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Summary: Every politician should be made to read...
Review: A classic account of the terror and sheer destruction of war. If you were affected by the opening scenes of Steven Speilberg's "Saving Private Ryan", this book is sure deliver the same impressions of one of the Second World War's lessor glorified but most destructive of campaigns. To imagine the mud, snow, ice, wind of an endlessly barren landscape and the thousands of tanks and waves of soldiers thrown at one another by their respective commanders is confronting in itself. For the picture to be painted by a soldier who started his campaign at 16, is to bring home the unimaginable horror that must have confronted every soldier who saw combat in the ebb and flow of the Russian Front. Powerful scenes of combat and the camaraderie of the private soldier are recounted in a vivid and confronting style, the writer at times deliberately unable to describe the scenes undoubtedly replayed in his mind. The final pages contain perhaps one of the most brutalising occurances of Sajer's account, as he is returned to "normality" - somewhat incongruous after having fought halfway across Russia and back, but emotionally devastating. Any politician who reads accounts such as this and still orders troops to war lacks the essential humanity they sell to us with interest at election time.
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Summary: Great first hand account of war on the Russian Front, but..
Review: First of all, the good news. This is an absorbing read, and if you ever wondered what it actually felt to be a member of what was quite possibly the most professionally accomplished killing machine in history, this book will give it to you. However, what makes the book different from similar accounts of the Russian Front is that Sajer fleshes out the characters like a good novelist, bringing his friends Hals, 'The Veteran,' and his chivalrous Hauptmann to life right on the pages.And this may indeed be the problem with 'The Forgotten Soldier.' Several Wehrmacht history sites on the internet have featured intense speculation as to whether Sajer's book is completely truthful, and there are some instances which call his veracity into question. For example, the personnel rosters for his division ('GrossDeutchland') show no captain on its roles with the last name Sajer gives him. Was he trying to protect the family? We don't know, and Sajer does not say that he has altered any names. He also makes a few mistakes with regard to ordnance specifics. So, what do we have? Either a misty, flawed recollection of a time log gone, or a work of fiction? I tend to side with the former, as talking to any old soldier will soon show you that they never seem to get their facts completely right (to most D-day veterans every German tank was a huge 'Tiger' tank). Still, I recommend you investigate this book if you are interested in World War II from the German perspective.
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Summary: The classic WW II horror
Review: When I bought that book I hoped for some memoirs full of tactical data. But it's nothing like this. Sayer's autobiography is so personal that I somethimes didn't know what to think about it. One doesn't find here any valuable military data, but endless horror of war in Russia from perspective of 16 years old boy (in 42). If you read that book carefully you would understand why german army colud fight 6 years and spirit of troops never been broken even till early 45.
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Summary: This book should be the next Spielberg movie...
Review: The definitive autobiograpy of the "typical" Wehrmacth soldier. No Nazi ideology, no theories on whether or not the war was "just", nothing like that....Just "true grit". I am serious when I say that a guy like Spielberg could make this the next great WW2 movie. Providing some objectivity to the German soldier's plight during the period 1942-1945 when all the Nazis did was retreat, this book was impossible to put down. Highly recommended...I read the paperback version when I borrowed it from a friend, but I am going to buy the new hardcover version when it is re-released later this year.
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Summary: WWII Version of All Quiet on the Western Front
Review: This book is the best first hand account of war I have ever read. It starts off rather slowly, but the last 2/3 of the book is a continuous battery of some of the most brutal fighting of the second world war. It is more vivid and captivating than All Quiet on the Western Front and is the paradigm of what a soldier's account of war should be. Particularly striking are descriptions of the Russian winters, artillery barrages, massed assaults, and the final hellish retreat out of Russia. Look no further if you desire to read a painful account of life in the trenchs of the third reich
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Summary: True War
Review: I have long strived to find out what "the real war" was like. I've talked to WWII and Vietnam vets, read the personal accounts, read the books, seen the movies, etc. It's true that the victors write the history books. And consequently, you're always told one side of the story. Guy Sajer's masterpiece is the best of the BEST, bar none. It accomplishes several goals that have never been as fully acheived as in The Forgotten Soldier. Never before has the horror of battle and the stress of long-term combat been so vividly detailed. Never before has the closeness and brotherhood of soldiering been so well portrayed. Perhaps the most remarkable accomplishment is that for the first time ever, you don't walk away from this book cursing the Nazi soldiers. One realizes that the grunts on the other side were patriotic humans just like you and me, swept up in the camraraderie and huzzahs of a nation going off to war. They had no concept of the evil that their Fuhrer was involved in; they just wanted their share of the glory of a rising nation. Sadly, millions of brave young German boys had to die countless tragic deaths, for a poor cause. READ IT NOW!
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Summary: The way war really is.
Review: Guy Sajer's "The Forgotten Soldier" was difficult to read, even for a seasoned military history nut like me. I have read hundreds of similar books from all periods of history and have never been affected by the absolute terror and misery Mr. Sajer portrays in his account. At times my feet and fingers tingled with the icy cold of the Russian winter. I could almost smell the death and hear the horrendous sound of the oncoming Russian army. Most of my study has been in the period of 1861-1865, the War Between the States, and I could not help but compare this to the forced retreat of General Robert E. Lee and his tenacious Confederates from Wilderness in 1864 to the foul trenches in Petersburg to the final surrender at appomattox. Starvation, lack of sleep, rags for uniforms, freezing cold, and a feeling of hopelessness are common in the two periods. War is hell.
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Summary: Should be required reading in High School History
Review: The Forgotten Soldier is a gut-wrenching, spellbinding, horrific read. Enemy and comrade are depicted as men. The author describes the terrible devastation of Germany and her armed forces without resorting to hate-filled descriptions of the enemy. His pain is everyones pain. Soviet and German alike. The description of Germays last, heroic stand, against gigantic odds, with examples of individual courage is something I will never be able to forget. An education for those whose knowledge of the history of WWII is limited to the PBS and cable programs. The great percentage of German soldiers were men like any other, who loved, suffered and died. In no other book I have read has this been made so apparent. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.
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Summary: compelling reading
Review: To be honest, I've always been a little bit leery of first-person war autobiographies. When it comes to "saying how it was", I've actually found historians to be more compelling; John Keegan's The Face of Battle certainly provides, though research and scholorship, a compelling and believable account of what it was like to be there, relatively untainted by bias. This, though, is an exceptionally well-written (or should that be well-translated? I don't know) account of one man's experience on the Eastern Front in WWII. In as much as I have read quite a few books on the Eastern Front, none of them ever presented the reality of the situation as clearly as The Forgotten Soldier. Or, perhaps I should say more realistically, attempted to present - as I'm sure those of us who have never toted a rifle can never really understand what it was like. I have an intellectual understanding that it was awfully cold out there, but reading this certainly brings it home in a way that scholarly history can't. The Forgotten Soldier provides a real human sense of the conflict - not just the battles but the quest for survival under appalling conditions. In fact, the descriptions of the battles are not the strongest parts of the book and the author admits as much in the text. It's the cold, the mud, the ever-presence of the enemy, standing in line for food, the hope of seeing home again, and the fear that you will never be able to adapt to peace. When I was younger, I read a lot of mediocre 50's grade history, and was taught the same in school. It's the books like this that are such crucial elements of understanding historical events that never seem to be taught, at least not in the history most of us get in school. Sure, it must be admitted that Guy Sajer has his own secrets that he does not divulge in his book; one reviewer says the book is as interesting for what it doesn't say as for what it does. I agree this is both true and crucial; as history, it should be coupled with some of the excellent, modern, readable history such as Anthony Bevor's "Stalingrad". Nontheless, I don't think anyone can say they have any understanding of World War II in the East - at least from the German side - until they have read this book. The real tragedy is that we don't have an equivilent tome from a Soviet soldier, or at least not one that's been as widely accepted in the West. While Guy Sajer's story is compelling, it is important to remember what he represents. The plight of the Soviet soldiers he was fighting was often worse, and their life expectancies certainly shorter.
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Summary: probably the ultimate story of ww2
Review: At first I was disappointed because Sajer is a Frenchman with a German mother, so the story only starts mid-war. So there's no invasion of Poland and the Western campaign. But it's authentic: when the war lasted foreigners were drafted into the Wehrmacht. Sajer's story is told through the eyes of a combat soldier with only one desire: survival! He starts out as a member of a supply unit before entering the elite Gross Deutschland motorised infantry division. (Only elite division outside the SS were allowed the carry a name.) As part of Armee Gruppe Mitte the Gross Deutschland division is almost whiped out during the ferocious combat on the Eastern Front and this is the story of that destruction. From winter 1942/3 onwards Sayer tells the story you know from history books: the battles against the freezing cold, the partisan, the endless waves of attacking russian tanks, the chaos of the german retreat, the suffering through shortage of food while others hold back these supplies. Sajer's story isn't the story of a thinking man, it's the realtime story of a man who wants to survive during suffering, who has no time to think! That's the only down-side of this book: there's no criticism of Nazi-Germany. But then again: this men witnessed combat and managed to survive. And it's not the duty of a combat soldier to think. Sajer greatest achievement is that he takes the reader inside himself: the story grips you by the throat and the reader suffers with Sajer. Effectively the reader becomes Sajer and only the very best stories manage that! He achieves this because he doesn't hold back and show his deepest thoughts and goes into detail. If you want the true story of life as a combat soldier, than you only have to read this book! BUY IT! NOW!
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