The Boy Who Went to War by Giles Milton Page A

the Austrians don’t want to join us. Is this guy never going to leave people alone?’
    Hers was a lone voice. When the result of the plebiscite was announced – and people were told that 99 per cent of the electorate had voted yes – there was an outbreak of patriotic fervour in Pforzheim, as elsewhere. There were parties, singing and dancing in the streets, with everyone shouting: ‘ Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer! ’
    When Wolfram’s sister, Gunhild, took a trip into town that afternoon, she noticed many of the older women wearing dirndles, the Austrian national costume, in honour of the occasion.
    Those with cars headed for the Austrian border in order to join the excitement. In young Hannelore’s eyes, it seemed as if there was an extraordinary outburst of support for the Führer. Whatever people’s views, there was overwhelming praise for him.
    The incorporation of Austria into the German Reich was indeed a personal triumph for Hitler. When, shortly afterwards, Hannelore’s parents organised a social evening, her father said to his friends: ‘You see, we are now one big nation – and without any war. Now Hitler’s going to solve all other problems as well.’
    One of those present at the soirée responded: ‘I hope you’re right, Eugen. I’ve got two boys and war would be terrible.’
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    The autumn of that year brought leaden skies and heavy rain to Pforzheim. It also brought a major change to Wolfram’s life. Just a few months earlier he had turned fourteen, the age at which he could leave school. He jumped at the opportunity to quit full-time education, begging his parents to allow him to leave behind the travails of the classroom.
    When Erwin asked him what he wanted to do with his life, he heard the answer he was expecting. Over the last few years, Wolfram had developed a deepening passion for gothic woodcarving. He drew particular inspiration from the work of the medieval master craftsman, Tilman Riemenschneider, who could capture human emotions with absolute precision, wielding his chisel like an artist’s paintbrush. In the elongated fingers of his apostles, the aquiline noses of his saints and the long tresses of his prophets and bishops, Wolfram found a tender expression of piety and finesse.
    Wolfram had carved his first sculpture at the age of six. Now, he told his father that he intended to make sculpting his profession. Erwin scoffed at the notion, not because he thought it ridiculous but because he feared that Wolfram would be unable to make a living. He suggested that he should first learn a trade, to have something to fall back on.
    Wolfram was sent to lodge with an eccentric aunt in Stuttgart, where a position had become available for an apprentice carpenter. The hours were long and Wolfram had nothing in common with the rough types with whom he was working. Homesick, he soon returned to Pforzheim where he found employment in the workshop of a wood manufacturer.
    That autumn, it seemed to Wolfram’s parents as if Germany was tipping inexorably towards war. In October, Hitler had deliberately provoked the Sudetenland crisis, claiming a large swathe of Czech territory that was inhabited by ethnic Germans and describing it as his last territorial ambition. Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was by now sufficiently alarmed by Hitler’s bellicose behaviour to fly to Munich and attempt to broker a deal directly with the Führer.
    Hitler was contemptuous of Britain’s premier with his outmoded diplomacy and rolled umbrella. ‘If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella,’ he is said to have declared, ‘I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers.’
    The ensuing Munich Agreement, which gave Hitler all of the Sudetenland, led to a flurry of anti-British propaganda in the German newspapers, expressing