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Introduction
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Introduction In August 1942 a German-born U.S. Army private, Kurt Frank Korf, wrote to his mother in Germany: Now the arms of madness [of Nazism] are stretching across the Atlantic, and they are gripping us with the fingers of those men and boys who were once close to me. They are the ones who are arming the torpedoes that are blasting the ships that supply our food. . . . Maybe they have reservations about what they are doing, but they are doing it anyway. I, however, am committed to fighting against them. I do know one thing: I must be a part of this war. It is being fought for me and for you. It concerns us both. I hope the army will accept me . . . or I will feel like a coward for the rest of my life.1 These words convey something of the essence of a very special man. Korf was born to privilege in Germany. As a young man, Korf was close to his grandfather, a successful publisher who was born a Jew and later converted to Protestantism. With his grandfather’s encouragement, young Korf studied law. But the coming of the Nazi regime changed Korf’s life forever. Shortly after the Nazis came to power, they issued laws against Jews in the civil service. One of the laws stipulated ‘‘non-Aryans,’’—that is, people who had one or more Jewish grandparents—were forbidden to take the bar exam. Because his maternal grandfather was a Jew, Korf was therefore denied permission to take the bar exam. The anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws of 1935 further blackened the reputation of Korf’s beloved grand- xiv | Introduction father, and Korf was disgusted by the fact that he himself was regarded by law as ‘‘second grade mixed-breed,’’ or Mischling zweiten Grades. Korf’s work as legal consultant to his family’s publishing concern also ran him afoul of Nazi authorities: his knowledge about the location of synthetic fuel refineries brought him under suspicion by German intelligence, and he was interrogated in 1936. Sensing that his future in Germany was tenuous, Korf decided to emigrate to the United States in 1937. He came with very little money and no connections. He worked as an elevator boy until he became a reporter for an American newspaper published in the German language, the New Yorker Staatszeitung und Herold. All the while, he did what he could to discredit Nazism. He probed levels of pro-Nazi activity in German-American organizations in the city and volunteered to inform the FBI about pro-Nazi activity in the United States. When the United States entered the Second World War, Korf was drafted and eventually became a member of Military Intelligence in Patton’s Third Army. As a military intelligence officer, Korf obtained important tactical and strategic information from German civilians and prisoners of war. He also helped to liberate Flossenbu ̈rg concentration camp, and he interrogated the camp leaders. At the end of hostilities he was charged with finding Nazi war criminals in prisoner-of-war camps. After his discharge from the army, Korf was employed by the Justice Department, and in 1948 he was sent back to Germany to investigate the authenticity of the recently published diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous minister of propaganda. Korf’s story is one that is worth telling because he holds a special place in the history of Nazism and World War II. Because he was a German who became an American soldier, Korf was able to reflect upon his experiences in a unique way. Most studies on World War II deal with its military aspects, along with experiences of American soldiers. Many historians of the latter subject, such as Paul Fussell and Stephen Ambrose, focus mostly on the experience [44.213.75.78] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:10 GMT) Introduction | xv of young American men coming of age in battle.2 But Korf did not fit into these categories. He was not a naturalized American citizen when he was drafted. He was also significantly older than his fellow soldiers. He entered the army at the age of thirty-two, which made him about fourteen years older than 95 percent of the draftees. In addition, soldiers featured in works by Fussell and Ambrose did not have the same agenda as Korf, who wanted to join the army to fight Nazism. Most studies on Nazism deal with its major perpetrators, its victims , and...