrifying family scenes, dominated by his overbearing Nazi father, dating from the early 1930s.
The whole 15-year span deserves our study and understanding, for only by realizing the bitterness of such a brutal upbringing can we appreciate the realities of its consequences such as the boy's simultaneous hatred of and avid desire to please his father, and his suceptibility to brainwashing and the acceptance of rank misinformation.
Even as young Armin's perspective outgrew his family's heavy influence, there was precious little relief; for now the state's constant oppression, hypocrisies, and lies could simply take over mastery as the dominant theme in his life, leading even to war.
Our word "incredible" is badly overworked, and for someone like myself, born in 1932 and still able to recall both prewar times and the vast changes that swept over us even in Canada from Sept. 1939 onward - for instance, the loss of my dear cousin Leslie over the English Channel in 1940, and those stabs of fear as German U-boats torpedoed ships and killed men right here in the St. Lawrence River - I unfortunately know all too well how tragically credible this book really is.
Buy the work, then, by all means! - together with such overview works as Sir Winston Churchill's compendious non-fiction series (for its broad perspectives as much as anything) and Erich Maria Remaque's war fiction (for its complementary human insights), if you are able.
I do however hope to see a Second Edition someday, providing photos, maps, and a table of major events during the period covered.
The present edition is a marvel; the next will surely excel, although a roomfull of books would be needed to tell the entire tale of such a massive, far-reaching conflict as World War II.

Rating:
Summary: Fact or fiction?
Review: Having read a great many Eastern Front and last days of Berlin accounts, I can't just can't be certain of Lehmann's account.

It seems unbelievable to me that he was a part of Hitler's last public appearance outside of the Bunker, an appearance of which we know photographs do exist - see Hitler Youth, The Hitlerjugend in War and Peace 1933-1945, by Brenda Ralph Lewis, Spellmount, 2000 p185 - and yet there is not one photograph of the event (or indeed any photographs of Lehmann except for 1946 and 2000 pen portraits) contained in the book. For such a keen young photographer, it seems almost as unbelievable that not one of his photographs (or his family's) has survived and/or warranted inclusion in the book.

Finally, having received a shrapnel wound as serious as he seems to depict in early 1945, I find it hard to accept the account of his recovery. He goes from continuing severe pain on walking and fever only days before his release from hospital, to contiuing pain while standing on a train to his grandfather's house on leave, to no mention of any continuing side effects only ten days later when he rejoins his original Kampfgruppe.

Fact or fiction - your guess is as good as mine when you compare this seemingly incredible account to works from Sajer, Voss, Koschorrek or Zoepf.

Rating:
Summary: Invaluable Historical Contribution
Review: I very much enjoyed reading Armin Lehmann's autobiography, "Hitler's Last Courier." His book, I feel, has helped me understand how many young Germans came to admire and even worship Hitler and to dedicate their lives to his new Germany. Mr. Lehmann's book illustrates very well how German adolescents sublimated their enthusiasm into a fanatical heroism and blind obedience to a regime which demanded immense sacrifices, including that of their lives. Armin Lehmann also admirably describes how he slowly lost his illusions after his idol's unheroic suicide and his gradual discovery of the evil deeds of Hitler and his henchmen. Armin Lehmann involves us intimately in the terrifying inferno of the last days of the battle of Berlin, as seen through the eyes of a frightened 16 year old boy. His last hours in the Bunker's unreal world will fascinate historians of World War II. Such candid personal observations are rare as most occupants of the Bunker did not survive the war or chose to remain silent. Armin Lehmann's contribution is therefore invaluable and we are most grateful to him for sharing his memories with us.

Rating:
Summary: The Insights of a Survivor of Berlin
Review: I've studied Germany in the 1930s and 1940s since William L. Shirer came out with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Armin Lehmann's autobiography tells us how it happened from an unique point of view. It was amazing that he survived. It was a miracle that he became a leader in the travel industry. We are fortunate that he has told us his fascinating story.

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Perspective on Hitler's Germany
Review: Mr. Lehmann's book portrays Hitler's Germany as few people have known it or understood it to be. Historical accounts abound on the victims of the holocaust and on the madman who perpetrated those events. However, few of us have known of the horror Hitler inflicted on his own people, and in particular, the children of Germany. Mr. Lehmann guides us through this tragedy with accounts of his early indoctrination of Hitler's beliefs, through his training and subsequent service to Germany in the Hitler Youth. The book is a fascinating account of the profound effects on the young minds of Hitler's Germany, their tragic slaughter to serve the madman's impossible bidding, and the realization of the horror of Hitler's cruelty. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: A very timely message for all of us
Review: Review February, 2003
Reviewer: Claus Hackenberger, Author of the book A LONG WALK
So that the reader of this review may fully embrace its content, I need to provide some background.
Both, Armin and I were raised in Germany during the time Hitler came to power, marched into Poland, France and Russia. Armin was four in 1932. I am a year older. I was born where Armin was raised, namely in Silesia. Schweidnitz, Schreiberhau, Breslau, all towns and cities where at one time or another we literally were neighbors.
Both of us wrote down our accounts here in America within the last three or four years, and truly without knowing of each other.
We recently met in Bend Oregon where we made presentations at the High Desert Forum and at several High and Middle Schools. We exchanged books. And I am offering now my review of his work.
Armin wrote in his introduction, I quote: "It takes many reeds to create a basket to be filled with contribution for progress. I hope that after my life is over, my wife Kim, the children and children's children will carry the basket and keep it filled."
In its purest form, that is der Mensch Armin. Talking with him, looking into his eyes I instantly fathom the pain he that has left its deep scar.
He describes events such that whole paragraphs could be exchanged between our biographies. What Armin wrote I do authenticate. He did an immense amount of research, tells about happenings that only peripherally passed by me. With sixteen I was drafted to be a soldier while he remained in the Hitler Youth.
Armin's family is alive through out his book, from the beginning to the bitter end.
As I, he also was proud to wear his uniform, believed in the warped Nazi ideologies that distorted our souls and the ones of uncountable other children.
On either side of the fence there are heroes, brave people who are pressed to hate one another, while with their hearts they want to be friends. Armin's words attest to that.
Towards the end I hear him speak of loneliness and despair, yet with almost every sentence his will to live, to survive outdoes all the horrific hours he had to endure.

This book adjusts the focus that over time has been blurred by denial of what war is really about. Timely? Yes, very timely.
I am so elated I met Armin Lehmann. You can meet him too.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Buy
Review: The incredible, gripping autobiography of author Lehmann, the "last courier" to Adolf Hitler in his infamous bunker, tells his story with sensitivity and brave candor. This large volume is constantly fascinating for WW2 enthusiasts, especially because of his unique perspective as a German "insider." Lehmann's wit and wisdom are apparent throughout and one particular paragraph stood out for me as a summation of his message: "How difficult it must be for all those who live in a democracy, used to a free press and to open exchange of opinions, used to a multiple-party system or, at least, to a two-party system, to understand the one track mind of youth in a dictatorship." Eye opening and candid, this is work of passion and immense detail...not to be missed. It will change the way you look at film of the masses...to realize that every face has a name and a story all his/her own. Especially timely with our current global turmoil.

Rating:
Summary: Lehmann teaches important lesson
Review: The very idea of recognizing the validity of anything an admitted Nazi had to say was anathema to me: A Holocaust refugee who landed in America at age ten.

But, Hitler's Last Courier is making a difference. The message of the book is a magnificent paean to the honesty and integrity of the writer.

Armin Lehmann gives us a picture -- in meticulous, almost overly zealous, detail of how the Nazi machine worked in Germany. Idolatry of Hitler took over, became stronger than any religion, and all participants involved cheerfully allowed themselves to be brainwashed.

Little kids judged each others blondness, parents skillfully eliminated any non-Aryan ancestors from family trees. Armin Lehmann omits nothing. He even translates every military and youth-group term into English so that the reader will have a complete picture of the Nazi hierarchy.

As a youngster, it seems that duty and obedience -- part and parcel of many unsuccessful attempts to please his judgmental "SS"father -- were major priorities. And, on he went, to become a teen-age soldier, earning two Iron Cross medals for heroically saving his fellows even when he, himself, was grieviously wounded. His reward, at age 16, was being assigned as Courier in Hitler's final bunker.

So, why celebrate this book, this gray recount of Nazi bureaucracy, of Hitler's propaganda machine, of worship at the Nazi altar? What is there to gain from such an exposition?

In a word, everything!

Because at age 16, when Armin Lehmann was shown the carnage of the extermination camps, the residue of the ovens, the skeletal remains of both the dead and the barely living, he underwent a change that took charge of the rest of his life.

From that moment, he became a fierce advocate for non-violence, for peace, and a dedicated enemy of all hatred. And he has never stopped. He has given his heart and his soul to erasing even the most remote possibility that any kind of hate movement could ever arise again.

He pulls no punches, makes no attempt to deny guilt, fully accepts the karma that has painted his destiny as an activist.

This man is to be respected. Hitler's Last Courier was written for a reason. At this point in time, at this juncture between peace and a possibly deadly World War III, we must all heed the message his message.

This book is for all ages. Every potential skinhead, racist, Aryan Nation member, and homophobic kid on the block needs to read it, learn from it. History, in fact, does not need to repeat itself.

Rating:
Summary: A Boy's Survival
Review: This is an insightful and well written story of a boy's coming of age in Hitler's Germany. He relates the story of how he survives and excels within the belief system in which he was raised and becomes the epitome of Hitler Youth. It shows us there are still many perspectives and stories yet to be discovered about WWII. This story proceeds as smoothly as fiction and it helps make the German people's incomprehensible support of Hitler understandable within the context of this German boy and his family. Beyond the historical perspective, it is a human story of survival and the quest to succeed and to do the what is right. This boy's view of what is "right" is antithetical to those of us post war who view it all with the wisdom of hindsight. It takes this sterotype and gives us more compassion for the German people and how they had to transform their belief system. This author has clearly done that with great success. The suspense builds at the end of the book as with a fine mystery novel and becomes a real page turner. This book will be enjoyed by those who are interested in history and also as an inspiration to young people.