These are the wartime memoirs of Erich Stahl, an officer in the Waffen SS; they are his account of the Eastern Front from the early days of Operation Barbarossa to his surrender to the Americans after fighting the Russians in Hungary and Austria.

This is an interesting book in many ways.  Stahl was a journalist attached to the Waffen SS and he served with several different SS formations over the course of the war.  However he wasn’t just a reporter but actually fought with the troops.  So his writing has a certain tone to it.  I have to say at this point that Stahl’s exact position is never properly explained and the fact that he is a journalist is not really explained at all in the body of the book but in the blurb on the back cover.  This is something I found a little odd.

His writing style is mostly in short sharp paragraphs which lend themselves well to the descriptions of some the frenetic action he saw.  However there are lots of in references to various personalities and situations that are sometimes not explained by the author but which presumably would have been familiar to someone in Stahl’s position.  Most of the time the book’s translator (Robert J. Edwards) helps us out with some useful footnotes (without which small parts of the book would be something of a mystery to all but an Eastern Front specialist).

The book isn’t an all action title.  The journalist in Stahl makes frequent appearances in long discussions with various people he meets along the way – these are often long expositions on the nature of the German occupation of the Ukraine, the Nazis approach to non Aryan nationalities (and the negative impact that has on the war effort) and after his capture about the nature and future of Germany and the impact of the Nazis.   I have to say that I found myself somewhat conflicted as a reader.  Stahl was quite clearly a committed National Socialist – a Nazi – I don’t think you got into the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler otherwise.  And therefore someone whose views most reasonable people would expect to find abhorrent.  But he comes across as a reasonable man and in fact has a very clear insight into the negative impact the Nazi policies in Eastern Europe were having and how properly harnessed some of the nationalities of the Soviet Union (the Ukrainians for example) could have turned the war in the East!  He also seems to have a genuine empathy and respect for the people he meets in Russia. 

Of course the book was originally written soon after the end of the war so the reader must make up their own minds about whether Stahl re-writes history to his own benefit.  I am prepared to (very, very cautiously) give him the benefit of the doubt.  I find it interesting that the book’s publishers (Ryton) find it necessary to state that some will find his views on Bolshevism somewhat “anachronistic in today’s world”.  I think his views on the excesses of the Soviet Union and the Communist leadership during this period are perfectly valid and whilst he clearly has what one might term a “Nazi filter” on the subject his objectivity as a journalist seems to shine through.  I think one might do well to remember that the Russians were very much allies of convenience to the Americans and British during the war, on the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend and that actually their system was nearly as repugnant as that of the Nazis, although the nightmare of the Holocaust is clearly without parallel.

Stahl also documents in some graphic detail the horrors inflicted on German soldiers captured by the Russians and on civilian populations by the resurgent Red Army as it advanced beyond the Soviet Union in the war’s later stages – in Stahl’s case he documents those in Hungary.  What he reports about the civilian atrocities is backed up in other more modern accounts.   So war in all its ugly detail is here.   However Stahl is very quiet about the German atrocities; both military and civilian and it is here that the book is most unbalanced and Stahl’s objectivity seems to desert him.

I would recommend this book to all Eastern Frontniks; it is an intelligent book, which gives the reader pause to think and review their own views about the nature of the combatants in World War Two.    As always I’d be cautious about any account by any former Waffen SS man and Nazi and the possibility of an unrealistic re-writing of history to claim they had an entirely honourable war.  Stahl’s account isn’t perfect but those with a rounded view of the history of World War Two will not be misled.

Available now from Casemate in paperback, priced £11.99 (ISBN 9780982190739)

Review written by: Paul Robinson, Staff Writer