About me

My name is Adrian Matthes, I am 25 years old and I live and study in Erlangen. My interest in history began in my childhood with a fascination for knight castles, pirate ships and the ancient Romans. I only began to study the Second World War in my youth and initially I researched my family history. The memories of the war were always present in my grandparents and other older relatives, and occasionally the fate of family members who lost their lives in the war was discussed.

When I was 13, I went to a flea market in my hometown and ended up talking to an older gentleman from a neighboring town. It turned out that he had served as a tank driver in the German army during World War II. This was a formative encounter for me, because he was able to answer many of my burning questions and took a lot of time to tell me about his youth. He took great pains to give me a realistic view of what happened, not omitting the immense suffering of war.

Over the years, a real friendship has developed between us. When I was about 17 years old, I started to write down the key points of his stories, which I now knew almost by heart. My intention was to be able to reproduce his reports authentically and in his own words at a later date. The notes, which soon grew into a small booklet, met with interest among friends. Eventually, we published a small book.

The demand was overwhelming and within a few weeks we had received hundreds of orders from all over the world. Soon there was a second and third edition. With the income, we were finally able to finance a trip to Normandy together. There, he showed me the positions of his unit's former positions in the terrain and we also visited some military cemeteries where he showed me the final resting place of his comrades. We were given the opportunity to ride in “his” tank again and then gave presentations to an interested audience.

Through this project, I came into contact with other surviving veterans from a wide variety of military branches. Spurred on by the success of the first book, I began documenting additional memoirs while pursuing my engineering degree, which I had started in the meantime. Over the past seven years, I have written 13 books, some of which have also been published in English, Spanish, and Hungarian. In 2025, I am pursuing a master’s degree and have remained true to my passion for research, investigation, and writing. Eighty years after the end of the war, it has become difficult to find surviving veterans who would be willing to participate in a book project. I have therefore begun to focus on other topics and, in 2023, published a chronicle of the air war in my home district. I would like to continue publishing on selected topics in the future. Do you know any veterans who are still alive, or do you have diaries, unpublished manuscripts, or photo albums? Please write to me! I welcome any material that can be made available to help provide a balanced view of history!

Adrian Matthes, Erlangen, 2025