Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... After Stalingrad: Seven Years as a Soviet Prisoner of Warby Adelbert Holl
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
The battle for Stalingrad has been studied and recalled in exhaustive detail ever since the Red Army trapped the German 6th Army in the ruined city in 1942. But most of these accounts finish at the end of the battle, with columns of tens of thousands of German soldiers disappearing into Soviet captivity. Their fate is rarely described. That is why Adelbert Holl's harrowing and vivid memoir of his seven-year ordeal as a prisoner in the Soviet camps is such an important record as well as an absorbing story. As he moves from camp to camp across the Soviet Union, an unsparing inside view of the prison system and its population of ex-soldiers emerges. He describes the daily life in the camps the crowding, the dirt, the cold, the ever-present threat of disease, the forced marches, the indifference or cruelty of the guards in authentic detail. The Soviets treated German prisoners as slave labourers, working them exhaustively, in often appalling conditions. The prisoners could only struggled to survive, to support each other, and hope against hope to return home. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)940.547247092History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- Military History Of World War II Prisoners of war; medical and social services Prisioner-of-War CampsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
While I did find the story a compelling page-turner, I did have some problems following the story and keeping track of the charachters. The translation did seem somewhat "clunky " at times as well. I don't regret taking the time to read this book. To the contrary, I found it informative as to that part of history which marked the beginning of the end of the end of the Third Reich, and answered the question as to what happened to all those German soldiers that were taken prisoner in the east?