GoldLyrics.com - Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front

List Price: $18.99 Our Price: $12.91 Your Save: $ 6.08 ( 32% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Manufacturer: Zenith Press Average Customer Rating: Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 940.548243 EAN: 9780760321980 Feature: ISBN13: 9780760321980 ISBN: 0760321981 Label: Zenith Press Manufacturer: Zenith Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 288 Publication Date: 2005-10-30 Publisher: Zenith Press Studio: Zenith Press Features ISBN13: 9780760321980 Condition: NEW Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices Related Items In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front (Modern War Studies (Paper)) Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS AT LENINGRAD'S GATES: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936-1949 The Good Soldier: From Austrian Social Democracy to Communist Captivity with a Soldier of Panzer-Grenadier Division "Grossdeutschland" Editorial Reviews: For the German soldier fighting under Hitler, keeping a diary was strictly forbidden. So Gunther Koschorrek, a fresh young recruit, wrote his notes on whatever scraps of paper he could find and sewed the pages into the lining of his winter coat. Left with his mother on his rare trips home, this illicit diary eventually was lost—and did not come to light until some 40 years later when Koschorrek was reunited with his daughter in America. It is this remarkable document, a unique day-to-day account of the common German soldier’s experience, that makes up the memoir that is Blood Red Snow. Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Interesting account of Stalingrad from a soldier outside the cauldron Comment: This book complements other first-hand accounts of the Stalingrad battle (from the German perspective), but is authored by an enlisted man who was stationed in a support unit outside of the City. It provides a decent picture of life in the German army at that time and place, along with laconic accounts of other assignments, such as the pursuit of Italian partisans. Like almost all books of this nature, the author alleges that he knew absolutely nothing about war crimes, except for the atrocities committed by Russians. Indeed, this author's narrative almost reads like the memoirs of a conquering hero whose primary regret is that the "good guys" lost the War. If you take another self-serving treatment of the War by German military personnel, go ahead and read it. Customer Rating: Summary: Superb despite flaws Comment: Here on Amazon, some very good points and valid criticisms have been made about this book. For decades, I have been intensely interested in the Russian-German war of 1941-1945. I too read this book very critically. Still, despite the already-discussed criticisms, I think that this book recounts the author's authentic experience. For example, to put it mildly, his description of his time in Stalingrad paints a word picture, though brief, so compelling and affecting that I had to put the book down for some minutes. It is in the nature of oral history to be flawed when compared to formal history written by professional historians. Oral history is nevertheless recognized as valuable. What is important is that we remain aware of the shortcomings of the oral history genre. Allow me to use myself as an example. If I were to recount my experiences from 1967 - 1969 (27 months) in Viet Nam with the 101ST Airborne Division, virtually all of that time in the mountains, my account would most likely be factually wrong in many specifics, and exaggerated in other cases. For example, instead of four enemy soldiers walking down a trail, I could see myself easily revising history and saying eight North Vietnamese soldiers were walking down a trail. The above is a clumsy example, but I am only trying to illustrate a typical problem with oral history. Inaccuracies can result because of simple memory lapses or because of human nature; Malice, I think, is rare. To repeat, despite its flaws, some of which are jarring indeed, I like this book very much. Customer Rating: Summary: Interesting story from a front-line soldier Comment: In the genre of German soldier memoirs on the Eastern Front during WWII, this is a great find. Although it is not as fast-paced as some (such as "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer), one has the feeling that it is probably that much more authentic. Written based on the Author's wartime notes several decades after the war, he offers a comparatively less emotional but more sobering view of the war. His tale is an amazing set of circumstances, both because of his many narrow escapes (and 6 or 7 wounds) and the suffering him and his brothers in arms endured. This would be a good book to add to any Eastern Front collection and is an exciting read. Customer Rating: Summary: a good journal Comment: this book is a good diary with its raw feelings, recorded on the spot.one does feel what this man went through to survive. the realistic picture of every day ,combat and rest, life is well described. An very interesting book, again more maps will be appreciated. Customer Rating: Summary: Could have been good Comment: As a report transmitting a German front line soldier's experience, Koschorrek's book would be very recommendable, if it didn't contain some dubious claims that arouse the suspicion of propaganda serving political-ideological purposes. I'm referring to the descriptions of Soviet massacres against their own civilian population accused of collaborating with the enemy, which the author claims to have witnessed during the German troops' retreat from the river Inhul to Voznesensk on the southern Bug (Mikolayiv Oblast, Ukraine) in March 1944 (pages 230, 235/236 and 242/243 of the English translation). As two historians familiar with the subject matter informed me in response to my related inquiry, such massacres did in fact happen - but only in isolated cases and mainly in the areas that had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939/40. According to these historians there is no indication that such massacres - as Koschorrek claims - were falsely blamed on the Germen troops. Such wouldn't have been necessary anyway, after German units, including such of the Wehrmacht, had copiously provided for mass graves in the course of the extermination of the Jews (about 2 ½ million victims from the occupied Soviet territories), the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war (about 3 million out of 5.5 million Soviet prisoners of war did not survive captivity), the so-called fight against partisans (300,000 - 350,000 civilians killed in Belorussia alone, about half a million in total in all occupied Soviet territories) and also during the retreat (killing of prison inmates, brutally carried-out forced evacuations, in some cases also massacres of civilians like at Ozarichi in Belorussia). None of all this is mentioned by Koschorrek; according to his memoirs the German side was obviously so gentlemanlike as a rule that the author was deeply shocked when an non-commissioned officer Schwarz killed Soviet wounded with a shot in the head so as not to be eventually shot in the back by them. And then there is the touching story of the Ukrainian kitchen helper Katya and her constant worry about the soldiers from Koschorrek's unit, who she had grown so fond of ... It may be that Korschorrek, as a frontline soldier fighting for his life in the phase of German retreats, did not or only marginally get in contact with crimes of his own side. But it would also be an extraordinary and accordingly improbable coincidence if, out of millions of Wehrmacht soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front, it had happened to be the machine-gunner Koschorrek and his comrades who became witnesses of some of the few massacres committed by Soviet troops against Soviet civilians accused of collaboration, and that in areas of southern Ukraine that had already belonged to the Soviet Union before 1939 (it is also a seemingly improbable coincidence, incidentally, that Koschorrek's unit, as he later claims, should have taken part in the retaking of the East Prussian town of Nemmersdorf and he should thus have become witness to the atrocities committed there by Soviet troops and loudly decried by NS propaganda). Given that this is also the (at least to my knowledge) so far only description by a German soldier of massacres committed by Soviet troops against Soviet civilians, I consider skepticism to be very appropriate. In addition there is the contemporary context of Mr. Koschorrek's claims: when his book was published for the first time in 1998, the controversy about the first Wehrmacht War Crimes exhibition was still under way, and a fake version of Stalin's order 0428 of 17.11.1941 (so-called "torch-men order"), according to which Soviet special units were instructed to put on German uniforms and commit massacres against the Soviet civilian population in order to stoke up hatred against the German invaders, roamed the related discussions (see Christian Hartmann/Jürgen Zarusky, Stalins "Fackelmänner-Befehl" vom November 1941, in: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, issue 4/2000, pages 667-674, online under [..], as well as my related blog article under[..] ). Could it be that Mr. Koschorrek tried to provide assistance to the "torch-men" myth? Given such doubts about the accuracy and honesty of certain claims, my evaluation of this book cannot be a good one. More Reviews