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“I Must Be a Part of This War”
One Man’s Fight Against Hitler and Nazism
Patricia Kollander, with John O'Sullivan
$34.00
ISBN: 9780823225286
World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension, No. 8
Book (Hardcover)
288 pages
November 2005
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"...Traces his [Korf's] work as an FBI informant observing pro-Nazi figures in America, his service as an intelligence officer and POW camp administrator in the war, and his postwar work tracking down war criminals."—The Chronicle of Higher Education
"...a potentially epic tale of Korf's incredible significance in the great war against Nazism in America."—Bookwatch
"...the exploits of a man involved in a top secret World War II operation."
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel"Kollander eloquently traces Korf's WW II experiences using Korf's rich personal collection of wartime correspondence, notes, military records, and in-depth interviews with Korf himself...Recommended."
—Choice Kurt Frank Korf’s story is one of the most unusual to come out of World War
II. Although German-Americans were America’s largest ethnic group, and
German-Americans—including thousands of native-born Germans—fought
bravely in all theaters, there are few full first-person accounts by German-
Americans of their experiences during the 1930s and 1940s.
Drawing on his correspondence and on oral histories and interviews with
Korf, Patricia Kollander paints a fascinating portrait of a privileged young man
forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1937 because the infamous Nuremburg Laws
had relegated him to the status of “second-degree mixed breed” (Korf had one
Jewish grandparent).
Settling in New York City, Korf became an FBI informant, watching pro-Nazi
leaders like Fritz Kuhn and the German-American Bund as they moved among
the city’s large German immigrant community. Soon after, he enlisted in the
U.S. Army, serving in Germany as an intelligence officer during the Battle of
the Bulge, and as a prisoner of war camp administrator. After the war, Korf
stayed on as a U.S. government attorney in Berlin and Munich, working to
hunt down war criminals, and lent his expertise in the effort to determine
the authenticity of Joseph Goebbels’s diaries. Kurt Frank Korf died in 2000.
Kollander not only draws a detailed portrait of this unique figure; she also
provides a rich context for exploring responses to Nazism in Germany, the
German-American position before and during the war, the community’s later
response to Nazism and its crimes, and the broader issues of ethnicity, religion,
political ideology, and patriotism in 20th-century America.
| Patricia Kollander is Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic
University. She is the author of Frederick III: Germany’s Liberal Emperor.
“I Must Be a Part of This War” is part of her ongoing research into the
experiences of some fifteen thousand native-born Germans who served in
the U.S. Army in World War II. |
| John O'Sullivan was Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University. |
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