#268
Post
by auggie_o » 20 Aug 2009, 05:31
This is a review of the book that I wrote after reading it about a year ago... and I have done a lot of research since then and my opinion still stands...
I read this book from cover to cover in a little over a week because I could not find it in me to put it down. I've been a WWII buff for longer than I can remember, especially when it comes the the German side of the war. This book was a god-send! It is very rare to be able to find a book written from the German point of view, especially from a German grunts point of view. Many of the German memoirs out there are written by officers in the various branches of the Wehrmacht, and they read like after-action reports. Very technical and dry. This book is written with the focus more on what it actually physically and mentally felt like to be on the East Front. I read it from the comfort of a warm chair, but the descriptions he gave of the frozen hell that they went through often made me shiver.
As far as the "controversy" that has been raging over this book about weather it is fact or fiction, I have to admit, is ridiculous and even a little childish. I've read the essays that have been written both for and against this books creditability. The argument that this author made everything up, or even twisted the truth, has no legs to stand on.
The essay that made the argument that this book was fake contained several weak points. One point stated that Guy's unit was never in some of the places that he claims to have been. Well, as a avid reader of many WWII German books, I can tell you that from 1941 till the end of the war German units as a whole were seldom used as one cohesive fighting force. Rather they were often broken up into kamphgruppen and attached to other units for periods of time. Especially towards the end of the war. Guy said it himself in his book that he and a few of his close comrades would often get taken away from their "assigned" unit and get put into hodgepodged units for special duties, patrols, or attacks. So if you go and check the official German records and they say that a certain unit, such as the GD, was at a certain place on a certain date, that may be true for the majority of soldiers within that unit, but not for all of them.
Another point that that "nay-sayer" essay makes is something trivial about the uniform of the Gross Deutchland. Every good WWII buff knows that the German "elite" divisions in both the SS and the Wehrmacht wore cuff titles. And most WWII buffs even know that the SS wore their cuff titles on their left sleeve while the Heer and the Luftwaffe units wore theirs on their right sleeve. In the book, Guy mentions that the day he received his Gross Deutchland cuff title he sewed it onto his left sleeve. So the author of that essay I mentioned earlier states that because Guy wrote about putting his cuff title on the wrong sleeve that is supposed to mean that the whole book is a fake. Are you kidding me? Guy Sajer wrote the book 20 years after the war was over, and mostly late at night when he would sit and recall all the bad memories that he said he had suppressed for 20 years. You can't tell me that he might have remembered things a little differently than they actually happened. Or that he might have even forgotten a few of the details over time. Guy even states right in the book that he had held back these memories for so long that there are things that he just couldn't remember. Several times he tells of retreating though towns in Russia that he can't remember the name of. He and his comrades walked hundreds of miles in retreat from the Red Army. If you were running away from a horrible enemy and fearing for your life, do you think you would remember the names of ALL the towns you went through? I think not. Heck, I was stationed in California when I was in and I can't remember the names of some of the towns I drank in on leave. All that I'm saying is that this was a GREAT read. If you are looking for a technical book that gives you every detail about troop movements, uniforms, weapons, and equipment, this is not the book for you. Go buy and encyclopedia or something. But if you are looking for a book about what it FELT like to be a German soldier on the ground in Russia... What is was like to be right in the middle of such battles as Kursk and Karkov.... And what spending a month sleeping in a hole in the frozen Russian earth and not eating anything for days.... Then this is the book for you!
Sgt. "Auggie"
USMC
L Battery 3/11