Showing results for "Soldier Boy" in History

Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men but boys, many of whom were under the age of 16 and some even as young as nine. In Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution, Caroline Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service.

Helene Munson resurrects her father’s WWII journals and embarks on a meticulous investigation, exposing how the Nazis trained 300,000 impressionable children as soldiers. In 1937, Munson’s father, Hans, was enrolled in an elite German school whose students were destined to take leadership roles in the Reich. At fifteen, he was drafted—along with the rest of the Hitler Youth—and assigned to an SS unit. A personal lens into a nation’s shameful past, Hitler’s Boy Soldiers documents the history of the largest army of child soldiers in recent memory.

Embark on a journey through the past two centuries as you delve into the personal stories of twelve renowned soldiers. Discover their early lives and how their formative years influenced their extraordinary military careers. This podcast offers an intimate exploration into the making of these great soldiers, as compiled from the book’s preface. (Summary by philchenevert)

Bestselling author Charlie Connelly returns with a First World War memoir of his great uncle, Edward Connelly, who was an ordinary boy sent to fight in a war the likes of which the world had never seen. But this is not just his story; it is the story of all the young forgotten soldiers who...

Willi Langbein was just thirteen when the Nazis took him away from his parents under the pretense of protecting him. Their real reason was to turn him into cannon-fodder for use against Hitler’s enemies. Deployed to the collapsing Eastern Front in the last days of the war, Willi, now aged fourteen, and his schoolmates were ordered to stave off the relentless Russian advance. None were expected to return alive from the final battles of the Third Reich.

The powerful true story of a heroic couple whose love for their country was matched only by their love for each other. Mike and Kate Blaise fell in love during high school in small-town Macon, Missouri. Sharing a deep sense of patriotism, they both entered the U.S. Army—she as a commissioned...

The true story of Deng Adut - Sudanese child soldier, refugee, man of hope Deng Adut's family were farmers in South Sudan when a brutal civil war altered his life forever. At six years old, his mother was told she had to give him up to fight. At the age most Australian children are starting...

From the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles comes an exploration of a promising theory that when put to practice wreaked havoc on the world. An expert on communism, Richard Pipes follows the history of the Soviet Union from the 1917 revolution to the Cold War, and finally, to its deterioration and collapse.