World War II Database

I came to Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier _clean_, having read none of the criticism as to the accuracy of certain details. I leave this to others here. Having read the book (all 465 pages), I'm no more qualified to judge its authenticity as a historical document. I can say that Sajer's book is good, and even if it is fiction, I wouldn't care. The details, the conversations, the internal musings of a young man in the middle of the Russian campaign (and of a 30-something narrator/author trying to make sense of it all) are apart of a time and place students of the period should study.

If The Forgotten Soldier is indeed a work of non-fiction, it's a striking testament to the friendship among soldiers and of the utter waste and senseless of conflict. No one is spared on the Russian front, and it is a miracle of no short order that Sajer and his friend Hals made it through the campaign together. If indeed it is a work of fiction, then you've just read one of the finer works of post World War II imagination. Judge for yourself. Where else can you read about a crashing Russian fighter meeting a white horse in a field? You can find many similar bits of unlikely happenings among the many hundreds of descriptions of death, among them soldiers crushed by tanks, dead and mutilated German soldiers with severed genitials shoved their in mouths (courtesy of Russian partisians), and of a friend of Sajer's hung by German MPs for having food from a crashed supply truck.

One of the striking details of the book is the frank discussion of fear. There are numerous references to soldiers pissing and shitting themselves in the midst of some battle, a detail that is glossed over in many popular American memoirs. It's a continuing problem as one soldier notes ("I'm tired of shitting myself") and you begin to understand that fear has automatic physical responses that serve to make the experience even more miserable (and not _great_ or _good_ as some popular authors have argued). Sajer is equally tough on himself, too, near the end of the book for failing to act decisively in a battle after a recent promotion. There he sat, in his hole with soldiers looking to him, frozen with fear. It was one his greatest personal regrets of his experience as a soldier. It's a strange admission as well, coming from a man who admitted to engaging in mercy killings at various time during the Army's retreat west.

There is a good deal of introspection in The Forgotten Soldier and at moments it becomes a little tedious. But there are times that this commentary is especially useful. All too often in period memoirs, we read only of comradeship, personal valor, and there is little frank discussion of civilians and their plight. In Sajer's retreat out of Russia to the west, he shared the road with thousands of refugees, all fleeing the Russians to an uncertain future in the west. His descriptions turn ironic when discussion turns to orphan children fending for themselves on the road, consigned now to a life without hope. His question becomes to do you help you crying children who will soon be dead? We often read of heroic soldiers or units, but not often of children without parents, some killed by strafing aircraft, others doomed to a rat-like existence.

American readers may well find Sajer's frequent discussion of heroic German soldiers in battle regrettably short-sided given the history of the German Army in Russia. While there are frequent musings about death and a soldier's gradual coarsening in the field, there is no larger questioning of Germany's reasons for invading Russia, only a single-minded vision of a soldier's duty. And it is broken down into familiar ground: the only way out is getting wounded or killed. Other than this, you do your duty and look to your friends. There is little else. Hitler is mentioned on occasion, but his role as a leader and organizer of this century's greatest tragedy is not discussed in any meaningful detail. We're only left with Sajer's own internal strife of being a Frenchman conscripted into an Army that lost having to justify his actions in the post-war world. Even so, The Forgotten Soldier honors those who suffered. Me, I'd like to believe it's all true as it stands as a firm witness against brutality and organized murder. But that's just me.

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Visitor Submitted Comments

1. Dusty Miller says:
   13 Jan 2007 10:48:47 AM
   
   This book needs to be read with caution for three principle reasons. One: It shows a clear performative contradiction. Sajer writes thathe was subject to intense terror, extreme horror and acute trauma. But if this was so, how can he then recount these experiences with clarity and
   expressive confidence. The primary way he mangaes the problem is stylistic. He shifts so easily between first and third pewrosn narration that it is often diffcult to distinguish if he is present within the events described. On one ocasion he tells the reade that he was in hospital when a Soviet attack occured, but the description is detailed and given as if Sajer was actually there(with the screams of the dying and the sound of tank tracks crushing bones and so on). He does not wrtie that I was told this later by survivors or some such. This narrative and stylitic smotthness should make readers think twice as to what kind of work they are reading. Second: There are odd uses of narrative absences. Sajer was operating where it is known war crimes were committed. But although he hints at these, he is always in the hospital or on other duties and is therefore never invovled or present when they occur. Also, Sajers unit is always fighting heroic and victorious defensive actions and winning stunning victories agaisnt terrible odds. But by the next chapter the whole front is in retreat after serious reversals and defeats.These defeats are never really described and seem to happen off the page as it were. This raises the third issue. Sajers Soviet enemy are all a mass horde or a dark Mongol herd. He decribes the Wermacht offensive in the East as the last European crusade. This is serious racism designed to appeal to a Cold War Russophobic mentality and it is little wonder that this book sold well in the seventies. Also, Sajers REd army opponents have no military skill only a degree of ability in artillary bombardment and limitless numbers. One wonders how these disorgansied rabble ever won a serious tactical victory such as Kursk, Belgorod. The book is full of impressive and emotive accounts of the terror and horror of mass combat and the extremes of war and is a very good read, but it needs to treated with a strong dose of critical awareness. Readers should ask themselves what it is that they find attractive about this work (as I do) as this raises some very curious questions in regard to war literature like this.
2. Anonymous says:
   16 Dec 2008 03:54:16 PM
   
   Give this man some poor credit- will ya? I am so tired of everybody deflicting always bad against the Germans. If you would all take the time and learn the truth behind WW1 and WW2, you would all see we have been 100% lied to.
3. S W Franz says:
   15 Jan 2009 06:52:41 PM
   
   As an amateur WW II historian, I have read and enjoyed The Forgotten Soldier several times. Curiously, I became aware of the autobiography vs. historic fiction controversy only recently. One of the inaccuracies I found on my first read has (to my knowledge) never been raised in the blogs: Sajer's mention of SS Hitler Jugend soldiers fighting alongside the Gross Deutschland Panzer Grenadier Division in Belgorod in summer 1943. I had researched this and found no evidence of SSHJ soldiers taking part in any battles until 1944, beginning with their tenacious, sacrificial stand against overwhelming odds in the Normandy campaign. Certainly, SS soldiers were an integral part of the Citadel offensive in Russia 1943, including Belgorod. But the units involved were 1st, 2nd, and 3rd SS Panzer Divisions, all part of II SS Panzer Corps.
   That being said, it is clear to me that Sajer's narrative, whether biographical or not, is an accurate personal description of a war of unparalleled savagery and suffering. Sajer's steadfastness as an unapologetic defender of Germany's invasion of the USSR is regrettable, to say the least. The criminality of Nazi Germany, as exemplified by the many inhuman, criminal acts perpetrated against millions of civilians by tens of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers, Waffen SS soldiers, and especially SS Einsatzgruppen, cannot and should not ever be swept under the rug.
   However, without question, the vast majority of Germans who fought in WW II were decent, honest, regular folk who had the extreme misfortune of being born (as were most Europeans, Russians, Asians, and many Americans as well) in the early-to-mid 20th century. With this in mind, Sajer's accurate presentation of German soldiers as skillful, courageous, and resourceful is a welcome change to the shop-worn, malicious stereotype that permeates American movies and books.
   
4. Anonymous says:
   1 Feb 2010 09:46:09 PM
   
   I read this book about five times. I really enjoyed it. The above descriptions seem valid, and I think why it makes it such a good read: The reader gets in side his head and sees the war through his perspective. What I'd really like to know is whether or not there really was a Herr Hauptman Wesiridau. This character is truly well polished: Similar to Ahab, Indiana Jones, STaff Seargent Barnes from Platoon, you know the type. Perhaps he changed his name? I'd like to know if there was ever such a character.

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