Through Hell for Hitler: A Dramatic First-Hand Account of Fighting on the Eastern Front With the Wehrmacht

Here is the extraordinary story of one man’s war. This book portrays the gradual awakening in the mind of a young Hitler Youth ‘educated’ soldier of a Panzer Division, bogged down in the bitterest fighting on the Eastern Front, to the truth of the criminal character of what he is involved in.

Having in mind that about 9 out of 10 German soldiers who died in WWII were killed in Russia, the book throws light on the largely unreported heroic sacrifices of Soviet soldiers and civilians often against seemingly hopeless odds, without which Europe might well have fallen to fascism. It deals less with grand strategies, tactics and military technicalities than with the human involvement of ordinary people, from both sides, who were caught up in that enormity of a tragedy, that epic struggle in Russia.

It throws light on the chasm which existed between officers and men in the sharply class-divided Wehrmacht with most of the top rank officers having been drawn from the old imperial aristocracy.

Henry Metelmann was born into a working class family in Altona, near Hamburg, on Christmas Day, 1922. A member of the Hitler Youth, he was called up into the Wehrmacht in 1940, becoming a panzerjager, or rank driver. After service in France, his unit went via the Southern Russian Front to Stalingrad. After the Battle of Kursk, his unit moved to Polan and then Austria. Surrendering in 1945, he was a POW in America and then Britain. After a short time in Germany, he returned to Britain and worked on the railways until his retirement and now lives in Surrey.