I was born in Berlin, Germany in 1930.  My father, a mathematician and a banker, taught me to read and write before the age of 5.  I discovered my love for writing by the time I was 10 years old and wrote vacation reports and several articles for the German school periodical “Hilf Mit.” When I was 10, I entered the “Jungvolk,” a subdivision of the Hitler Youth, which was mandatory in the Berlin school system.  I then entered the Hitler Youth at the age of 14, also mandatory, and continued writing for the Hitler Youth periodicals “Der Pimpf” and “Die Deutsche Jugend Burg.” My books are written based upon my own experiences as a young boy in Germany during World War II and the days leading up to and after the fall of Berlin.  I was forced to fight for an idea I did not understand and unlike many young boys during that time, I survived and am here today to tell my stories.  Much has been written about the war, but nothing has been written from the perspective of a 14 year old German boy.  In the early 1950s, I left Germany and immigrated to the United States and became a citizen.  For the past 30 years my wife and I have lived in Northern California on a small ranch that we share with quite a few different animals.