'The unknown war': Popular war fiction for juveniles and the Anglo -German conflict, 1939--1945

This dissertation analyzes and compares the content of juvenile war fiction produced in Nazi Germany and Great Britain during World War Two. Although belittled at the time and subsequently overlooked by scholars, the extensive production and avid consumption of this type of popular adventure literature made it a significant part of the wartime experience for adolescents in both nations. The image of the contemporary conflict presented in these stories---and thus potentially cultivated in the mind of adolescent readers---is examined through a discussion of the characteristics of the enemy, the battlefield, and the hero which appear in each nation's tales. Following a brief overview of the propaganda organizations employed by the two states, separate thematic chapters which alternate between the countries consider the presentation of the enemy, combat and heroism. The first pair of chapters explores, in the context of broader wartime propaganda themes intended to cultivate anger or hatred, what young readers in Germany and Britain were told about each other's nations and armed forces. Next, consecutive chapters discuss the depiction of modern combat according to conventional or (in the case of Germany) official limits on the degree of realism acceptable for juvenile audiences. A third set of chapters surveys each side's image of the modern warrior hero and considers the interaction of traditional virtues with social transformations motivated by wartime crises or pre-war ideology. After comparing and contrasting the substance of what one critic labeled the "unknown war," the conclusion also examines the potential effect of this class of war propaganda upon its young audience in Britain and Nazi Germany.