The Forgotten Soldier
by Guy Sajer

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Book Reviews of The Forgotten Soldier

Book Review: "Gott Mit Uns"
Summary: 4 Stars

"The Forgotten Soldier" is the memior of Guy Sajer, one of the "volksdeutsche" -- people of majority German blood who lived outside Germany, but were awarded (or condemned, depending on your point of view) to German citizenship when Hitler conquered or annexed their country of residence. Sajer was French, with a German mother, spoke almost no German, and drafted into the Wehrmacht not long after it made him a refugee. His perspective is one of an outsider looking in, and it is part of what makes the book so interesting.

"Soldier" is a long, slow-moving book, somewhat boring at first. Sajer's prose starts out clumsy, overlong, and plodding. He lacks descriptive power and tends to go on and on about trivial matters. As the book advances however, he warms to his subject and becomes much more readable, even showing flashes of genius as he desribes his tiny corner of Hitler's war. After basic training he is shipped off to Poland and then Russia in the spring of 1942, and serves as a rear-echelon soldier with the Reichsbahn, the outfit responsible for getting supplies to the front. His main enemies are boredom, discomfort, crushing physical labor, and the horrible Russian weather, which oscillates between extremes of heat and cold, dryness and flood. Out of sheer ennui, he volunteers for an elite combat unit, the Grossdeutschland panzergrenadier division, in the spring of '43....and has no idea what he is getting into.

From his merciless combat training at "Camp F" (whose motto is "WE ARE BORN TO DIE") -- recruits are drilled until they faint, shot at with live ammunition, and literally trampled by their commanding officer -- to the baptism-of-fire in vicious street fighting at Orel, Sajer goes from complacency to a state of constant, bewildered terror. He and his tiny group of "Kameraden"
-- upright Weisreidau, fanatic Lensen, fun-loving Hals, cowardly Lindberg, and cynical survivor Wiener aka "the Veteran" -- are constantly in the thick of it, enduring endless artillery bombardments and human-wave assaults, crawling on elbows and knees through mud and barbed wire toward meaningless objectives, alternating from vicious cruelty (shooting Soviet soldiers as they try to surrender) to gallant chivalry (cheering Soviet prisoners who fought bravely) and back again. Never is there an escape from the war: shipped to the rear for "rest" they are attacked by partisans; shipped home for leave they witness the terror-bombings that turn every major German city into smoldering rubble. And as the situation at the front deteriorates, the misery multiplies. Just when you think things can't get any worse, they do: one of the most harrowing scenes in the book comes after the retreat following the Battle of Kursk, when Sajer and his comrades survive all nine circles of hell, only to face arrogant military police who pass life-or-death judgements on them one at a time.

The true villain of the book, however, is not the Soviets or the Nazi leadership, but the endless Russian winters. The scenes where soldiers shove their numb, frost-bitten feet into flames or urinate on each other to keep warm, while outside trees literally explode from the intense cold, are horrible and haunting.

Sajer wrote his book because the Eastern Front, the decisive theater of the war which saw the biggest battles in human history, is largely ignored by western historians, and its veterans largely forgotten. I guarantee, however, that nobody who can get through "The Forgotten Soldier" will ever forget it.

Historical Books

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• History > Europe > Germany
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