Product Description

A German soldier during World War II offers an inside look at the Nazi war machine, using his wartime diaries to describe how a ruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinary Germans to carry out his monstrous schemes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #236882 in Books
• Published on: 1993-08-09
• Released on: 1993-08-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This engaging, introspective memoir, coauthored with Bruslaw ( The Business Writer's Handbook ) offers insight into the thinking and attitudes of a Wehrmacht officer. Knappe served in the artillery during the invasions of Czechoslovakia, France and the Soviet Union and as a staff officer during the Italian campaign and the defense of Berlin. Though he had moral reservations about the Czech campaign and was troubled by his government's betrayal of its non-aggression pact with Russia, Knappe believed that his participation in combat was honorable and that the overriding purpose of the war was to correct the injustice perpetrated against Germany by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Only after he was captured by Soviet troops in 1945 did he begin to understand that he had been an "unthinking cog," accepting without question Hitler's might-makes-right philosophy. The memoir closes with an account of his release from a Soviet prison camp in 1949 and his reunion with his family in Leipzig. Knappe came to America in 1955 and is now a retired corporate executive in Ohio. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Knappe's Wehrmacht career began in 1936. He participated in the final collapse of the Eastern Front, then spent more than four years as a Russian POW. Readers may doubt Knappe's insistence that he fought not for National Socialism but for Germany, but this mindset, common among his generation, cannot be dismissed out of hand as special pleading or selective memory. His memoir, based heavily on a wartime diary, shows a talented professional soldier and unreflective patriot who initially regarded Hitler as fulfilling legitimate German aspirations; by the time he began probing beneath the regime's surface, it was far too late to take action. Soldat makes a worthwhile companion to Hans von Luck's Panzer Commander ( LJ 10/15/89). Both works highlight an unresolved paradox: never did soldiers perform better in a worse cause than the men who served Adolf Hitler.
- D.E. Showalter, U.S. Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
World War II from inside the Wehrmacht. Knappe, one of the Third Reich's best and brightest, trained under Rommel and distinguished himself rapidly, meeting the Fhrer as a young peacetime soldier. He lived and fought through most of the major campaigns (France, Russia, Italy, the defense of Berlin), cheating death time after time, surviving for nearly five years as a Russian prisoner. Here, aided by Brusaw (The Business Writer's Handbook--not reviewed), Knappe offers precise, affecting memories of the WW II era--of his family, his circle, and a Jewish friend who had to leave Germany; of the way people lived in different places he was billeted, and of the textures of his life: the Russian winter and the hell of combat are palpable. No everyman, Knappe comes off as sensitive as well as dutiful, and remorseless in his respect for his own life. Yet the self-deceptions of nationalism and war appear in justifying asides here and there. He was bothered by the use of children in the war, he tells us, but outraged when a teenaged leader failed to report that they had fled their position, and he was nonplussed by a Russian woman who thought Fascism would be as bad as Communism. His memoir displays an unnerving acceptance of an establishment: There is no hint of civil disobedience. Knappe was disturbed about the treatment of Jews and wondered, ``Why invade Russian when we have a treaty?''- -but his ethic of discipline did not allow him the initiative of those who plotted to kill Hitler. Withal, a superb description of the German war machine from creation to defeat, and a fine, absorbing chronicle of a remarkable time. (Forty-five b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Confessions of an Indestructable Everyman
When a fellow has as much story to tell as Siegfried Knappe, it's easy to produce a book that's nothing more than a tidal-wave of names, dates, and places, blurring together and hence failing to produce a clear picture of what the author actually experienced. This memior largely avoids that trap and thus SOLDAT is a helluva book, really a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the German Army under - and after - Adolf Hitler.

As a soldier, Knappe was fairly typical of the generation who came of age between wars and thus served as a kind of bridge between the era of Weimar and the following Nazi period. A casual admirer of Hitler as a young man, he nevertheless had a Jewish best friend, and went through the mill of Labor Service and drafted soldier just the same as countless other German youths. Serving in the horse-drawn artillery, he was recognized as having leadership potential given a rare opportunity for officer training, an experience which for him was so enjoyable that he decided to make the Army a career. Unfortunately the war intruded on what had been an idyll of ballroom dances, riding competitions and opportunities to lure women with his fancy uniform, and before too long he was in Russia for the opening day of the Russian campaign. There his romanticism died a painful death, and although he was grimly determined to carry out his duty to the bitter end, Knappe had an oddly lucky propensity to get wounded just badly enough to be removed from the fighting, but not badly enough to be crippled or killed. Eventually selected for service on the General Staff, he rose to the rank of major and finished the war helping to coordinate the defense of Berlin - an event that put him in close proximity to Hitler. Of course, "finishing the war" is a misleading expression, as Knappe spent many years slowly rotting in a Soviet POW camp, a subject covered in harrowing detail in the book.

As a read, SOLDAT has only one real flaw - the periods where, as narrator, Knappe gets bogged down in providing a strategic overview of the military situation in, say, 1945. Obviously as a General Staff officer this was part of his frame of reference, but it is somewhat jarringly academic compared to his personal experiences - this is a personal work, not a military history, and I wish the editor had seen fit to trim these interludes back. Other than that, however, it is an absolutely fascinating tell-all, not merely because of its intricate depictions of peacetime and wartime Army life, but because of its harrowing depictions of the aftermath millions of German soldiers had to live through as members of a defeated nation. The privations of the gulag were hard enough on Knappe, but the cruel psychological tricks the Soviets played on their German prisoners over their long years of captivity - denying their mail, lying about release dates, tricking them into committing crimes and then extending their sentences - are so exhausting and draining to read about that I can't even imagine what it was like to endure them for ten years. By the time Knappe finally "escapes" to West Germany near the end of the book I think I was almost as glad as he was.

Overall, SOLDAT is a very strong entry in the field of German war literature and I would strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a fresh perspective - that of a staff officer during the climactic days of WW2.

Fantastic book!
This book "Soldat" was a splendid read - It makes me feel like I'm going through the war with Herr Knappe.... I enjoyed it immensely and would have liked to have had the chance to say hello to the man. I highly recommend it!

Soldat review
A very interesting account of the Second World War, coming from a lesser publicized perspective - that of a German career officer (albeit a very young one). Mr. Knappe did a masterful job of setting the scene of the years leading into the war and allowing us a rare glimpse into the German psyche. A moving account also of his years in the Soviet prisons - not that disimilar to the Nazi camps.