Under The Crooked Cross

About the Book

Under The Crooked Cross – the swastika – is a story about one middleclass German family in the Hitler era and World War II. More than that: it is a story of a whole nation’s promise, asserted and corrupted, pain inflicted and suffered and eventually found “guilty” for its march of folly and fury.

Pain and promise belong together. Expiation, redemption and reconciliation are not only worthwhile but possible for persons and nations that have sinned against their neighbors. At least, decades later, such hopes abides.

About the Author

Born in 1922, Gerhard Hennes grew up in Germany. He served in the German army from 1939 to 1946 and took part in the campaigns in North Africa, where he was taken a prisoner in 1943. As a POW he journeyed through sixteen camps in six countries. But most of this time he was confined in Crossville, TN.

After his return to war-ravaged Germany, he studied modern languages and is fluent in several. In 1947 he joined Church World Service, an American Protestant organization engaged in relief, refugee and development work. He has lived, worked and traveled in eighty countries. His fifty years in church work included six with the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.

A U.S. citizen since 1958, Gerhard Hennes is a widower living near Allentown, PA. His family is close-knit: two married daughters, three grown grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. He has restored twenty-one historical houses, a strenuous hobby. Besides three work-related books, he is the author of The Barbed Wired (2004) and Hybris (2006).

He now spends his time reading, writing, traveling and speaking. Gardening, fishing and landscape-painting are added in the summer. For an old guy, he says, life is good.