This book is a study of Germany's first post-war author, Wolfgang Borchert, including his pre-1945 literary works, and offering the first complete and comprehensive analysis of his unpublished oeuvre. It covers the dramatic and poetic works written during the period that Germany was preparing for, and then engaged in, the struggle that led to its devastation. Professor Warkentin identifies themes and ideas common to both published and unpublished works, arguing that the literature produced by Borchert in post-war Hamburg is not solely the product of a disillusioned soldier, but the result of a lengthy developmental process begun as early as 1938, when Borchert's first poem was published in Nazi Germany.