Soldiers' Women

New York/London: Harper & Brothers. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. 1930. First American Edition. Hardcover. [good sound book, just a touch of wear to extremities, light spotting to fore-edge, vintage price sticker (from San Francisco department store The White House) on rear pastedown; jacket has 2.5" split at bottom of rear foldover, minor soiling/creasing to rear panel]. "Perhaps this is the first book to touch on that particular aspect of war; the soldiers and their women. The domestic histories of four or five men brought together by chance into the same platoon forms the chief theme of the book. Through the stories of these farmers and tradespeople and their wives we understand the horror and the misery that grows out of the enforced separation of the sexes." Wendler (1895-1968) was a German writer and educator, who published several novels and also wrote in what we would today call the Young Adult genre. This book, his very uncommon first novel (published in Germany in 1929 as "Soldiers Marieen"), was founded largely on his own military experience in World War I. When the Nazis came to power he was dismissed from his position as rector at a Catholic school, and a number of his books were banned; he remained in Germany, writing sometimes under a pseudonym, and also working as a screenwriter thanks in large measure to his longtime acquaintance with producer-director Robert Stemmle. .