G. H. Hertling is Professor emeritus in Germanics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Born 1930 in Pasadena, California of German parents, their last und final visit back to Germany from California proved fatal. Young American Hertling and his German mother could not return, whereas his father succeeded in repatriating to California alone. Caught in Hitlers "Grand German Empire of a Thousand Years" initially in airraid-riddled Hamburg and later in bombed-out Munich, he attended a private, then "state administered" highschool in Bavaria. Torn between identifying with National Socialism on the one hand as a member of the Hitler Youth and yet as a German-American with liberal-democratic ideals on the other, Hertling here vividly recalls the turbulent "hard times" during World War II: He fully remembers, reminisces and relates to large portions of those historical and personal events that have affected his formative years psychologically and emotionally. His central narrative is pictorally enriched by two subtexts - by a series of historical as well as by some personal images. The author served the University of Washington forty-four years, retiring in 2004. He had joined the faculty in 1961 upon completing his graduate studies in Germanics (and History) at the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of specialization continue to be modern German literature and thought of the 18th and 19th centuries (particularly Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, Poetic Realism).