The Forgotten Soldier
by Guy Sajer
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When Guy Sajer joins the infantry full of ideals in the summer of 1942, the German army is enjoying unparalleled success in Russia. However, he quickly finds that for the foot soldier the glory of military success hides a much harsher reality of hunger, fatigue, and constant deprivation. Posted to the elite Grosse Deutschland division, with its sadistic instructors who shoot down those who fail to make the grade, he enters a violent and remorseless world where all youthful hope is gradually show more ground down, and all that matters is the brute will to survive. As the biting cold of the Russian winter sets in, and the tide begins to turn against the Germans, life becomes an endless round of pounding artillery attacks and vicious combat against a relentless and merciless Red Army. Sajer's perspective as a German foot soldier makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." A work of stunning force, this is an unforgettable reminder of the horrors of war. show lessTags
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VonKar Weliswaar een andere Wereldoorlog, maar eveneens een persoonlijk relaas van de gruwelen van de oorlog. Ernst Jünger ziet er nog een heroïsche kant in; bij Sajer is er enkel harde realiteit.
Member Reviews
Born of a German mother to a French father, Sajer was swept up in National Socialist fervor and enlisted to defend the Reich on the Eastern Front. Truck driver in a convoy arriving in Ukraine as Stalingrad fell, Sajer arrived in time to join in a multi-national retreat akin to Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia. Vacuumed up into the Großdeutschland Division, an elite combat unit of the German Army, Sajer retreated and fought until the Reich, his division, and his identity evaporated leaving him to recover in a France unknown to him. This is a fascinating memoir of Eastern Front privation and a detailed, reflective analysis of events by a front-line soldier grappling with the Red Army and his own reasons for fighting and living. Beside show more battle recaps, material on obtaining and using leave time, encounters with partisans, and fellow fighters not seeing Sajer as truly German make this one of the most revealing and insightful German WW II soldier autobiographies I have read. show less
This autobiography by Guy Sajer definitely will deliver you a different view on WW2, which I think is the reason most people read it. There is an overabundance of movies and books about the Allies (recent example being Dunkirk), but I can't think of even one about the experience of a German soldier. And I think it's clear why. Now if you are going into this book thinking you will read about concentration camps or about someone indoctrinated by Nazi ideologies, this is the wrong book. Guy Sajer rarely mentions Hitler, and you don't get the feeling that he was a fervent follower of national socialism either. Instead you will read about a very young man trying his hardest to survive war and fight for 'his country'. But oddly enough he only show more ever resents the war itself but not Germany for starting it ... one might think he would blame the aggressor more and not just the process itself.
Also I was somewhat sad that both the prolog and the epilog were so short. I really want to know how exactly he ended up fighting in the Germany army, despite being French/German and barely speaking the language. Also I want to know how he was treated after the war and his thoughts on the Holocaust. I can't even imagine seeing so many people die for a cause of a mad man.
At times this book is almost written like a novel and I think it might have been better to publish it that way as well since Guy Sajer definitely messed up a few of the historical facts throughout his autobiography. I'd like to think something similar to 'Im Westen Nichts Neues'. would work
At least he seems aware of the fact.
A few quotes I'd like to save since my copy is falling apart:
Slightly ironic to say war brings people together. Especially written by a German soldier during WW2.
Also I was somewhat sad that both the prolog and the epilog were so short. I really want to know how exactly he ended up fighting in the Germany army, despite being French/German and barely speaking the language. Also I want to know how he was treated after the war and his thoughts on the Holocaust. I can't even imagine seeing so many people die for a cause of a mad man.
At times this book is almost written like a novel and I think it might have been better to publish it that way as well since Guy Sajer definitely messed up a few of the historical facts throughout his autobiography. I'd like to think something similar to 'Im Westen Nichts Neues'. would work
P 94 "But God did not answer my appeals. In the cab of a gray Russian truck, somewhere in the vastness of the Russian hinterland, a man and an adolescent were caught in a desperate struggle. The man struggled with death, and the adolescent struggled with despair, which is close to death. And God, who watches everything, did nothing."
P 222 "One can only draw a very general view of our situation from the lines I've just written, without any of the details. I am not trying to recreate precise geographic chronologies of the Russo-German War, but to give, an account of the almost inconceivable difficulties we faced."
At least he seems aware of the fact.
A few quotes I'd like to save since my copy is falling apart:
P 166 "Throughout the war, one of the biggest German mistakes was to treat German soldiers even worse than prisoners, instead of allowing us to rape and steal-crimes which we were condemned for in the end, anyway."
P 184 "There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or
less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to
the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers."
P 217 "We can expect no reward for this effort. We are loathed everywhere: if we should lose tomorrow those of us still alive after so much suffering will be judged without justice. We shall be accused of an infinity of murder, as if everywhere, and at all times, men at war did not behave in the same way."
P 234 "But the almost drunken exhilaration which follows fear induces the most innocent youths on whatever side to commit inconceivable atrocities."
P 332 Partisans in the Ukraine
P 342 "The war had brought together men from many different regions and walks of life, who would probably have mistrusted each other under any other circumstances; but the circumstances of war united us in a symphony of heroism, in which each man felt himself to a certain extent responsible for all of his fellows."
Slightly ironic to say war brings people together. Especially written by a German soldier during WW2.
P 414 "Death at Memel would seem a relief and release, and a more orderly end than death in a place which would never be distinguished by any military operation."show less
The Forgotten Soldier is a stunning book, which is to say one leaves feeling traumatized after a long nightmare. Sajer leaves no bones unturned in describing the horrors of the Eastern Front. Of course it's visceral, mutilated corpses. But it runs deeper, Sajer's voice has an innocence and normality in contrast to the insanity of the situation. We tend to think of the Germans as "supermen" but Sajer is a normal person stressed to the utmost degree. No wonder Germany collapsed it's soldiers were abused and when they complained hung up from a tree. This part of the story is not often told.
The writing is dense with incident. It's easy to question if he remembered everything so clearly and with novelistic description but it's not too show more important because it rings true. My favorite part was as he wondered around the steppes of western Ukraine with no front line and troops randomly encountered one another in the dark and snow. The lonely outpost of a single tank buried in the earth surrounded by open plains "like Africa". show less
The writing is dense with incident. It's easy to question if he remembered everything so clearly and with novelistic description but it's not too show more important because it rings true. My favorite part was as he wondered around the steppes of western Ukraine with no front line and troops randomly encountered one another in the dark and snow. The lonely outpost of a single tank buried in the earth surrounded by open plains "like Africa". show less
Where to start? This book has affected me greatly. I did expect to be shocked, and did expect to read an account of some appalling experiences of a soldier fighting in the heart of an horrendously bloody and grisly conflict. But nothing could really prepare the reader for the overwhelming relentlessness of it all. This is a reading experience that should not be at all taken lightly.
Guy Sajer was a very young Alsatian (barely seventeen I think), of mixed Franco-German parentage, who finds himself in training with the German army during the autumn of 1942. The memoir does not make it clear if he is conscripted or volunteers. The zenith of the Nazi Reich has already passed - unbeknownst to its combatants and civilian populations. After his show more training in the Fatherland, Sajer is attached to a transport logistics unit supporting the combat troops at the Eastern Front. All too soon he is witness to the horrors of the fighting that follows the fallout from the Wehrmacht's defeat at Stalingrad and the first retreat from the Don.
Writing several years after the event, Sajer pulls no punches with his descriptions of the deprivations of combat, and the depravity. Early in his account though, he makes it clear how inadequate his words will always be in expressing the "cumulative nightmare...an uncommunicable terror":
"It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to use the word 'frightful' to describe a few broken-up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake which might be forgiven.
I should perhaps end my account here, because my powers are inadequate for what I have to tell."
(This on page 90 of a 560 page book.)
As the war progresses, and following a brief respite of sorts during leave in Berlin (where he witnesses a terrifying daytime Allied air raid), Sajer and his comrades are 'volunteered' into the elite Grosse Deutschland division as infantry. Back at the front, he is thrown right into the abyss again, in time for the chaotic blood-soaked retreat from Ukraine. At times in this memoir Sajer comes out with some truly shocking comments - "Throughout the war, one of the biggest mistakes was to treat German soldiers even worse than prisoners, instead of allowing us to rape and steal - crimes which we were condemned for in the end anyway." - for example. And this from a Frenchman not indoctrinated with Nazi bile prior to the conquest of France in 1940. A second period of leave - later in the memoir - is cancelled before he can even reach his destination, the whole train transport being reversed - back depressingly to the front. Anyone who has served as a conscript will recognise the achingly despondent sense that there is when home leave has to end, but to not even get there in the first place? - only to be sent back into the hell you had just escaped from...
There is a constant sense of fear that pervades everywhere.
"I know in my bones what our watchword 'Courage' means - from days and nights of resigned desperation, and from the insurmountable fear which one continues to accept, even though one's brain has ceased to function normally."
There is no mention at all of the ongoing Holocaust against the civilians of Europe, and no mention of Jews, and barely any of the racial Hitlerism at all. (There is though one very sinister glimpse of that horror, and what had thus far been 'dealt with' by the authorities, on the first page, (September '42) when en route to the front from basic training, via Poland, Sajer and co. pass through the Warsaw ghetto:"Our detatchment goes sightseeing in the city, including the famous ghetto - or rather, what's left of it. We return to the station in small groups. We are all smiling. The Poles smile back, especially the girls."
There is a surreal moral code of sorts that exists in his mind - the 'rules' of combat according to the Wehrmacht. When it comes to encounters with the Partisans, he is certain - "Also, partisans were not eligible for the consideration due to a man in uniform. The laws of war condemned them to death automatically, without trial." This coming after a description of how some Red Army POWs were killed mercilessly in a way too graphic to describe here.
The disastrous retreat continues as it becomes clear that all is lost.
"Faced with the Russian hurricane, we ran whenever we could...We no longer fought for Hitler, or for National Socialism, or for the Third Reich - or even for our fiancées or mothers or families trapped in bomb-ravaged towns. We fought from simple fear, which was our motivating power. The idea of death, even when we accepted it, made us howl with powerless rage."
Even when writing many years later Sajer seems to pour most of his anger out still on the Partisans. He doesn't ever seem to accept that Germany had invaded the continent, and that people without an army fighting for them, had the right to fight back - by whichever means available. The moral argument he attempts against the 'underhand' techniques of the guerillas is completely flawed. Nevertheless, his memoir, even if factually inaccurate in places as some have suggested, is an important document of witness. I struggled with the utter nightmare of it all, but am glad that I read The Forgotten Soldier. I'm sure I won't forget it. show less
Guy Sajer was a very young Alsatian (barely seventeen I think), of mixed Franco-German parentage, who finds himself in training with the German army during the autumn of 1942. The memoir does not make it clear if he is conscripted or volunteers. The zenith of the Nazi Reich has already passed - unbeknownst to its combatants and civilian populations. After his show more training in the Fatherland, Sajer is attached to a transport logistics unit supporting the combat troops at the Eastern Front. All too soon he is witness to the horrors of the fighting that follows the fallout from the Wehrmacht's defeat at Stalingrad and the first retreat from the Don.
Writing several years after the event, Sajer pulls no punches with his descriptions of the deprivations of combat, and the depravity. Early in his account though, he makes it clear how inadequate his words will always be in expressing the "cumulative nightmare...an uncommunicable terror":
"It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to use the word 'frightful' to describe a few broken-up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake which might be forgiven.
I should perhaps end my account here, because my powers are inadequate for what I have to tell."
(This on page 90 of a 560 page book.)
As the war progresses, and following a brief respite of sorts during leave in Berlin (where he witnesses a terrifying daytime Allied air raid), Sajer and his comrades are 'volunteered' into the elite Grosse Deutschland division as infantry. Back at the front, he is thrown right into the abyss again, in time for the chaotic blood-soaked retreat from Ukraine. At times in this memoir Sajer comes out with some truly shocking comments - "Throughout the war, one of the biggest mistakes was to treat German soldiers even worse than prisoners, instead of allowing us to rape and steal - crimes which we were condemned for in the end anyway." - for example. And this from a Frenchman not indoctrinated with Nazi bile prior to the conquest of France in 1940. A second period of leave - later in the memoir - is cancelled before he can even reach his destination, the whole train transport being reversed - back depressingly to the front. Anyone who has served as a conscript will recognise the achingly despondent sense that there is when home leave has to end, but to not even get there in the first place? - only to be sent back into the hell you had just escaped from...
There is a constant sense of fear that pervades everywhere.
"I know in my bones what our watchword 'Courage' means - from days and nights of resigned desperation, and from the insurmountable fear which one continues to accept, even though one's brain has ceased to function normally."
There is no mention at all of the ongoing Holocaust against the civilians of Europe, and no mention of Jews, and barely any of the racial Hitlerism at all. (There is though one very sinister glimpse of that horror, and what had thus far been 'dealt with' by the authorities, on the first page, (September '42) when en route to the front from basic training, via Poland, Sajer and co. pass through the Warsaw ghetto:"Our detatchment goes sightseeing in the city, including the famous ghetto - or rather, what's left of it. We return to the station in small groups. We are all smiling. The Poles smile back, especially the girls."
There is a surreal moral code of sorts that exists in his mind - the 'rules' of combat according to the Wehrmacht. When it comes to encounters with the Partisans, he is certain - "Also, partisans were not eligible for the consideration due to a man in uniform. The laws of war condemned them to death automatically, without trial." This coming after a description of how some Red Army POWs were killed mercilessly in a way too graphic to describe here.
The disastrous retreat continues as it becomes clear that all is lost.
"Faced with the Russian hurricane, we ran whenever we could...We no longer fought for Hitler, or for National Socialism, or for the Third Reich - or even for our fiancées or mothers or families trapped in bomb-ravaged towns. We fought from simple fear, which was our motivating power. The idea of death, even when we accepted it, made us howl with powerless rage."
Even when writing many years later Sajer seems to pour most of his anger out still on the Partisans. He doesn't ever seem to accept that Germany had invaded the continent, and that people without an army fighting for them, had the right to fight back - by whichever means available. The moral argument he attempts against the 'underhand' techniques of the guerillas is completely flawed. Nevertheless, his memoir, even if factually inaccurate in places as some have suggested, is an important document of witness. I struggled with the utter nightmare of it all, but am glad that I read The Forgotten Soldier. I'm sure I won't forget it. show less
This book was the first "war story" I read that ruined the glamour and boyish admiration for war, guns, and all things explosive. Until this book, what I read was simply hero worship that did not relay what really goes on...the horror. I was glad to have the veil torn from in front of my eyes by this book as a boy and enjoyed the reminder as an adult. This should be required reading for all recruits as a counterpoint to the "video game-izaton" of war.
For any student of WWII there is a danger of losing sight of the size of the catastrophe and it's huge effect on the world. Guy Sajer was born in Alsace which at that time was a section of France. But after 1940 the Germans reclaimed the territory. Due to his ancestry, young Guy was then liable to be drafted into the German army and shipped off to the Eastern Front. In the Wehrmacht, he had been looked down on as a half-breed. He survived. That was a considerable accomplishment.
The war finally ended but Guy was now an inhabitant of an angry France, and had to somehow fit into a society that condemned his actions. A lot of people didn't see his situation as unfortunate and were punitive in response to his record. This book should remind show more people that on the personal level one hundred million tragedies got played out from 1934 to 1945. I've read this book at least twice. show less
The war finally ended but Guy was now an inhabitant of an angry France, and had to somehow fit into a society that condemned his actions. A lot of people didn't see his situation as unfortunate and were punitive in response to his record. This book should remind show more people that on the personal level one hundred million tragedies got played out from 1934 to 1945. I've read this book at least twice. show less
Áhrifamikil saga af fótgönguliða í þýska hernum seinni hluta síðari heimsstyrjaldarinnar. Öfugt við frægðarlýsingar margra herforingja þá er sagan upplifun óbreytts hermanns af átökum við ofurefli liðs þegar þýski herinn fer hallloka fyrir rússneska hernum á austurvígstöðvunum. Kuldinn og kúlnahríðin ásamt mannfalli vina og félaga er átakanleg og þessi saga hefur verið á leslistum herskóla víða um heim.
Hins vegar hefur komið upp gagnrýni á bókina þar sem engar vísbendingar hafa fundist um höfundinn Guy Sajer og því er umdeilt hvort sagan sé skáldverk að hluta eða dulnefni hans hafi verndað hann svo vel sem raun ber vitni.
Hins vegar hefur komið upp gagnrýni á bókina þar sem engar vísbendingar hafa fundist um höfundinn Guy Sajer og því er umdeilt hvort sagan sé skáldverk að hluta eða dulnefni hans hafi verndað hann svo vel sem raun ber vitni.
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- Original publication date
- 1965
- Important places
- USSR; Kharkiv, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine (as Kharkov); Berlin, Germany; Belgorod, Belgorod Oblast, Russia; Dnieper River; Klaipėda, Lithuania (as Memel, East Prussia, Germany) (show all 7); Russia
- Important events
- World War II (1939 | 1945); World War II, Eastern Front (1941-06-22 | 1945-05-05)
- First words
- July 18, 1942. I arrive at the Chemnitz barracks, a huge oval building, entirely white. I am much impressed, with a mixture of admiration and fear.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)There is another man, whom I must forget. He was called Guy Sajer.
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