Wolfgang W.E. Samuel

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Wolfgang W.E. Samuel (born 1935) is a German-born American author and a veteran of the United States Air Force.

Born in Germany, ten year-old Samuel fled with his mother and sister from his home town of Sagan (now Zagan in Poland) in 1945 as the Red Army approached. As a Flüchtling (refugee), he underwent privation and re-settlement in the post-war years. His mother was raped and his grandfather was killed by German communists. He descibes how he and his mother eventually settled near a U.S. airbase in western Germany, where his mother met and married an American serviceman.

After the family emigrated to the United States, Samuel attended the National War College and served in the air force for thirty years, retiring with the rank of colonel. He received three Distinguished Flying Crosses during his years of active duty. As of 2002, he resided in Fairfax Station, Virginia.

Samuel has published four books. The first, German Boy: A Refugee's Story, is a memoir detailing the war years and his post-war life as a refugee, and features a forward by historian Stephen Ambrose. His second book, I Always Wanted to Fly: America's Cold War Airmen, is a compilation of oral histories of American aviators of the Cold War era. The War of Our Childhood: Memories of World War II, another oral history compilation, tells of twenty-seven Germans who experienced the war as children. His most recent work, American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets, is an account of the efforts made by the United States military to acquire German military technology.

[edit] Works By Wolfgang W.E. Samuel

• German Boy: A Refugee's Story. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000. ISBN 1-57806-482-1
• I Always Wanted to Fly: America's Cold War Airmen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. ISBN 1-57806-399-X
• The War Of Our Childhood: Memories of World War Two. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. ISBN 1-57806-482-1
• American Raiders: The Race to Capture the Luftwaffe's Secrets. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. ISBN 1-57806-649-2