Great eastern front memoir!Fantastic!

cornelunc said:
Sniper on the Eastern Front is the best. You cannot stop reading all night.
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What really bothered me about that book are his descriptions of incidents where he waits and watches horrible scenes of torture and murder through his sniper scope, allowing the perpetrators to finish just before he opens fire and executes them all like some sort of avenging angel from above. Specifically the incident where he watches his friend being murdered by turncoat Romanians, and the case of the Hungarian woman who is gang-raped, tortured and murdered in the street by the Soviets. Of course from the comfort of my safe Canadian armchair I cannot say what a realistic action in such a situation would be, but it felt as if there was some creative writing going on there for dramatic effect or sympathy.
 
Quiet said:
What really bothered me about that book are his descriptions of incidents where he waits and watches horrible scenes of torture and murder through his sniper scope, allowing the perpetrators to finish just before he opens fire and executes them all like some sort of avenging angel from above. Specifically the incident where he watches his friend being murdered by turncoat Romanians, and the case of the Hungarian woman who is gang-raped, tortured and murdered in the street by the Soviets. Of course from the comfort of my safe Canadian armchair I cannot say what a realistic action in such a situation would be, but it felt as if there was some creative writing going on there for dramatic effect or sympathy.
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I guess when you see almost weekly for years peoples going dead, will start to loose sensibility. My grandpa refused constanly to talk with me about Eastern Front. He just told me that the horror of the Eastern Front was beyond description.
 
Another great one is:

"Feuer: An Artilleryman's Life on the Eastern Front" by Werner Adamczyk
Hard to find and expensive but worth it.There is some problem with the copyright is why it hasn't been reprinted.

One of the best older ones is:

"Moscow Tram Stop: A Doctor's Experiences with the German Spearhead in Russia" by Heinrich Dr. Haape
The good news is it will be finally be reprinted this year!

https://www.amazon.com/Moscow-Tram-Stop-Experiences-Spearhead/dp/081173790X
 
Desert_Fox said:
Sniper on the Eastern front is a great read, but I’m quite sure it’s not an actual memoir. If it is, it’s most likely highly embellished...
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I agree. Of all the memoirs I’ve read in the short time I’ve been at them, it’s my least favourite. Not sure the events are embellished, but quoting the Mongolian troops from a survivor who didn’t speak Russian and maybe told Sepp? Some of it seems off. There’s no shame on having gaps in the story and such as a memoir, but this one fills in gaps I think.
 
Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936-1949 Mass Market Paperback – Aug 9 1993
by Siegfried Knappe (Author)
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.
 
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