Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Soldiers and Sons … then take off on your own:
1. How much of the history of the Ritchie Boys was known to you before reading this book? If the answer is "some," what new information did you come away having learned by reading Sons and Solders? What surprised you, or resonated with you, the most?
2. Talk about the reasons many of the young men were sent to the U.S. in the first place, some of them without their parents. Consider, in particular, the stories of Martin Selling and Stephan Lewy.
3. What made the Ritchie Boys so valuable to the Allied effort? What particular dangers, over and above other Allied soldiers, did they face in returning to Germany?
4. Discuss some of the information they provided U.S. intelligence, as well as the various subterfuges they carried out.
5. Talk about the horrors that Bruce Henderson reports in Sons and Soldiers—soldiers using bloated cows for cover, the young German soldier laying under the apple tree in obvious agony, or scorched crews crawling out of their burning tanks. What else?
6. Werner Anagress wrote the following in his journal:
The longer this war lasts, the more ugly sights I see and the more I get to know what death looks like, the more I am convinced that it will be our first duty after this war to prevent a second one.
Are you ever concerned that the farther we move away from the men Tom Brokaw called "the greatest generation," the more we risk forgetting the horrors of war?
7. Was World War II the last good war—a war in which the cause was just and enemy so evil?
8. Talk about some of the ironies inherent in German Jewish men returning to their homeland to kill their compatriots. Also, consider this ironic episode: "On the long walk across the valley, with the German Jew leading the blindfolded SS officer by the crook of his arm and telling him when to watch his step, the two began to talk." What other ironies can you discern?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)