German War Memoirs: The Officer Corps
Explore the elite German Officer Corps through powerful war memoirs. Read Soldat by Siegfried Knappe and Panzer Commander by Hans Von Luck for firsthand WWII history.
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Panzer Commander
by Hans Von Luck
A stunning look at World War II from the other side... From the turret of a German tank, Colonel Hans von Luck commanded Rommel's 7th and then 21st Panzer Division. El Alamein, Kasserine Pass, Poland, Belgium, Normandy on D-Day, the disastrous Russian front--von Luck fought there with some of the best soldiers in the world. German soldiers. Awarded the German Cross in Gold and the Knight's Cross, von Luck writes as an officer and a gentleman. Told with the vivid detail of an impassioned eyewitness, his rare and moving memoir has become a classic in the literature of World War II, a first-person chronicle of the glory--and the inevitable tragedy--of a superb soldier fighting Hitler's war.
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Soldat
by Siegfried Knappe
Paris. The Somme. The Italian Campaign. The Russian Front. And inside Hitler’s bunker during The Battle of Berlin . . . World War II through the eyes of a solider of the Reich. Siegfried Knappe fought, was wounded, and survived battles in nearly every major Wehrmacht campaign. His astonishing career begins with Hitler’s rise to power—and ends with a five-year term in a Russian prison camp, after the Allies rolled victoriously into the smoking rubble of Berlin. The enormous range of Knappe’s fighting experiences provides an unrivaled combat history of World War II, and a great deal more besides. Based on Knappe’s wartime diaries, filled with 16 pages of photos he smuggled into the West at war’s end, Soldat delivers a rare opportunity for the reader to understand how a ruthless psychopath motivated an entire generation of ordinary Germans to carry out his monstrous schemes . . . and offers stunning insight into the life of a soldier in Hitler’s army. “Remarkable! World War II from inside the Wehrmacht.”—Kirkus Reviews