David-Michael Harding's Blog, page 10
July 1, 2013
Hitler’s Desperate Last Days Forces Children Into The Front Lines of Battle!
Panzerfaust – “Armor fist”
In the last days of WWII a depleted German army was supplemented by boys as young as 11. Minus little formal training, they were often given the Panzerfaust as a one shot disposable close range infantry anti-tank weapon. The weapon was cheaply produced and made in the millions between 1942 – 45. The conscripted Hitler youth, pressed into front line service, signaled the end days of the Third Reich.
June 18, 2013
Latest How Angels Die Review from Spanish Reviewer!
How Angels Die, by David-Michael Harding
I have read several books set in the Second World War – and I will read more, because I like these stories – and all of them offer a different point of view because there were such an amount of subjects, countries and people involved that you always get to know a new side of that war.
In How angels die the main characters are two sisters who work for the French Resistance against the Germans. Claire is the youngest sister and she is a brave fighter: she works at night preparing ambushes in the forests and killing as many Germans as she is capable of with many of the Resistance men. Monique also works at night, but she puts her best dresses on and goes to the best clubs, where she meets and dates Germans in order to extract information from them in a sometimes too intimate atmosphere.
Monique does her best because she knows she would never be able to hold a weapon, and anyway, her job is also dangerous since she can be accused of espionage; but both Claire and their father don’t understand she is also contributing to the cause so they argue very often and this makes Monique feel so lonely. Their mother instead supports Monique but doesn’t like Claire’s assignments: she is afraid every time Claire leaves home at night because she doesn’t know whether or not she will come back.
The story takes place in 1944 but it only lasts a few days from the night when Monique meets Pieter, a German officer who seems to be kind, educated and tender to her, and finishes the night of the Normandy landings. In the meantime, Monique will fall in love with Pieter but nevertheless, she will betray him to give the information about the next movements of the German army to her people, so the Gestapo officers will become suspicious of him. On the other hand, Claire will put herself in too much danger and her family is about to break down.
I enjoyed every single page of the book. The story is very descriptive so you feel as if you are going with the girls through the streets of their village, always in the dark, back and forth from Monique to Claire, who are always in different places as their jobs require. The characters are so realistic, and they reminded me of my own sister and me: we couldn’t be more different but it doesn’t mean we don’t get on well with each other. I also liked other characters and secondary plots about other people of the Resistance, even though I would have liked to know more about some of them, especially about the men of the story: Pieter, Claire’s boyfriend and the father of the two main characters.
All the scenes are well described and I felt I was watching a movie instead of reading a book. It is full of action and has some surprising twists at the end so you can’t stop reading and suffering for the girls when they are in too much danger; Monique and Claire are engaging characters who will make readers laugh and cry. I loved the book.
April 26, 2013
Interesting Article…Hitler’s Food Taster Tells of Poisoning Fears
View PhotoAssociated Press/US Army Signal Corps from Eva Braun’s album, File – FILE – This undated file picture shows the German Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun while dining. A German woman named Margot …more
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[image error]View PhotoOne of the food testers of Adolf …
BERLIN (AP) — They were feasts of sublime asparagus — laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler’s food taster.
Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler’s food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his “Wolf’s Lair,” the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.
“He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there,” Woelk said of the Nazi leader. “And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him — that’s why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself.”
With many Germans contending with food shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler’s food had its advantages.
“The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta,” she recalled. “But this constant fear — we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal.”
The petite widow’s story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II.
Only now in the sunset of her life has she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis, although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story as she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917.
Woelk first revealed her secret to a local Berlin reporter a few months ago. Since then interest in her life story has been overwhelming. School teachers wrote and asked her for photos and autographs to bring history alive for their students. Several researchers from a museum visited to ask for details about her life as Hitler’s taster.
Woelk says her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives about 435 miles (700 kilometers) to the east in Rastenburg, then part of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war.
There she was drafted into civilian service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf’s Lair complex, located a few miles (kilometers) outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person — only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the women.
Hitler’s security fears were not unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the Wolf’s Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000 people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the bomber.
“We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang,” she said of the 1944 bombing. “We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting ‘Hitler is dead!’ But he wasn’t. ”
Following the blast, tension rose around the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives’ home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound.
With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf’s Lair.
She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding.
Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home.
“Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls,” she said. It was after Soviet troops overran the headquarters in January 1945.
When she returned to Berlin, she found a city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and British planes was grinding the city center to rubble.
On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS and Hitler Youth fighters.
After about two weeks of heavy fighting, the city surrendered on May 2 — after Hitler, who had abandoned the Wolf’s Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe.
For many Berlin civilians — their homes destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone — the horror did not end with capitulation.
“The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too,” Woelk said. “They took me to a doctor’s apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That’s why I could never have children. They destroyed everything.”
Like millions of Germans and other Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe.
She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from the war but died 23 years ago, she said.
With the frailty of advanced age and the lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece stops by frequently, she said.
Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story.
“For decades, I tried to shake off those memories,” she said. “But they always came back to haunt me at night.”
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April 24, 2013
Author Receives New Shipment of Cherokee Talisman: Available for Review!
To request your FREE copy for review, send email to Kate at: info@DavidMichaelHarding.com.
March 4, 2013
“Few Write Historical Novels Better Than David-Michael Harding!”
Top 50 Reviewer, Grady Harp of Los Angeles, CA Reviews Cherokee Talisman…See what he has to say about it!
5.0 out of 5 stars Few write historical novels better than David-Michael Harding!, March 3, 2013
By
Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States)
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (TOP 50 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Cherokee Talisman (Paperback)
“When an author has the ability to transfer intensive research into a subject planned for a novel and then transform that historic information into a thrilling and eloquently written work, it is a feat of passion for writing and for the topic about which the book is conceived. For those who have had the distinct pleasure of reading David-Michael Harding’s recreation of WW II in HOW ANGELS DIE, then this recreation of American history from 1775 to 1821 and the manner in which America destroyed the Native Americans in order to take over the land being wrestled from British colonization will not come as surprise. Here, finally, is a two sided view of what really happened during that now embarrassing and shameful period in our country’s history.The story is fact, embellished by Harding’s poetic prose. It is a touching tale of the legendary Cherokee war chief Tsi’yugunsini, the Dragon, taking a little orphan boy, Totsuhwa, under his wing. It is this passage of rights and power that places Totsuhwa in a world where he must be the one to defend the very existence of the Cherokee nation against the terrifying odds of facing General Andrew Jackson. The story is powerful, enlightening, and told with the force of a spear headed right for the heart. But despite the fact that the historical aspects are so clear, it is the language with which Harding tells the story that makes it a monumental achievement.An example of this poetic approach to the body of the work is evident from the opening Prologue: `Autumn comes late in the Carolinas. Summer willfully drags her feet which pleases some and riles not but a few, including the trees which are anxious to change their hues, rid themselves of summer’s trappings and rest in the coolness of the fall.’ With this element of writing Harding seduces the reader into the story that, while absorbing full attention until the book’s end, will at the same time alter the conscience of this country in the manner in which our forebears won the land. There are many reasons to read this book: there are as many reasons to look forward to the next book that David-Michael Harding will be composing. He is a major writer.”
Grady Harp, March 2013
English: Portrait drawing of United States General Andrew Jackson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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February 3, 2013
February 2, 2013
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January 31, 2013
Lew Hastings, Gulf Coast Business Spotlight Interviews Author…Tune In!
Join me this Friday, February 1st @ 3pm EST as I talk with Author David-Michael Harding about his new book “Cherokee Talisman” on “Gulf Coast Business Spotlight” WENG 1530AM/107.5FM or LIVE on WENGradioTV.com
You can get it by going to WENGradio.com and click the WENGTV menu tab at the top of the page. You will be able to see and hear the show from anywhere in the world! 
If you have read it please give your review or if you have questions you would like me to ask Mr. Harding please feel free to share them.
~Lew
Patrick Walters, Triangle Variety Radio Interviews David-Michael Harding
Patrick Walters Interviews David-Michael Harding
Listen to internet radio with Triangle Variety Radio on Blog Talk Radio
January 10, 2013
Author Working on Book 2 in the Cherokee Series…Due Out This Summer!
Author Writing Losing St. Christopher
Look for Book 2 in the Cherokee Series….
Losing St. Christopher
Chancellor’s education continues as he struggles to bridge the gap between his nation and that of the New Americans while his father’s world comes apart. The Cherokee Nation is fragmenting as well. Encroachment and violation of treaties leave little room between a war they cannot win and assimilation that may be equally as deadly. Chancellor takes a white wife without his father’s blessing and begins his family under the harsh eyes of racism. Gold is discovered in the historic Tsalagi hills and the race is on to rid the land of all traces of Cherokee culture. General Jackson, now President of the United States, signs The Indian Removal Act which leads to the “Trail of Tears.” Totsuhwa struggles with sanity as he pits his vow to Tsi’yugunsini against the salvation of a family he has all but disowned.
