The Upside of Hunger

Summary

He fled his village in eastern Hungary to escape his father's iron fist. But now, fighting for the SS, he's facing starvation on the Eastern Front as the deluge of enemy fire from the Russian army comes closer every hour.

The Upside of Hunger is the powerful story of Adam Baumann's coming of age in the midst of WW2 and his journey toward manhood, from the rarely told perspective of a Hungarian-born German.

EASTERN HUNGARY, 1941 – desperate to escape his father’s iron fist, 12-year-old Adam fled. But when his father traced him to the mountain village where he was living under the guise of an orphan, Adam knew he’d have to go farther next time. The military recruitment station in Vienna seemed like the perfect solution, and the age of their recruits no longer mattered to the Germans.

As autumn turned to winter and Adam lay terrified and starving in a frozen foxhole on the Eastern Front, he knew he’d made a horrible and deadly mistake. In front of him, enemy fire rained down from the approaching Russian army. Behind him, his German commander’s orders were clear – hold steady. Then, a Russian bullet found its mark, catapulting Adam into a series of terrifying captures and narrow escapes from enemy forces as Europe reeled from the final destruction of WW2.

Never standing still, Adam struggled through war-torn landscapes to find his family and began to build a life from the ashes, until the results of a medical examination at an American Embassy in Germany changed the course of his future again.

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting true story of courage in the face of unbeatable odds.