Dodgy memoirs of questionable reliability.....

[Sid Guttridge]

There was an interesting article in the Sunday Times last weekend focusing on a number of doubtful WWII memoirs.

The books it highlighted were Do the Birds Sing in Hell by Horace Greasley, The Man who broke into Auschwitz by Denis Avey and a collection of accounts titled D-Day through German Eyes..

I recall what one author wrote here on AHF six years ago about "Greasley’s story being symptomatic symptomatic of a worrying tendency that is afflicting the publishing industry. Old men with failing memories are teaming up with sharp-elbowed ghostwriters to “recall” increasingly fantastical stories of derring-do during the war".

There are others that have been highlighted here on AHF. A serial offender would appear to be Colin Heaton, who has been discussed on AHF before. Heaton not infrequently claims to have unearthed obscure individuals who he supposedly interviews for exotic books like Prince of Aces or Four War Boer. However, they have a habit of dying before he publishes, or are otherwise uncontactable, or completely untraceable. Heaton had the first withdrawn by the publisher before release and so published the second himself. He also writes on some real subjects, especially German aces, but his dubious record elsewhere rather puts the accuracy of these books into question as well.

Has anyone got any others they found suspicious and, if so, why?

Cheers,

Sid

[Ken S.]

I read some of "Assault from Within" by Georg von Konrat and found it suspect, however after reading a recent message board post by someone claiming to be his daughter, and a few other bits about his possible post-war life, I'm willing to reconsider.

[book lover]

How can I be collecting German memoirs for 20 years and never heard of: "Assault from Within" by Georg von Konrat?????
What message board are you referring to?

[Ken S.]

How can I be collecting German memoirs for 20 years and never heard of: "Assault from Within" by Georg von Konrat?????
What message board are you referring to?

Here it is:
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/ ... enburgers/

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Ken S.,

I agree that Assault from Within is suspect and have thought so since I bought the paperback nearly 50 years ago. For instance, from memory, Konrat claims that the Brandenburgers captured Odessa when, in fact, it was the Romanian Army. He also claims the use of Tiger tanks in 1941.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. I see that Konrat has been questioned on AHF before: viewtopic.php?f=55&t=67551&p=609168&hil ... at#p609168

P.P.S. The apparent daughter does not exactly endorse the veracity of the book in your link: "What he remembers and whether or not it is entirely correct according to the history books remains his secret." If his claimed daughter can't trust the accuracy of his stories, how can anyone else, given the large number of apparent inconsistencies in the book?

[Pz III]

While George von Konrat may have served in the Wehrmacht - the book he authored is total fiction and trash. More of a dime store true fiction/crime
novel than a memoir of any sorts. With all if the well written memoirs available and more being published every year - save your time and money and avoid this type of drivel.

Rich

[BasedGodfrey]

However, they have a habit of dying before he publishes, or are otherwise uncontactable, or completely untraceable.

I think I know what is happening. Our author is a serial killer who interviews people for money and kills them afterwords!

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi BasedGodfrey,

Cynical as I am, that had not previously occurred to me!

Cheers,

Sid.

[B Hellqvist]

Aw, crap, I've got "Normandy Through German Eyes". I haven't read it, and now it will remain unread. This is the most thorough one-star review on amazon.co.uk:

We are asked to believe that the author’s grandfather was a journalist writing for German army magazines in 1944 who interviewed soldiers along the Atlantic Wall for an article shortly before D-Day; that his article was never published because D-Day changed the situation; that ten years after the war he sought out the men he’d interviewed, or at least others from their units, and conducted a second series of interviews focussing on their experiences of the day itself; and that the notes from this second series of interviews were discovered by the grandson and collated into the two books “D-Day through German Eyes” books 1 and 2, subsequently translated into English.

Like most readers, I took these claims at face value when I started reading the books. I’m frankly embarrassed at how long it took me to cotton on that I was reading fiction. There is a lack of detail about locations and units – well, sometimes these works of history are anonymised to an unnecessary degree. The language and style of speech of all the supposed interviewees are very similar – well, the interview records might have been condensed by the interviewer and then they were translated and those processes would tend to homogenise the language somewhat. The accounts are highly dramatic and full of action – well, perhaps he interviewed scores of veterans and selected only the most interesting and exciting accounts. The accounts of hand to hand combat and the effects of various weapons on the bodies of the combatants are reproduced in a level of gory blow-by-blow detail more appropriate to a cheap paperback war novel – well, now I’m starting to wonder.

The final account of book 2 was what finally tripped the alarms on the fake-ometer. The interviewee, name of Bergmann, supposedly relates a tale of how the Germans had a fully developed thermobaric (fuel-air) weapon deployed and operational and ready to be used to destroy the port of Calais if the allies took it. A weapon of that type, if it works efficiently, produces several times the explosive effect of a conventional bomb of the same weight. But the claims made by ‘Bergmann’ are ludicrous – the bomb was powerful enough to destroy an armoured division and potentially lethal to exposed troops at up to 10km from the site of the explosion but small enough to be launched from a truck! ‘Bergmann’ goes on to say that the weapon was redeployed to destroy the armour concentration being readied for Operation Cobra. He was literally moments away from launch (and turning the tide of the war) when by sheer luck an allied fighter-bomber destroyed the launch vehicle. For vague reasons relating to shortage of aluminium, they never built another of these devastating wonder weapons.

My immediate reaction was that Bergmann was a fantasist. Unfortunately, a little digging reveals that Bergmann is not a fantasist, but a fantasy. He’s a made up character and so is every one of the veterans in this fabrication. Read the one-star reviews for books 1 and 2 and the compilation volume. No-one is able to trace the author. No-one is able to trace his grandfather. Accounts can’t be matched to locations. Those accounts that can be matched contradict more reliable sources. Language is used to describe equipment that wasn’t current in the WWII or even ten years after the war. It’s supposed to be the English language version of the German original, but no-one can find the German original. Put all that together with the concerns outlined in my second paragraph and it adds up to fraud.

Why perpetrate the fraud? Well apart from the obvious – to make a fast buck – we have here a number of accounts of the war that are inherently sympathetic to the Germans. Some have suggested that the books were written by an American because they portray the Americans as treating prisoners well etc and I do agree that they may have been written by a native English-speaker. But while genuine accounts of the war by Germans do often display a natural bias, a reluctance to recognise the evils done by ordinary soldiers etc, I have here a sense that the message the author is slyly sending is; “I’m not saying that I agree with these viewpoints, I’m merely recording how the ordinary soldier felt about the war: that the Germans did some bad things but the Allies were just as bad, that even if they didn’t go about it in quite the right way the Germans were really defending European civilisation against the evil Bolshevik horde and the rapacity of American capitalism, that whatever you think of the leadership the ordinary German people’s ideals and war aims were noble” with the intention that these misrepresentations take seed and the reader starts to look more sympathetically not just at the individuals caught up in the situation but at the German people and the National Socialist movement as a whole.

[B Hellqvist]

I would like to ask what the members here think of another Eastern Front book: Hans Roth's "Eastern inferno".
From the description on Amazon:

"This book presents the remarkable personal journals of a German soldier who participated in Operation Barbarossa and subsequent battles on the Eastern Front, revealing the combat experience of the German-Russian War as seldom seen before. Hans Roth was a member of the anti-tank (Panzerjager) battalion, 299th Infantry Division, attached to Sixth Army, as the invasion of Russia began. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. Then a firestorm broke loose as the Wehrmacht tore across the front, forging into the primitive vastness of the East.

During the Kiev encirclement, Roth's unit was under constant attack as the Soviets desperately tried to break through the German ring. At one point, after the enemy had finally been beaten, a friend serving with the SS led him to a site where he witnessed civilians being massacred en masse (which may well have been Babi Yar). After suffering through a horrible winter against apparently endless Russian reserves, his division went on the offensive again, this time on the northern wing of "Case Gelb," the German drive toward Stalingrad. In these journals, attacks and counterattacks are described in "you are there" detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors. When the Soviet counteroffensive of winter 1942 begins, his unit is stationed alongside the Italian 8th Army, and his observations of its collapse, as opposed to the reaction of the German troops sent to stiffen its front, are of special fascination.

Roth’s three journals were discovered many years after his disappearance, tucked away in the home of his brother, with whom he was known to have had a deep bond. After his brother’s death, his family discovered them and quickly sent them to Rosel, Roth’s wife. In time, Rosel handed down the journals to Erika, Roth’s only daughter, who had meantime immigrated to America. Hans Roth was doubtlessly working on a fourth journal before he was reported missing in action in July 1944 during the battle known as the Destruction of Army Group Center. Although Roth’s ultimate fate remains unknown, what he did leave behind, now finally revealed, is an incredible firsthand account of the horrific war the Germans waged in Russia."

While reading the book, I was struck by the level of detail and grasp of the overall tactical and strategic situation in the journals. Usually, soldiers have a rather vague grasp on such things. The third part of the book was less a journal and more like a memoir, as Roth ceased writing down the entries day by day. For being a member of a Panzerjäger unit, there's preciosly little on engagements with tanks, but it seems like he wasn't in a gun crew anyway. I checked the details of his comrades mentioned as KIA, and most of them checked out with the Volksbund entries; names, locations and dates were correct.

Still, while the book is powerful reading, there was something that made it feel different from other accounts. Those of you here who have read it, what are your thoughts?

[Ken S.]

This thread was started by someone claiming to be the translator:
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=90795&hilit=Eastern+Inferno

[WCM2020]

I just completed the book that claims to be based on the translated journals of soldier Hans Roth. I want to believe these are accurate and honest observations by an eyewitness to the brutal combat on the Eastern Front during the war. As his perspectives are not only gripping. But remarkably well-written. There is no doubt the first two-thirds of what I read was richly raw with details of up-close combat, notable awareness of his surroundings and the brutality of winter, and even the mundane aspects of soldiering. But I began to waver in my enthusiasm by the final third of the journal entries as indeed, it read more like the polished prose of an after-the-fact observer turned memoirist and less like a soldier down in the trenches (literally) recording the gritty details of just trying to survive a relentless battle against an unsparing foe. And thus I was left to wonder why the seeming change in style and tone? Especially as Roth could not have known his own fate a year later, in 1944. It almost feels like this final section was written to memorialize a soldier's experiences and not as a day-to-day journal. I WANT to believe Roth and his observations and his entries are REAL. Because this would surely make this book one of the most important accounts of the war in the East from the German perspective. But......
I hope I am off-base.

[Cult Icon]

It's very interesting to me that the PzJ Diary of Hans Roth is being discussed here. I read this memoir shortly after it was published and it, too, struck a cord with me.

What stands out is the vivid, detailed, thoughts of the diary and also Roth's hatred of the Soviets, including comments about witnessing war crimes and beating prisoners. And IIRC he even admits to beating a prisoner in one entry. It is also a miserable, nightmare-ish diary.

Maybe the memoir was "too good" because it was spiced up by someone with research skills and talent in prose?