The West German university city of Freiburg (pop. 110,000) was a bad place for a child in late 1945. Bombs and artillery shells had cratered its streets, shattered its industry (mainly textiles and precision instruments), gutted its homes. Children roamed the rubble in wolf packs, raiding homes, stealing food and clothing for the black market. By 1947 Freiburg had a shockingly high juvenile-delinquency rate: scrawny, defiant boys, aged 12 to 18, were being brought before Freiburg's courts in batches of dozens at a time, sentenced and packed off to prison. Freiburg's citizens just shook their heads. But one man, Dr. Karl...
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