Soldat - Hardcover

Siegfried Knappe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1853104396 ISBN 13: 9781853104398

Publisher: Airlife Publishing Ltd, 1993

Synopsis

Paris. The Somme. The Italian Campaign. The Russian Front. And inside Hitler’s bunker during The Battle of Berlin . . . World War II through the eyes of a solider of the Reich.

Siegfried Knappe fought, was wounded, and survived battles in nearly every major Wehrmacht campaign. His astonishing career begins with Hitler’s rise to power—and ends with a five-year term in a Russian prison camp, after the Allies rolled victoriously into the smoking rubble of Berlin. The enormous range of Knappe’s fighting experiences provides an unrivaled combat history of World War II, and a great deal more besides.

Based on Knappe’s wartime diaries, filled with 16 pages of photos he smuggled into the West at war’s end, Soldat delivers a rare opportunity for the reader to understand how a ruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinary Germans to carry out his monstrous schemes . . . and offers stunning insight into the life of a soldier in Hitler’s army.

“Remarkable! World War II from inside the Wehrmacht.”—Kirkus Reviews

About this title

About the Author:

Siegfried Knappe (1917-2008) was a soldier in the Wehrmacht, the German Army, before being captured by the Russians.

From Kirkus Reviews:

World War II from inside the Wehrmacht. Knappe, one of the Third Reich's best and brightest, trained under Rommel and distinguished himself rapidly, meeting the F hrer as a young peacetime soldier. He lived and fought through most of the major campaigns (France, Russia, Italy, the defense of Berlin), cheating death time after time, surviving for nearly five years as a Russian prisoner. Here, aided by Brusaw (The Business Writer's Handbook--not reviewed), Knappe offers precise, affecting memories of the WW II era--of his family, his circle, and a Jewish friend who had to leave Germany; of the way people lived in different places he was billeted, and of the textures of his life: the Russian winter and the hell of combat are palpable. No everyman, Knappe comes off as sensitive as well as dutiful, and remorseless in his respect for his own life. Yet the self-deceptions of nationalism and war appear in justifying asides here and there. He was bothered by the use of children in the war, he tells us, but outraged when a teenaged leader failed to report that they had fled their position, and he was nonplussed by a Russian woman who thought Fascism would be as bad as Communism. His memoir displays an unnerving acceptance of an establishment: There is no hint of civil disobedience. Knappe was disturbed about the treatment of Jews and wondered, ``Why invade Russian when we have a treaty?''- -but his ethic of discipline did not allow him the initiative of those who plotted to kill Hitler. Withal, a superb description of the German war machine from creation to defeat, and a fine, absorbing chronicle of a remarkable time. (Forty-five b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Airlife Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1853104396
• ISBN 13: 9781853104398
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384