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The Forgotten Soldier | 
 enlarge | Author: Guy Sajer
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy Used: $6.55
You Save: $13.40 (67%)
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Rating:  192 reviews
Sales Rank: 24652
Media: Paperback
Pages: 476
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1574882864
Dewey Decimal Number: 355
EAN: 9781574882865
ASIN: 1574882864
Publication Date: October 15, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This book recountsthe horror of World War II on the eastern front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer’s war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov.
His German footsoldier’s perspective makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." Now it has been handsomely republished as a hardcover containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the eastern front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This volume is a deluxe edition of a true classic.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 187 more reviews...
 Poignant and Powerful. July 2, 2004
Bernard Chapin (CHICAGO! USA)
105 out of 111 found this review helpful
This is simply one of the most memorable and important books that I've ever encountered. I first read it in 1994 and it remains as vivid in my mind today as it did on the day ten years ago that I finished it. I have heard questions regarding its historical accuracy but can only say that his account of the nature of war can be supported by other German memoirs of the Eastern Front such as "The Black March." Was the GrossDeutschland Division in all the places that he claimed? Perhaps not, but I will say that, as the Eastern Front disintegrated, it was far from unusual for scratch companies to be formed regardless of where the units derived. Either way, it's a magnificent read. His desription of the Hitler Jugend before the battle of Belgorod is absolutely priceless with their banners reading "The World Belongs to Us." In chapter four, his romance with the Berlin girl Paula happens to be one of the most engaging and believable relationships I've ever run across in print. I've read it aloud to high school students and they loved it. The book should appeal to anybody who has experienced passion.
Full Metal Jacket of WWII October 21, 2000
K. Ambrose (San Francisco, CA United States)
72 out of 99 found this review helpful
If any young person you know has a glorified view of warfare, give them this book. I gurantee it will cure them of such idiocy. I don't believe anyone could read this book and ever glorify warfare again. It's that shocking. Absoluteley a must read and own for anyone interested in WWII or anyone wanting an understanding of war in modern times.
 Vivid (And Longwinded) Account of the Eastern Front Collapse September 9, 2004
A. Ross (Washington, DC)
44 out of 53 found this review helpful
One of the essential preparations for modern warfare is to deny the humanity of one's enemy. This makes it much easier in psychological terms to both kill, and then to live with the knowledge that one has killed. And in the years following the end of WWII, the disclosure of the full extent of the Holocaust has done this in reverse. It's hard to imagine regular people committing such acts, and shades of gray are tossed out the window, so that the entire German military is equated with the Nazi party, and thus evil. For younger Americans, Nazis are cartoon villains invoked whenever a villain of unquestionable evil is required. And German soldiers in field gray are usually faceless automatons (see, for example, Saving Private Ryan, the Band of Brothers series, the Medal of Honor video game).
For anyone seeking an alternate perspective of the common German soldier, this book is an invaluable (if overlong) work. Sajer was a half-German, half-French teenager of conflicted identity who enlisted in the Wehrmacht in order to be part of something glorious (although he never really seems clear what that is). Like so many naive young men seduced by the idea of war and being a soldier, it doesn't take long for reality to intrude. Following a vigorous training, he becomes part of the Rollbahn supply corps. Hundreds of pages of sheer terror follow, as he and his friends are thrown into the maw of the Eastern front.
Most people have more than a passing knowledge of WWII know that the Eastern front was a big mistake on the part of the Germans. Between the insane winters, the overstretched supply lines, constant partisan harassment, and ultimately, the sheet number of Red Army troops, the Germans never had a chance. Knowing that on a strategic level is one thing, but hearing about what this meant to the average soldier on the ground is something else. And hearing it from someone who was there is even more compelling. You've never read about being cold like this. Cold that cracked the hands and caused sores so that men would urinate on each other's hands in order to provide brief relief. Hunger was the other major issue, and it's impossible to conceive of men living in such conditions surviving on the meager portions available.
Terror and misery is the major theme of the book, as the front collapses and Sajer spends most of the war retreating. He and his friends volunteer for the Gross Deutschland, a renown SS division, which doesn't appreciably improve their plight. Although they were previously running supplies to front line positions, they now find themselves manning positions in rearguard actions, constantly being strafed by Russian airplanes who began to control the sky, and often on the verge of being overrun by Russian tanks or infantry. As Sajer's unit falls back through the Ukraine and over the Baltic coast and into Prussia, the chaos is palpable and it seems remarkable that the German army managed to remain any semblance of order. And ultimately, it simply becomes a matter of racing to find some British or American troops to surrender to before the Russians catch up.
That's one of the several minor flaws of the book, the Russians are entirely portrayed as barely human savage hordes who would mindlessly throw themselves into battle, complete with war cries. Granted, the German soldier was probably indoctrinated to think of them that way, but Sajer only occasionally displays any empathy for them as fellow soldiers. Another minor problem is that the book is awfully long-winded. There's a lot of interesting detail, but the problem is that you have to sometimes slog through uninteresting detail to find it. There's also a saccharine love story that seems very hokey.
It should be noted that there have been claims made that the book is a fake, and that Sajer made the whole thing up. These claims focus on particular details and have been fairly convincingly rebutted in a vigorous debate that took place in publications like Army Journal, (copies of these exchanges can be found online fairly easily). It's worth noting that since the book's original French publication in 1967, no one has disputed its description of life for the German soldier on the Eastern front. Others have criticized the book on the grounds that it attempts to engender sympathy for an army that destroyed Europe and made the Holocaust possible, and that, essentially, "they got what they deserved." To a certain extent this is valid, since Sajer has said repeatedly that the book is a tribute to his fellow soldiers and to their bravery and suffering. But if one does feel sympathy for Sajer and his fellow soldiers, it at least means that the reader has a true sense of the horror of war and will keep this knowledge in mind when the next time their own country rushes to battle.
 Riddled with Errors...A Novel, Not Fact December 30, 2005
Michael Slater (Ashburn, VA United States)
43 out of 67 found this review helpful
Sager is a myth. The book is a novel, not nonfiction. Proof? Well, lets begin with Sager's supposed assignment to a Rollbahn unit. There were no such units. Rollbahn = Road, not a unit. Move forward to Sager's account of witnessing a daylight bombing raid over Berlin in the spring of 1943, months before the Battle of Kursk. Sorry Sager. The first daylight raid over Berlin was flown in March 1944 -- one year later. Sager couldn't have witnessed this raid because there wasn't one. Then Sager claims to have witnessed Hitler Youth boys participating in the battle of Kursk wearing of all things, their HY uniforms. Sorry Sager. No Hitler Youth fought at Kursk and the Third Reich did not outfit its grenadiers in HY uniforms. Then Sager claims to have fought at Konotop. But the history of the German 183rd Infantry Division, the unit that did defend Konotop in the fall of 1943, makes no mention of the Grossdeutschland Division's presense anywhere near the city. Nor is the GD located on the copy of the situation map inside the book. (Weg und Schicksal der 183. Infanterie-Division, for anyone who is interested.) Why doesn't the 183rd Infantry Division's history mention the GD's presence? Because the GD was nowhere near the city---and neither was Sager. Then take Sager's account of the GD division's participation in anti-partisan duties. Sorry, Sager, but the three-volume history of the GD Division doesn't mention that one of its units was fighting partisans. Why not? Because the GD Division had other fish to fry. Being a fully motorized / mechanized unit, the GD was too busy tangling with Red Army tank corps to fight partisans. Then, why doesn't Sager mention the Battle of Targul Frumos in Romania? Not a peep. This was the GD Division's last major victory in the east. Anyone who fought there would remember the fight. But not Sager. Why? Because he wasn't there. Finally, the author of the GD Division's history, Helmuth Spaeter, went to his grave stating that Sager was a fraud. So if you want to read an OK novel about the Eastern Front, read the Forgotten Soldier. If you want to read a great novel, then start with the Cross of Iron and then read, If This Be Glory. Both were written by men who fought in the East wearing the uniform of the German Army. As for Sager, if lazy historians would stop quoting him in nonfiction accounts of the war in the East, they'd improve their scholarship.
 MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT October 3, 2006
Gregory Moss (Diamond Bar, CA United States)
30 out of 45 found this review helpful
Before reading this controversial book, I did some research into the argument that Sajer's memoir is or is not authentic and came away from it sitting on the fence. I had to read this book and judge it for myself, having read more than a few memoirs from the German side previously. Although it has been claimed that Guy Sajer is a real person who did fight in the Wehrmacht, my sources relate that Sajer did not defend the book as a meticulous eye-witness account of the battles he was in or of the time frame in which they were fought. Essentially, Sajer says that his book is more about feelings than about facts. It is an impression of war and not a history book, so fact and accuracy take a back seat to the author's purpose of creating a mood.
With that in mind, my first reaction was that the book does not live up to the hype of the many rave reviews I've read on it. It did not draw me into itself as did "Blood Red Snow" by Gunther K Koschorrek, nor did it amaze me as did "In Deadly Combat" by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann, surely the best German WWII memoir I've read to date. The prose in Sajer's work throws out red flags all over the place. For example, the dialogue reads nothing like the authentic dialogue in the two memoirs mentioned above and, moreover, nothing like that in Voss' "Black Edelweiss," Knappe's "Soldat," or von Luck's "Panzer Commander."
In those memoirs dialogue is sparse and tight. There are no long conversations about the nature of this or that because no one writing from memory can possibly come close to remembering or duplicating words spoken years before, especially words spoken in the steel rain of combat. Sajer's book has too much detailed dialogue, as if he were writing a novel and crafting characters rather than penning a memoir. Even his thoughts have been incredibly preserved and put down on page after page after page ad nauseam. When you are retreating through ice and snow, about to be gobbled up by a relentless and brutal enemy, the only thought you have is of survival.
In addition, this "memoir" goes into great detail about many things other memoirists leave out because of faded memories, and the prose Sajer uses turns somewhat purple in many places. He says the Soviets are upon them, but somehow they miraculously escape. He reaches the end of his rope, weakened by hunger and exhaustion, and the reader expects him to succumb and get captured or die. Yet he knows that cannot be because there are still hundreds of pages to plow through. And sure enough, another miraculous surge of strength rescues Sajer as he overcomes insurmountable odds to live and fight again.
I found "The Forgotten Soldier" a tiring and unconvincing read, and I was glad when it was finally over. Too many close calls, too many miraculous escapes, too much bad dialogue. I had been spoiled by the genuine article and had little patience for this overwrought piece of fiction that may or may not be based on actual events, and that probably does not chronicle the war years of actual human beings. I highly doubt that Sajer's book is the real deal and do not recommend it. Even as pure fiction, the book is third-rate at best. If you want to read a memoir that has the ring of truth to it, spend your time with Bidermann, Koschorrek, von Luck, Voss or Knappe. That's where the real gold is. In fact, if you read only Bidermann's somber and reflective tour de force, and you will realize that "The Forgotten Soldier" cannot hold a candle to it.
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