Soldaten - On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs

by Sönke Neitzel, Harald Welzer

On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded & recently declassified. Netizel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington. These were discoveries that would provide a unique & profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy & the military in general--almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war. Collaborating with renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, Neitzel examines these conversations--& the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them--from a historical & psychological perspective. In reconstucting the frameworks & situations behind these conversations, they've created a powerful narrative of wartime experience.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Military Fiction, Germany, War, Military History

448 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2011

About the author

Sönke Neitzel is a German historian who has written extensively about the Second World War.
Neitzel was educated at the University of Mainz and is currently Professor of Military History at the University of Potsdam, having moved there from the London School of Economics in 2015. He has also held posts at the University of Karlsruhe, University of Bern, and the University of Saarbrücken in Germany and Switzerland, and was briefly Professor of Global Security at the University of Glasgow in 2011/12.

He is editor of the journal German History in the 20th Century and has written several books such as Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs based on recordings of German POWs held at Trent Park. Neitzel edited the book Tapping Hitler's Generals (with Harald Welzer (de)).

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yikes. Soldaten is chilling stuff. This is not bedtime reading.

There are some grim truths in this book, grim truths about soldiering, war, and the complicity of many German soldiers in heinous war crimes. Even more shocking than revelations of actual crimes are the casual way they are discussed, something that suggests that such evils were both widespread and accepted as normal.

Based on thousands of protocols made from secret recordings of German internees in POW camps in both the US and UK, Soldaten explores the compelling, and often meandering, chats that imprisoned soldiers had about the war, combat, crimes against humanity, morale, women and the German state. This unvarnished window into soldiers’ lives and beliefs is both enlightening and shocking.

While the transcripts are what sets Soldaten apart from other works on World War II, the book is more than just a collection of conversations. Working from the protocols the book also explores the nature of violence and the way in which framing-societal, ideological and professional- influence men at war and the choices they make.

At times Soldaten is not a pleasant read. Men openly discuss rape, murder and executing innocent civilians to make a point. Their talk of killing is often cold and unconcerned with right or wrong. The lasting impression I finished this book with is that for many soldiers Nazism and it's associated baggage were not of great importance, but they each operated in a temporal and social context so alien that their views on life, death, war crimes and killing seem shockingly different to ours.

Soldaten provides a fascinating insight into the values, beliefs and experiences of German Wehrmacht soldiers who fought in World War II, and the way societal attitudes can condition people to kill, torture and abuse people designated as 'enemies'. In an era when 'us and them' thinking seems to be making a comeback this book is a warning of what can be unleashed when we send our soldiers to fight those we have designated as 'other'. I couldn't help but think of the abuses at Abu Ghraib while reading this book, and reflecting that the behaviors of Wehrmacht soldiers in the 1930s and 40s aren't as far away as we might hope.

[Charles Weinblatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“They seized three year-old Jewish children by the hair, held them up and shot them with a pistol. The Latvians and German soldiers were standing there, looking on. The whole thing sounds just like a fairy story. If one were to destroy all the Jews in the world simultaneously, there would not remain a single accuser” (laughing).

During World War II, a large number of German soldiers were captured and interrogated by British Intelligence agents. The authors of this book uncovered almost 800 pages of transcripts recently declassified at the British national archives. Some of the conversations occurred during interrogations. Others were surreptitiously recorded in barracks, holding cells, social halls and dining areas. Some of the most chilling transcripts came from German POWs conversing with each other, in what must have appeared to them as a confidential atmosphere.

On the surface, German POWs appeared “normal” human beings. They had, by and large, a typical upbringing. Yet their recorded conversations reveal a terrifying picture. This was particularly evident in their discussions about participating in genocide. They do not regard these actions as unjust, immoral or negative in any real sense. On the contrary; they brag about it. That the majority of these POWs felt justified in murdering civilians is enough to chill the soul of almost any reader. Certainly not every POW held these wicked sentiments. Yet German prisoners spoke openly about their “righteous” actions to annihilate European Jews; their singular recurring complaint was that they were unable to complete the extermination. For some, it was exciting to be able to kill without encountering consequences. This singular lack of remorse is stunning. They described the deliberate mass murder of civilians as though it was no different than exterminating annoying insects.

Many of the captured German pilots and submariners cheerfully described murdering the enemy. Luftwaffe personnel were only too happy to describe their deliberate shooting and bombing of British and American civilians. Submariners gleefully discussed torpedoing medical and other civilian ships, in addition to military ships and convoys transporting war material and supplies. Their only form of apology was that they were not more successful. They were proud to proclaim that murdering civilians was their job.

Soldaten carries the reader on a whirlwind of genocide in which no one felt personally responsible for their actions; yet everyone seemed proud to participate. The frame of reference encompassing mass executions and extermination camps represents an idiosyncratic amalgamation of anti-Semitism, support for genocide and innocence based upon delegated responsibility. The eradication of European Jews was simply not a part of the German soldier’s emotional world. It was a job that had to be done to make Europe “more Aryan.” Moreover, some of the mass killing sites became a perverse demonstration for anyone who desired to witness them. In a sick voyeuristic way, large crowds of soldiers and civilians were allowed to watch the mass shootings for personal edification.

German POWs described without emotion the murder of Jewish children as though they were making widgets in a factory. Removal of the Jewish genetic footprint was necessary, they recalled, “for German purity in Europe.” The POWs recalled accounts of raping Jewish women before murdering them. The soldier’s attitudes about sexual violence were altogether perfunctory. They regarded the rapes as permissible, “since the Jewesses were to be executed anyway.” This was internalized and justified as a “logical” course of action in that German soldiers required sexual gratification and these Jewesses were available to accommodate those needs. In fact, the Germans did not consider mass murder, stealing the Jews’ possessions or raping Jewish women as immoral or negative in any sense. The majority of POWs laughed when describing these acts of violence.

Neitzel and Welzer produce for the reader a chilling glimpse into the immorality of German armed forces during WWII and the Holocaust. The Nazi officers, sailors, airmen and soldiers describe their war crimes and genocide as the norm, or a job that had to be done to improve the quality of life for Europe and, eventually, the rest of the world. Rape, pillage, torture, starvation and genocide were distasteful but necessary. The murder of innocent civilians, who were completely unable to defend themselves, had become for many German POWs an excuse for committing crimes that outside of war would land them in prison. Luftwaffe personnel laughed while describing with pride the deliberate murder of British civilians on the ground.

Soldaten will send a chill through your heart. The reader will listen along with British intelligence as Germans describe with gusto their annihilation, rape and torture of the innocent. These transcripts lay bare the projection of honor that German armed forces proposed to rationalize their actions. Distinction between genuine military combatants and innocent civilians was completely dissolved. As we see here, German POWs had been only too happy to murder women and children as legitimate targets. The German soldier in these transcripts saw nothing depraved with these horrific deeds.

The POWs accurately describe transporting huge numbers of Jews in cattle cars to extermination camps, even when they had nothing directly to do with those events. This debunks the suggestion that hardly any Germans were aware of the massive genocide occurring at Nazi death camps scattered across Eastern Europe. These were not innocent men blindly following orders of the Fuhrer. The authors reveal a clear mentality of powerful violence - men who find murder of the innocent a thrilling experience. They joke about the poor innocent souls whom they gunned down with rifles, machine guns airplanes and submarines. For all of the atrocities that they committed, for the rationalization that mass murder, racism and genocide was their job – these men do little more than reflect the “normal” German society that they represented.

The hardcover edition of Soldaten is handsome, with thick paper and a descriptive cover. The text is well written, although somewhat divergent of function at times. Although sprinkled with 21 photographs and illustrations, it could have been improved with additional pictures, diagrams and maps. Many readers are visual learners.

Near the conclusion, the authors paint a picture of German soldiers as transformational figures. They change from ordinary, law-abiding citizens into terrifying monsters bent upon rape, murder, torture and genocide because they put on the uniform.

The POWs in this case do not include those captured on the eastern front, who suffered greatly from weather conditions, loss of supplies, a massive resentful civilian population and fanatic Russian soldiers fighting from street to street. If they provided Russia with similar recorded conversations, we’re unaware of it. There is also little way to fact-check some of more grandiose statements, whose commentary was perhaps infused with more bravado than veracity. However, Soldaten has an extensive bibliography and it is well-indexed, making the book an excellent scholarly text. The writing style is succinct and evocative. The authors have produced an outstanding expose of the rampant racist mentality and brutality of German soldiers, airmen and sailors during WWII.

Reviewer Charles S. Weinblatt is the author of the popular Holocaust novel Jacob’s Courage: A Holocaust Love Story (Mazo Publishers 2007).

[David Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book. It makes one sit a little less complacently in one's skin. It has the courage to trace a line from ordinary humanity to the ordinary German soldier to the commission of atrocities.

One is reminded throughout that it's a German academic book; infelicities of translation abound. But being reminded of its Germanness is often a good thing, because one also realizes that the authors, had they been in a different generation, would have been likely to have been combatants rather than students of the war.

The source material for the book provides a unique perspective: it is based on transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations among German POWs made during the war; while there is occasional involvement of a British or American agent posing as a soldier to elicit specific types of information, the men believed they were speaking to comrades, and therefore take for granted the frames of reference prevailing at the time, without the self-justification to outsiders, interrogators, or posterity that one would find in other oral history.

The mixture of military history and social psychology means that this work won't please those who like a straightforward military history--one Amazon review criticized the authors for using thematic rather than chronological and geographic organization. The degree to which such a comment betrays a failure to grasp the essential of the work is stunning: their point is that a sample of humans will respond, within a range, based on the context in which they find themselves.

I have always been fascinated with the experiences, perspectives, and self-justifications of humans functioning in extreme circumstances, and the Nazi period represents an interesting case study of this. One realizes that Speer was, in his autobiography (Inside the Third Reich), carefully finding the space on the Venn diagram where "Nazi experience" and "conventional western European outlook" intersected. In such a situation a clever person can tell true stories without telling the whole truth.

The verdict of the authors is that the capacity to commit atrocities is far closer to the surface of most people than most people would like to allow. We want, as a society, to treat massacres of civilians as exceptional, but the reality is different.

[Arthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot of background and commentary leading up to the different sections of actual commentary from prisoners. At times it tedious but it does provide much useful context.

One warning, you wont be hearing about the prisoners talking about their living conditions at their internment camp or the food quality, although I'm sure that was talked about, this is focused, in large parts, about truly sickening acts- being spoken about in what seems to be a matter of fact, even nonchalant manner.

Also of interest is there is no benefit of hindsight. It's a transcription of thoughts taking place at that time, without knowing necessarily how the war would end or what would follow.

[Schubi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessanter Einblick in die Gefühlswelt und ideologischen Vorstellungen von abgehörten Soldaten in Kriegsgefangenschaft; durch das Zusammenspiel im "Referenzrahmen des Krieges" ist den Gedankengängen im Kontext gut zu folgen und es wird klarer, wie diese Vorstellungen und Äußerungen zustande kommen konnten. Gestört haben mich die gelegentlichen Wiederholungen.

[David Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tend to seek out war books that feature as much first-person narrative as I can find. Such books tend to feel more immediate, more personal, and provide more compelling stories. They're not about campaigns or strategy, or even tactics. They're about feelings and actions. The book is based a great deal on surveillance recordings of Axis POWs, so I figured it would feature the voices of many participants in combat.

That it does, but it's not the sort of book I was expecting. It's more about psychology. I've been reading about World War II pretty much my entire life. It always amazed me that the horrors of that war ended only 14 years before my birth. I have always had trouble understanding how people could do these things, particularly the Holocaust. I can't imagine anybody in my society participating in such a thing. Is it possible, I've wondered, that people have changed in such a short time, or that the German people of the 1930's and 1940's were so different, held such alien values? I know that anti-Semitism was not unique to Germany, it was endemic in Europe. But why was it the Germans that industrialized it and took it upon themselves to eradicate the Jews?

Of course, it's not just the Holocaust. Fifty million people were killed during the conflict, and war crimes of all sorts were perpetrated by the Germans, the Russians, the Japanese, and, yes, even the Americans (to a considerably lesser degree). While reading the early pages of the book, I couldn't help but think of a few more modern events. In fact, the two that I pondered were both addressed in this book: the My Lai massacre and the "Collateral Murder" incident in the Iraq war.

The authors make the case that ideology is not the decisive factor in wartime atrocities. It is primarily a matter of frames of reference. I won't attempt to summarize the argument and perhaps do it disservice by bringing it up in this review. But I find their thesis compelling, being that it explains not only Oradour-sur-Glane and gunning down fifteen year old Polish boys, but My Lai and "Collateral Murder".

It also fits with what we're seeing in our lives today. I would never have thought twenty years ago that my relatives and neighbors would have supported torture or the systematic separation of toddlers from their parents but I do know that those otherwise fine people not only support such policies; they find them not only good but necessary. What would my relatives and neighbors do if placed in the situations we read about in this book? What would I do?

Includes extensive notes, detailed bibliography, and index. I'm somewhat amused by the bibliography. Being translated from German, I expected many of the sources to be German, but even many of the English language books cited here use German titles. It's as if they didn't bother translating the bibliography.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, coauthored by an historian and a psychologist, represents an overview of secret recordings made of German POWs during WWII. It is at once a history as well as a psycho-social study of the military mentality during war. While its focus is on German soldiers, its conclusions draw upon hosts of other studies which, together, suggest there is more in common between the forces of belligerant countries than there is difference. While its focus is on combat, the German attempts at genocide are extensively treated. Again, lines blur, the authors concluding that war makes war crimes inevitable, military participation in German extermination campaigns being but logical extensions of more regular operations.

The translator of this book is to be commended. Indeed, it is only when I finished it that I noticed credit being given to a translator. I had thought it written in English, so flawless (well, except for one misspelling) is the text.

One hopes that the resources can be found to code the hundreds of thousands of transcript pages upon which this study is based in order to arrive at a more scientifically objective appraisal of their contents. Still, for a preliminary overview, this work is excellent and quite thought provoking.

[shixuan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ideology may provide reasons for war, but it does not explain why soldiers kill or commit war crimes.”

Neitzel deconstructs thousands of secret recordings of German POWs during WWII to analyse the psychological motivations of otherwise ordinary men in committing heinous, horrifying crimes against humanity. This evidence has been taken from a unique source — quoted verbatim from those who have directly partaken in the construction of these histories.

While the possibility of bias in these recordings has been acknowledged in the appendix, Soldaten differs from other historical interpretations of WWII in its ability to provide a holistic overview of the German military. It is able to evoke the jarring emotion of a memoir without being hindered by a limited scope; it overcomes the restrictive objectivity of a military evaluation by incorporating elements of psychoanalysis; it avoids to a degree prejudgements borne of hindsight by focusing on transcriptions taken during the war itself.

Overall judgement: good shit, would recommend.

[Themistocles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had such high hopes for this book! Intimate, unedited discussions are always tremendously interesting since -apart from the 'voyeuristic PoV'- they provide for unfiltered narratives.

However, the bulk of the book is way too fragmented - a couple of sentences from each discussion, followed by a skin-deep sociological and psychological analysis. I mean, really basic stuff. Like showing you a painting and then following it with a blurb saying "here's a window, and outside you can see some grass and the sky". The 50-odd page introduction lays down some decent groundwork explaining some of the sociological concepts, but after that any reader with a basic understanding of how the world works could draw the same conclusions without having to break up whatever narrative exists.

As such, the book quickly becomes very, very tiring and the 'analysis' works against the writer's convictions since it seems more like confirmation bias rather than an objective analysis.

[Ana-Marija Posavec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ova je knjiga rezultat istraživanja i suradnje dvaju znanstvenika iz različitih područja; prikaz zapisa britanskih i američkih obavještajnih službi o prisluškivanju zarobljenih njemačkih vojnika iz Drugoga svjetskog rata. Neprocjenjiva studija za ozbiljne istraživače koja donosi važni referentni okvir za razumijevanje funkcioniranja njemačkih vojnika različitih činova, objašnjava kulturne obveze kroz osjećaje srama, časti te racionalna rješenja "problema", formalnu obvezi vojnika Wehrmachta. Svijet Trećeg Reicha očituje se kroz iskustva vojnika i analizi konkretnih, u stvarnosti proživljenih situacija u kojima pojedinci djeluju.
Izuzetna, hvalevrijedna studija.

[Dschreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2001 historian Sönke Neitzel, a visiting lecturer from Germany at the University of Glasgow, was reading a book on the Battle of the Atlantic when was surprised to come across several pages reporting the secretly recorded conversations of POWs from German U-boats. Reports based on interrogations were well known to him, but not transcriptions of private conversations recorded by hidden microphones in POW camps. Intrigued, although expecting very little, he took a trip to London and requested the documents at the British national archive. A large bundle of 800 pages was delivered to his desk, covering September 1943. As he read through them, he wondered, Were there similar reports for October and November? For POWs from the army and the Luftwaffe? For the rest of the war years? By the end of his investigation, Neitzel turned up 48,000 pages of surveillance protocols in Britain and over 40,000 in the U.S., documenting the intimate conversations of tens of thousands of German POWs. The Allies had kept them classified for fifty years in order to keep their intelligence methods secret, not even providing them to prosecutors in war crimes trials. From the day they were declassified in 1996 until Neitzel unearthed them in 2001, they had lain forgotten in the two national archives.

Even though he specialized in World War II studies, Neitzel recognized that it would take more than a historian to tease out the complete meaning of the documents, so he partnered with Harald Welzer, a social psychologist with a background in the study of perceptions of violence and the willingness to kill. Working together they produced Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, an extraordinary study of soldiers at war chatting unguardedly—to each other, not to interrogators; while the war was still in progress, not afterwards with the benefit of hindsight and attempting to justify their actions.

By way of background the authors describe in some detail the world of the soldier and analyze the “frames of reference” of the conversations. For particular conversations they often provide analysis of the social setting and of the interpersonal dynamics. But at the heart of the book are the transcriptions themselves. Some chapters focus on the soldiers’ thoughts about their role as soldiers, about technology, about their knowledge of or participation in the Holocaust, their faith in victory, the extent of their belief in Nazism, and so on, all quite interesting. But most fascinating of all, fascinating in its horror, is the longest chapter, entitled “Fighting, Killing, and Dying.” We know the clichés such as “War is hell,” and think we know something of war from history books, novels, memoirs, and movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” but what we read in Soldaten can still come as a shock, as much for the soldiers’ attitudes as for the brutality of the deeds themselves.

MULLER: . . . near the junction of the Don and the Donetz . . .. It’s beautiful country; I travelled everywhere in a lorry. Everywhere we saw women doing compulsory labour service.
FAUST: How frightful!
MULLER: They were employed on road-making—extraordinarily lovely girls; we drove past, simply pulled them into the armoured car, raped them and threw them out again. And did they curse!

SOLM: We sank a children’s transport.
WILLE: Were they drowned?
SOLM: Yes, all are dead.
WILLE: How did you know that just this ship out of the 50 had the children on board?
SOLM: Because we have a big book. This book contains all the ships of the English and Canadian steamship lines. We look them up in that.

ENZIEL: Muller from Berlin was a sniper, he shot the women who went to meet the English soldiers with bunches of flowers . . . He took aim and shot civilians in completely cold blood.
HEUER: Did you shoot women too?
ENZIEL: Only from a distance.

It’s often said that it takes time and effort to change a peace-loving civilian into a killer. Not always.

POHL: On the second day of the Polish war I had to drop bombs on a station at Posen. Eight of the sixteen bombs fell on the town, among the houses. I did not like that. On the third day I did not care a hoot, and on the fourth day I was enjoying it. It was our before-breakfast amusement to chase single soldiers over the fields with machine-gun fire and leave them lying with a few bullets in the back.

Even in our most gritty movies, soldiers appear grim-faced or fierce in their killing. We rarely see the joy of killing.

BAUEMER: . . . we played a fine game in the “111.” We had a 2-cm canon built into it in front. Then we flew at low level over the streets, and when any cars came toward us we put on the searchlights and they thought another car was coming toward them. Then we turned the canon on them. We had plenty of success like that. That was grand, we got a lot of fun out of it.

Küster: We didn’t fire on the people in the station; there wouldn’t have been any point in it until we had got rid of our bombs. But afterwards we shot up the town; we fired at everything that was there. At cows and horses, it didn’t matter what. We fired at the trams and everything; it’s great fun.

BUDDE: I’ve taken part in two intruder patrols attacking houses . . . Whatever we came across; country houses on a hillside made the best targets. You flew up from below, then you aimed—and crash! There was the sound of breaking windowpanes, and the roof flew off . . . At the marketplace, there were crowds of people and speeches were being made. They ran like hares! That’s great fun! It was just before Christmas.

Soldaten is a study of the mentality of the German POWs and includes few references to other conflicts. In a passage dealing with the lack of concern about killing the innocent, we learn that “There was an unwritten rule among U.S. troops in Vietnam: ‘If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s a Vietcong.’” But throughout the book the reader constantly has in mind My Lai, the Canadian Airborne Regiment, YouTube videos out of Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, and so on.

V.GREIM: We once made a low-level attack near Eastbourne. When we got there, we saw a large mansion where they seemed to be having a ball or something; in any case we saw a lot of women in fancy-dress, and an orchestra. . . . We turned round and flew toward it. The first time we flew past, and then we approached again and machine-gunned them. It was great fun!

Wouldn’t such sentiments come easily out of the mouth of some Tom Cruise-like Top Gun pilot? And how do soldiers in any conflict deal with captured or surrendering enemy when it is impractical or impossible to deal with them according to the Geneva Conventions?

LEICHTFUSS: When a small detachment of about ten or fifteen soldiers was captured there, it was too difficult for the soldier or the Unteroffizier to transport them back 100 or 120 km. They were locked in a room and three or four hand grenades were flung in through the window.


There aren’t any other books like Soldaten. It offers insights, mostly ugly ones, into what can really happen in war, less biased than a memoir, more vivid, even more frank, than a veteran’s reminiscences recounted to you face to face.

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book with an odd premise. One of the authors, in the course of research, stumbled across the little-known fact that during World War II both the British and Americans bugged their POW camps, and transcribed tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages of conversations between the inmates. This was done during the War for intelligence purposes, and after the conflict the transcripts were filed away in archives. This resource is a treasure trove for historians and has, and no doubt will continue, to spawn scholarly monographs such as this one.

What Neitzel and Welzer have done with the material is to explore whether there was a particularly National Socialist way of making war, or whether the German Army was the same as the other fighting forces of the time.

Something that the authors don't address until the final part of the book, but which seemed obvious to me from the opening chapter was the problem of who is supplying the evidence. The inmates of the camps were by no means a simple cross-section of German Troops - Naval and Air forces were disproportionally strongly represented for much of the War, as the Allies were taking more of them than ground troops prisoner. Of course all of the subjects were taken on the Western, Italian or Middle-Eastern fronts, and while some of them had experience of war in the USSR and Eastern Front, it was by no means representative of the whole of the German combat forces.

There are of course other problems with the provision of evidence of this sort as well - the Allies didn't record every conversation, only the ones that they were interested in keeping, and of course the prisoners may have been telling less than the truth one way or the other, either to put off their captors, or to boast to their fellow inmates.

This doesn't make any of the transcripts any less fascinating for the insights they do provide us. And a lot of those insights are fairly gruesome. It seems many troops were aware of the Final Solution, and many of them had been involved in, or had witnessed mass shootings of Jews. While each soldier is more or less comfortable with what they saw or did, none of them really question the fact that it's taking place. The horrendous actions against partisans also cause little conflict amongst the POW, with troops sometimes expressing happiness over the actions they undertook. In fact what comes out from many of the transcripts is that many troops thought they pretty much had a licence to commit whatever crimes took their fancy.

Many of the troops were also cavalier with any prisoners they took, with some stories here from Normandy of Germans killing GI prisoners because they were Black, or "looked Jewish".

These stories stand out amongst the others in the book that refer to decorations, equipment, superior officers, and the other more mundane aspects of life in a military world.

What surprised me more, after reading the work, was that the authors conclusion is that there was nothing particularly Nazi in the way these soldiers, sailors and airmen fought. While it is fairly clear from the transcripts in the book that there were not many active Nazis in the forces, certainly the stories they told, that they acquiesced to or took part in do actually indicate that the German Armed Forces in World War II were engaged in a different sort of war than the other combatants. We haven't heard stories of Allied troops engaging in mass atrocities against a particular ethnic group (even the Russians didn't kill all the Tatars), we don't hear of other armies murdering POW as a matter of course, and certainly in the US and British armies many troops would have rebelled if they'd been asked to do so. Obviously there were circumstances where these other armies committed atrocities, and got away with it, but in the German Army these were committed as a matter of course, under superior orders.

I find the last chapter disturbing as well - "War as work", which describes in detail the footage provided by Wikileaks showing an ISAF gunship identifying a group of civilians as combatants and killing them. The authors use this to show how easy it is to make a mistake on the battlefield when working in the frame of reference of a firefight. I had the feeling (and this could just be me) that the authors were trying to equate many of the crimes described by the POW earlier in the book to this phenomenon. I think the transcripts they quote show in the vast majority of cases that there is no similarity between many things discussed by the POW and this incident.

With all my reservations, I found this still to be a book well-worth reading, with a lot to say about how the war was fought, what German Soldiers thought, and the lengths the Allies went to in gathering information.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Bas Kreuger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing book as it shows how thin the line is between 'normal' civilised peacetime behaviour and (also normal) wartime behavior and thinking.
The best example was at the very end of the book where the attack by American soldiers in Iraq was described from an Apache attack helicopter against unarmed civilians and it was shown how their state of mind was so pre-conditioned that there was hardly any possibility for them to see those unarmed civilians as anything else than armed insurgents. The pipe one of the men was carrying was no pipe, didn't even look like a pipe, but because the Americans operated in a high threat environment and were on the lookout for rebels, the pipe WAS a RPG-7 shoulder launched rocket.
This switch in perception is what is a recurring topic in the book, the more or less industrialized "work" view soldiers have of their handiwork of fighting and killing.

An intriguing book as well as the soldiers who were eavesdropped upon were candid in their opinions against their fellow soldiers and POW's and thus used hardly any political correct language.
You never know for sure if they talk the truth in what they are telling, but it mostly was their true opinion or vision on war, warfare and their fellow soldiers that was aired.

[Gabriele Goldstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't stop reading this book. I kept thinking of my dad (and other family members) - the Luftwaffe pilots, Eastern Front soldiers, POWs. This book has helped fill in some of the blanks. Quite a lot of ground is covered. And it's a book I'm sure I'll refer to back over and over. My favorite quote is on page 337 by Willy Peter Reese: "Just like winter clothing covers up almost all of you except for your eyes, the fact of being a soldier only allowed space for tiny bits of individuality." So grateful that my own children have not had to become soldiers.

[Justin Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given to me by a former co-worker, Will Hadeler, based on our shared interest in World War II.

What piqued my interest about Soldaten is to learn more about the darker side of human nature that comes out during times of war and if certain folks are more predisposed to committing heinous acts.

I have studied the Eastern Front since Middle School and visited numerous renowned World War II museums, battlefields, and other historical sights. Still, it was not until reading Soldaten that it clicked for how violent this front was.

According to the text, 5-10% of people are psychologically inclined toward violence.

I would recommend to anyone looking to World War II historians looking for first-hand accounts from soldiers. I did not find the book's second half as interesting as the first because it covered more commonly studied components of the War, such as the soldier's perception of technological advancements in aircraft.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Soldaten: Neitzel & Welzer.
This is a frustrating book. Based on thousands of hours of taped conversations between (German) POWs in WWII it claims to make clear the motivations, thoughts and feelings German soldiers, sailors and airman had about the war and their roles in it. Yet around 75% of the book consists of the authors explaining the genuine quotations and fitting them into their own theories and ideas. To the extent that we begin to feel the quotes are ‘cherry-picked’ to support preconceived conclusions.

We are given a short exchange between two POWs and told that this is representative of the mass of the recorded conversations. But as the book progresses the authors voices dominate to the point where we can no monger be sure of this. In short, the original voices are buried in the authors own ideas and intellectual verbiage to the point where we can no longer trust them.

Among the chapter-headings that divide and categorize the original voices, such as sex; technology; ideology etc one glaring omission is that of humor. What men, and particularly soldiers, laugh about tells us enormous amounts about their thinking and emotions. Yet this is absent, briefly touched on in places but never adequately explored.

The last two chapters contain only one long conversation, not between Germans soldiers, but between American soldiers in Afghanistan, to belabor the point that “frame of reference: war” is universal in all modern wars and dominates soldiers thinking and actions to the point where the soldiers of the Wehrmacht ae no different than their modern counterparts in any nation’s armies. They then go on to argue for their own conclusions which are tenuous, or banal at best.

That they use the pointless statistic that the majority of WWII’s 50 million victims died in the general violence of the war, and not in the Holocaust, does not make the Holocaust any less of a primary factor in the war’s conduct. Clearly for Hitler, Himmler et al it was a prime political goal which involved their armies in a ruthless war of extermination in the East, not just a war of conquest, from the start. A war which involved the routine slaughter of millions of Polish and Russian civilians and Polish and Russian POWs on any number of spurious pretexts, numbers not included in the Holocaust totals.

I tend to prefer to read eye-witness testimonies of the War, as they can be understood without the filters applied by historians, and need only a certain amount of skepticism, critical thought and common sense to decipher motives and agenda. More usefully, they are generally written in context, from which meaning ultimately derives. This book could have been such an effort. But the authors get in our way.

In the Foreword one of the authors tell how astonished he was when the other, having discovered the source documents, was willing to share them rather than keep such a treasure all to himself and thus have all the academic glory and publishing success. It is a telling moment. The academic and publishing framework provides a frame of reference we rarely, if ever, escape. We see a tiny amount of the text, wrapped in the meta text of the authors beliefs and ideas. A wasted opportunity.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

The blurb says "a powerful narrative." And that says it all. A fairy tale based on shallow observations from two academic bureaucrats.

"Medicinal statistics document the level of sexual activity among soldiers. At a field hospital in Kiev, for example, doctors spent most of their time treating skin and venereal diseases."

Of course the folder says skin and venereal diseases. But how does the reader know there wasn't a terrible eczema because of the ink used to print the portraits with the beautiful cow-like arian women? The lack of sanitation? Problems with the drinking water? Who cares! The author says it's sex and sex must be. And damn the references like what field hospital, when and who made the report. The Germans are too smart to waste time on these details! The second proof being "For example, a navy lieutenant proclaimed: [bla bla]." Those Germans were too pure to exaggerate. And what was the proclamation?

"GEHLEN*: They once made a raid in our area and discovered that 70% of all German soldiers whom they found with girls in the so-called bunks were suffering from venereal diseases"

So 1. once 2. they in 3. some area 4. 70% but beware! "whom they found with girls" and not just anybody. So the agile historian pushes right after a "That percentage does not seem to have been exceptionally high." Maybe it is 70% of 2 individuals? Who knows? Who cares!

Than there is a sample of the German witch doctor activity:

“The ‘sanitization’ consisted of being washed with soap and water and cleansed with sublimate solution whereupon a small disinfecting rod was inserted into the urethra. A balm was used to combat potential syphilis."

And again, through the same technique, the self important voice of the historian dumps a conclusion: "The mere fact that such institutions existed, together with a whole bureaucracy concerning venereal disease, shows how widespread and well known soldiers’ sexual activity was." Yea, right.

How about the Christian morals? Germany today has lost Gott mit uns on the soldiers' uniforms, but still a civil judge can award punitive damages to be paid by the accused straight in the coffers of the Church.

How about concerns about the future production of cannon fodder? Given medicine practiced in Germany at that time, as seen above, superstitions abounded. So the child of a syphilitic parent might turn out to be a Jew or even African. After all the medicine of that day mean phrenology and all sort of other nutty ideas, not far from the The Malleus Maleficarum. Few centuries ago the good peasants could not sleep because of the fear of witches. The electoral results show in the 21st century a comparable fear of Muslims in the same geographic area.

So, how does the German historian know that sexual violence was so bad during the War? "Some soldiers even boasted about the number of venereal diseases they had contracted."

[Perato · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting read. British and Americans taped their German prisoners of war and then wrote the conversations into paper only to be pushed into archives. IIRC there are hundreds of thousands of pages of conversations in the archives which Sönke Neitzel. To go through them all he collaborated with Psychologist Harald Welzer and together they analyzed the contents of these conversations.

This book offers a glimpse to how the German soldiers thought about the war and the situations they were forced to. The writers analyze these conversations and give a lot to think about how to read into these conversations. Even if the book had been just recorder conversations it would've been okayish, but these comments are the reason this book is lifted to top category in my eyes. They're really candid how they analyzed and what they saw in those conversations and the Welzer was very much needed to analyze the transcripts. They even bring similar situations from modern wars to explain their points. The book is thematically organized and the subtitle "on Fighting, Killing and Dying" gives a pointer what sort of themes there are.

If you want just (horror) stories about war, you might want to look the other way(say Svetlana Alexievich The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II ), if you want more than that, this is the book to read. If you are an history student or an aspiring researcher of WW2, I would very much recommend this book early on as to how to utilize different fields and sources while still writing an engaging work to be published. Not everything has to be popular history.

[Fenriz Angelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting recount on the sociological aspects german soldiers endured during World War II. Though is mainly focused on the eastern front since the information recollected comes from POWs in England, there's still some accounts regarding the Afrikan Corps.

This book takes on how the early ages of National Socialism influenced and made possible the desensitization of acts of violence from it's citizen and feed them with antisemitism whether the citizens agreed with it or not. It was all a subtle progression with inimaginable consecuenses. This could be seen in the battlefield, while the SS had a real fanatic behavior, Wehrmacht weren't exempt from criminal actions against habitants of the places they invaded. There's also an analysis of the different mindset every army division had, SS, luftwaffe, navy, and foot troops that adds a even more specific insight. I personally found the insight of the luftwaffe worth for my research.

Lastly there's a comparison in some acts of war during WWII against U.S Army acts in Vietman, Afghanistan and Iraq to make a point that things hadn't changed much.

Soldaten provides a perspective that is much needed to understand the magnitude of war.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodreads has several very thorough and thoughtful reviews, so I'm not going to try very hard here. Let's just say that I found it interesting but poorly edited and/or translated--some obvious errors that could be translation problems but others seem to just be WRONG. Also, the organization is not too useful.

An example of weird errors: p. 261 -- " . . . a Canadian amphibious plane, the Sunderland [italicized as if it were the name of a ship] reported it had sunk a U-boat . . ." -- duh, a Sunderland was a TYPE of flying boat, not the NAME of a particular plane!

All-in-all, writing this three months after I finished the book . . . it was disappointing. It isn't memorable. I gave it three stars at the time I finished, but probably wouldn't give it more than 2.5 now. Still, I'm keeping the book . . . may be useful for reference.

9/12/24 — had occasion to look at this again (wasn’t the book I was looking for) but am going to read or scan parts of it again.

11/9/24 -- enough of that. Didn't reread much. Once again, interesting but not memorable.

[Al Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book could have potentially provided an invaluable resource considering the information's source and time frame. A rare opportunity to learn the Good, Bad and Ugly behind the experiences and minds of German PWs. Unfortunately it totally lacks the objectivity such a task requires.
The contents concentrate more on gratuitous satisfaction for the reader to have their assumptions confirmed. That the German is truly a unique race of sociopaths. An agenda that became all too evident after only a short time which basically removed the possibility of gaining any legitimate insight into the minds of the German Serviceman. Nothing short of a wasted opportunity and not worth the money or time.

[Joe Sibley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soldaten
By Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer
I chose to read this book because, after finding it in the nonfiction section of the school library, I was curious. Promising an in-depth historical and psychological analysis of the German armed forces of WWII, I couldn’t help myself, as I was curious about the true variety of perspectives and whitewashing of the war. Sönke Neitzel, a German historian who has written extensively about WWII, worked with Harald Welzer, a social psychologist who has researched the Holocaust and now works with the social side of climate change, to provide an in-depth historical account of many aspects of the war and the varying perspectives and stances that members of the German armed forces took towards them, attempting to explain how Germany shifted into barbarism. Both authors were (are) well qualified within their fields and both had prior works related to WWII.
In summary, Soldaten provides a detailed account of many of the different aspects of the war (E.g: Autotelic violence, fun, hunting, sinking ships, crimes against POWs, miracle weapons, adventure, etc.) and the perspectives of soldiers toward them through the usage of an extensive collection of POW transcripts. Additionally, Welzer provides an explanation of the frame of reference of the war and the way that frames of reference can gradually shift and shape the way that people react to the events around them, giving us context for the insights to come.
Ultimately, after reading around half of the book, I’ve found the literary style to be effective and frequently captivating, keeping the subject interesting by avoiding excessive repetition of identical accounts without being unconducive to the construction of a mental picture of the German psyche. The personality and perspective analyses have all been very thorough and contextual, measured both individually and against the differing perspectives shown in other accounts in order to make both broad and specific objective characterizations. The following is a lengthy excerpt (Pg. 229) with which I hope to illustrate my point:
“In April 1943, after reading the nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine, First Lieutenant Fried remarked “They say that the Jews weren’t able to master through the German language in literature and so on. But the ‘Journey through the Harz is marvelous.” A few months earlier a low-level officer named Wehner declared “When I meet a Jew I could shoot him out of hand. The number of Jews we killed in Poland! We did them in mercilessly.” Both statements were made around roughly the same time by two members of the same branch of the military, the Luftwaffe. So is it fair to say that Fried represented humanistic Germany whereas Wehner was an anti-Semitic ideological warrior? Our material provides no evidence that enjoying Heine’s “Journey through the Harz” was any indication of whether or not someone was capable of murdering Jews. Conversely, of course, we can conclude that Wehner was fanatic enough to refuse to read books by Jewish authors (his other statements confirm this). The juxtaposition of these two excerpts indicated the spectrum of opinion expressed in the protocols about Jews and racism in general. On the one hand, the transcripts contain praise for Heine and Jewish doctors, chemists, and physicists as well as emotional rejections of the Holocaust and the persecution of Jews in general. On the other, the protocols are also full of theories about a global conspiracy, including “Jewified” England and America, as well as tales of glee after killing Jews. In short the transcripts contain just about everything under the sun.... single individuals often used seeming mutually exclusive arguments and expressed diametrically opposed perspectives. “The Nazis are worse swine than the Jews,” remarked one POW, while another opined, “The Japanese are the Jews of the east.”
I haven’t read any other books by the authors so I’ll have to make some broader genre comparisons here. This book has two primary draws. The first is the unique usage of POW transcripts in order to see exactly what military members were willing to say without speculation. The second is the opportunity for psychological analysis afforded by Harald Welzer, letting us see what soldiers thought throughout the war. Together, these come together to form a nearly objective view of the Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, and Kriegsmarine, potentially putting an end to hopeful theories such as the “clean Wehrmacht” while simultaneously showing that there were at least a select few that condemned the Nazis and the racist despotism of Hitler and the Third Reich.
I’ve personally found the book to be “enjoyable” (in the sole sense that it was well written) so far. I appreciate that the authors have provided before unseen insights into the military of the Reich using a unique and readable source and style of presentation. I also enjoy the objectivity that this source provides - Welzer never attempted to breach this with his ultimately subjective analyses. He also never shied away from opportunities to discuss the most despicable actions of the Reich, trying to explain the mindsets and frames of reference that could lead to the events and their corresponding responses, though this should not be confused for some foolish attempt at justification. I would say that anyone interested in a uniquely psychology and sociology focused account of WWII, or simply an insight into some of the more human experiences of the fanatical losing side of the war, would enjoy this book. It’s also worth mentioning that the prose is well done (in my opinion), never distracting, flowery, or vague. It flows more smoothly than can sometimes be expected of the genre, making the book more easily digestible.

[Michael Flanagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this book ticked all the boxes and was a highly enjoyable read. It takes the time to explain the mind set of Werchmat soldiers and explains how the normalization of violence experienced by any front line troops occurs. A fantastic study into the world during the war and those who fought it. Through the transcripts of German POW's the author pulls apart the social and human aspects of war and soldiers and shows it in a crystal clear perspective. This book should be mandatory reading of any military leadership group as the lesson to be learnt go to the heart of man at war. In short it pulls apart what it is to be a soldier and lays it bare for all to see.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is much more a scholarly book of history, sociology, and psychology than its title or copy might have you believe. While occasionally disturbing and other timea beyond credulity, this work goes beyond just revealing what memebers of the Wermacht talked about when they thought no one was listening - it opens a door of understanding to the exerience of war and soldiering in general and to how, despite how supposedly evolved and conscious we are in modern society, such awful things have happened and keep on happening. This would make a great companion text to On Killing by Grossmann.

[Christoph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well-researched and written, Neitzel and Welzer unflinchingly account for the actions of Wehrmacht soldiers during World War II, while considering the psychological and human needs for group membership as a mechanism for individual survival being a deus ex machina behind the apparent blind following of orders that so condemns the individuals behind these actions against the backdrop of The Holocaust.

[Gigi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this but I do feel like they could've cut down on the analyzing and included more conversations. Anyway, it was really interesting.

[Michael Cargill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stuff for those (like me) who enjoy reading about WWII.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for everyone, but for WWII history lovers and those interested in what happens to men in wartime, it’s a very good and unique read.

[Yili Zhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book presented information collected from the Surveillance Protocols. It is insightful on what the German soldiers and officers thought about various aspects of the war, including mass murdering of the Jews.

I find it difficult to read because the content and descriptions are fragmented. It presents a good collection of information for researchers. However, as a book for general public, it is difficult to read to the end.

I used to think that the German military people were less brain washed than their Japanese counterparts. Sadly, it was not true. Nationalism propaganda was such an effective tool to mobilise, unite and galvanise the people, that it created the same fanatical soldiers as well as civilians in Germany as in Japan.

I don’t believe most of the people were so stupid to believe everything told by their leaders. After all , the German people were well educated comparatively. I have a strong suspicion that they wanted to believe in Hitler and Nazi because they were promised great life if they followed. This includes taking the land and properties of other countries, and robbing the wealth of the Jews. Can you imagine what their response would be if Nazi just asked the German people to sacrifice their lives for the glorious national socialism course, without promises of material benefits in return?

It is human nature to advance their self interest, and disguise their motives under a big and glorious banner. This way they can commit atrocities and still believe they themselves are good people, because their actions against humanity are merely means to achieve the great goals, therefore immune from the judgment of their own morality.

The book presents the dark side of not just the Germans, but the entire human race, who will commit more atrocities against fellow humans and other lives on this planet. We can’t change it. All we can do is to be vigilant and suppress it wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

If this book doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you aren't paying attention. What makes this book so compelling, is not the fact that Nazis (regardless of the branch of the military in which they served) were uniquely evil in their penchant for killing, but that at the core, it is a problem of all of humanity.
This book transcribes and dissects the conversations from German POWs during WWII, who were recorded surreptitiously, with the goal of gaining information about the enemy that was not possible from direct interrogation. One does have to view the information with a grain of salt, as the POWs could have been lying or exaggerating for various reasons. However, the preponderance of certain behaviors and attitudes cannot be ignored. But the authors never attempt to isolate these beliefs to this particular war (while also not minimizing or excusing the abominations that were committed). They simply recognize that people have behaved in heinous ways throughout many conflicts, and want to utilize the data at hand in order to understand its origins better. This analysis is done from a historical, sociological, and psychological perspective.
I only gave it 3 stars because I felt as thought it was rather dry, and not necessarily enjoyable to read (to the extent that such a topic could or should be enjoyable). It is an important book, and one I would recommend others to read, even if its a bit of a slog.