A profound book , extremely well written, which helps one to get a glimmer of inderstanding how a hatred against a race / religeon can be insidiously inculcated into a population i.e. The German, ordinary peopele against the Jews starting in in the nineteen thirtees. There is a strong storyline which also makes it compelling reading. It is assumed to be partly based on the English author's own experiemce whilst living and working in Germany

Amazon Reviewer

This conveys in vivid terms the story of the growth and impact of national socialism in the context of individual experience and observation. It is quite different from any other book have read on the subject and I wonder what other hidden treasures lie in the unpublished writings of Frank Binder.

Amazon Reviewer

A lightly fictionalized recollection of the Rhenish province on the cusp of the abyss by a young English academic with a Leica eye and an ear to the ground, Binder's novel is as close as we're likely to get to to the Germany he experienced in 1932-33.

His story, filled with believable characters in a believable landscape, is a salutary reminder that the road to hell is paved with self-deceptions.

David Schoenbaum

This extraordinary tale in not quite history but a semi-fiction-alised account by Frank Binder, a Germanophile who spent the Great War in Dartmoor Prison as a reward for conscientious objection and lectured at Bonn University between 1921 and 1933.

The discovery and publication of this manuscript is the work of one of his former pupils, Michael Rines, who is to be congratulated on bringing to us this moving, colorful and evocative account of the rise of Nazism in the Rhineland.

Robert Gildea, History Today

This is the story written by Frank Binder during WW2 in 1940 and brought to light by his former student Michael Rines. The manuscript was looked after by Binder's daughter until recently.

Frank Binder left Nazi Germany before the Second World War began, 1937 to be precise, he left in a hurry. He refused to say the mandatory 'Heil Hitler!.'He left before any action could be taken against him. He is also thought to have been a British secret agent. Neither denied or confirmed by MI6 (this is their policy) and denied by Binder himself, it may answer several questions as to his actions around that time.

Their Cemetery Sown With Corn is superbly written and whilst fictional it has a real sense of authenticity about it, mainly due to the fact that it is most likely semi-autobiographical. Life in a German village during the Nazi rise to power and all the problems it brought with it are contained in a story of a young man and his struggle with Nazi beliefs, and loyalty to those he has come to love.

Beautifully written and wonderfully edited, Sown With Corn will be enjoyed by all World War II enthusiasts as well as those with an interest in German history.

WW2 Connection