When Hem Went to War

In November 1944, the U.S. Army experienced its bitterest fiasco in the war against Germany at the Battle at the Hürtgen Forest. Since the landing in Normandy, the famous American writer Ernest Hemingway accompanied the infantry as a hard-drinking and intrepid war correspondent and travelled from front to front. He wrote reports for Collier’s magazine and collected material for a novel, but repeatedly became an actor in the war himself, later boasting about the killing of countless German soldiers. He led Resistance fighters outside Paris, stockpiled weapons in the Ritz Hotel, turned a farmhouse in the German Snow Eifel into an artists‘ meeting place. In the Hürtgen Forest, however, the author fell silent in the face of the horrors of war.

The book describes Hemingway’s novelistic experiences during the war in the West in 1944/45 and his controversial role as a war reporter against the backdrop of the heavy fighting in Normandy, the Snow Eifel and the Hürtgen Forest. The author has followed Hemingway's footsteps into the villages of the Southern Eifel and the Hürtgen Forest and lets numerous contemporary witnesses share their war memories. He also explains for the first time what the "Hemingstein Castle" in the Eifel village of Schweiler was all about. – Ebook with numerous photos and maps.