structural:expansion, linguistic:paraphrasing
Early years

Albert Dietrich Fischer was born in 1925 in Berlin to Albert Fischer, a school principal, and Theodora (née Klingelhoffer) Fischer, a teacher. In 1934, his father added the hyphenated "Dieskau" to the family name (through his mother, he was descended from the Kammerherr von Dieskau, for whom Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the " Peasant Cantata "). He started singing as a child and began formal voice lessons at the age of 16. When he was drafted into the Wehrmacht during World War II in 1943, tending horses on the Russian Front, Fischer-Dieskau had just completed his secondary school studies and one semester at the Berlin Conservatory. He served in Grenadier Regiment 146 of the 65th Infantry Division south of Bologna in the winter of 1944–45 and entertained his comrades at soldiers' evenings behind the lines.

He was captured in Italy in 1945 and spent two years as an American prisoner of war. During that time, he sang Lieder in POW camps to homesick German soldiers. He had a physically and intellectually impaired brother, Martin, who was sent to an institution by the Nazi regime and starved to death. His family home was also destroyed during the war.