Franz Kurowski
| Franz Kurowski | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 17, 1923 |
| Died | May 28, 2011 (aged 87) |
| Language | German |
| Nationality | German |
| Genre | Popular history and fiction on World War II topics; children's literature |
Franz Kurowski (born November 17, 1923 in Hombruch; died May 28, 2011, in Dortmund, Germany) was a German author of fiction and non-fiction who specialised in World War II topics. His first publications appeared in the Nazi era; from 1958 until his death he worked as a freelance writer. According to the German National Library, he wrote 400 books for children and adults, under his own name and various pseudonyms. Kurowski wrote, among other things, for the weekly pulp war stories series Der Landser.
Kurowski produced numerous accounts featuring the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, providing laudatory and non-peer reviewed wartime chronicles of military units and highly decorated soldiers. Historians dismiss his works, pointing out that Kurowski's journalistic writing style leads to embellishments and half-truths. Mixing fact and fiction, his accounts emphasize heroics rather than provide an authentic representation of the war experience, thereby conveying a distorted image of the German armed forces in World War II.
Kurowski's books have strong revisionist tendencies; he held onto Nazi propaganda's military and civilian statistics and presented history devoid of any crimes by the Wehrmacht or the Waffen-SS. A number of his books have been published by far-right publishing houses such as the Türmer Verlag, the Arndt Verlag, the VDM Heinz Nickel, the Pour le Mérite Verlag, and the Verlag Bublies, leading to his writings being described as "journalism of gray and brown zone".
Kurowski grew up in Dortmund and, after primary school, learned turning. From 1942, he served as a soldier in World War II in southeast Europe and North Africa, where he completed his training as a radio operator, a parachutist, and interpreter of Modern Greek. In 1942, he was awarded the Storyteller Prize for his work in the Wacht im Südosten (Southeast Watch). These were propaganda publications (100 or so pamphlets) issued by the Propagandakompanie, the propaganda wing of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS.
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