Shadows of War : A German Soldier's Lost Photographs of World War II

Rating:
Summary: Rare Photographs Telling an Unusual Story
Review: There are hundreds of books on World War II. This one is unique. Willi Rose was drafted into the German Army in 1939 and served as a motorcycle messenger until captured in Poland in 1945. Throughout his service he carried a camera and took some 500 photographs from France to Russia. These are photos of ordinary German soldiers going about doing ordinary things eating, playing cards, talking. There is a almost nothing of war in the pictures, except of course the uniforms and equipment.

This book presents a view of the war seldom seen, and in my memory, never of the German side. You just don't think of the German soldier as a man like the rest of us. It changes your whole view of history.