June 24th, 2008
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 | Write heavy; write hard. | | Join Date: April 10th, 2005
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 Re: Forgotten Hope News Update: 18th June 2008
Quote:
Originally Posted by F.Spartacus  Yeah, straight translation. But "Grunt" is more in the right direction. | Yeah, sort of like "Dogface", etc. Quote:
Originally Posted by H.Moleman Esq. Wow. This one is definitely going on my ever-growing 'to read' list. |
Gunther Koschorrek's book is one of my three favorite memoirs by German soldiers. Gripping. Link: Blood Red Snow: Memoirs Of A German Soldier On Ther Eastern Front. Here's my review from an earlier post: I have found a new classic, and can recommend it very highly. Blood Red Snow: The Memoir Of A German Soldier On The Eastern Front, by Gunter Koschorrek, is outstanding in every sense. It captures more vividly than almost any other memoir I have read the terror of the Eastern Front fighting. It could have used a closer editing eye for some mistakes in grammar (translation problem perhaps?) and tense, and Koschorreck calls the Russian smgs "Kalashnikovs" (wrong war), but these mistakes I can overlook because of the electrifying sense of reality that he brings.
Koschorrek was a heavy machinegunner, and he goes into fairly good detail about the technical aspects of his job: emplacement, bunkering, the numerous barrel changes required, the continuing problem with bad ammunition that endangered his entire unit. His descriptions of fighting off attack after Russian attack are fantastic. His story of being overrun and having T-34s grind his comrades into mush is like nothing I've ever read.
Koschorrek's account is from scraps of a diary he secretly made during the war, parts of which he gave to his family at various times in the war for safekeeping. He does not appear to have been a deep political thinker, and while apparently not a Nazi, he clearly was ready to believe German propaganda, even about who massacred the inhabitants of ruined Russian villages he passed through. By the end of the war he had grown disillusioned with the Nazi leadership as well as the Army leaders; he had given up fighting for Germany, and fought for his fellow soldiers only.
I'm considering if I should place Blood Red Snow above Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier as the single best WWII German soldier's memoir. For one thing, I don't have to wonder if Koschorrek is a real person. Second, sometimes I wonder if Sajer might have been "gilding the lily" about the timing and depth of his own disenchantment with Nazism. Koschorrek is not ideologically pure, and he's not the writer that Sajer was, but perhaps that gives Blood Red Snow more credibility than Soldier.
If you buy WWII memoirs, you must have this. If you are a devotee of the Eastern Front war, you must have this. If you want to know how a German heavy machinegunner did his job, you must have this. IMO the book is that good.
Then the premier book of WWII sniping. It goes into detail about tactics and some technical aspects of sniping and camouflage. Sniper On The Eastern Front: The Memoirs Of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross. From an earlier review here: I recommend highly Sepp Allerberger's memoir, Sniper On The Eastern Front. He was an Austrian sniper with well over 250 confirmed kills (the #2 German ranking) with 3rd Gebirgsjager Division, serving almost continuously from July 1943 until war's end in what proved to be a single slow withdrawal from Ukraine into Poland, Romania, Hungary and Czecchoslovakia.
He's the real goods, and you'll see what care and planning a good sniper put into the choosing of multiple positions, methods of ingress and egress, secondary and tertiary positions, etc. Surprisingly, Allerberger was used as much to conduct recon, and cover wihdrawals or to perfoirm "overwatch" during attacks, as he was in the classic role of sniper in hiding waiting for a victim. He also had the job of counter-sniper, and when Russian snipers were encountered (once in company strength!) it was his job to hunt him or her down. He shows how sniping was done by the most experienced (and longest surviving) marksmen. He is adamant that shooting skills were really of secondary importance to that of the ability to scout out good and secure positions from which a clean escape could be made.
An interesting note to Allerberger's book is that he seemed to have few friends in his unit, and none really close. The landsers of his unit were happy for him to save their hides during withdrawal or while covering them in attacks, but otherwise he seemed to be something of a pariah, no doubtlaboring under the well known sniper's burden of being shunned for his "cold-blooded" killing.
If you have more than a passing interest in WWII sniping, Sniper On The Eastern Front is for you.
The classic of the German experience on the Eastern Front: The Forgotten Soldier Quote:
Originally Posted by Kev4000 | Heh: Teacher-Parent Group Furious at Wikipedia - "Littered With Inaccuracies"
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And also says that the face that he was on the heavy MG is probably the only reason he survived the war, refusing to be promoted to NCO ranks as it would mean he wouldn't be allowed to use his MG. 
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