Military Service
Like his mentor Heimpel, the young Schlesinger was initially supportive of the National Socialist movement (actually he had become a member of the NSDAP as soon as 1929). Over the course of his tour of duty, however, he came to realize the folly of Germany's war and when a letter he wrote containing criticisms of Hitler's regime was intercepted by censors, he was punished by being assigned to a high-risk battalion fighting anti-Nazi insurgents in the Balkans. Schlesinger was critically wounded in action and subsequently discharged.
Read more about this topic: Walter Schlesinger
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or service:
“The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)