Lost Honour, Betrayed Loyalty: The Memoir of a Waffen SS Soldier

by Herbert Maeger

Unusual book

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

258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[andy mack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the story but the author didn’t go much into details for my liking. He didn’t describe enough his actions in combat, his actions as a medic, his feelings, the settings etc. It feels as if the whole thing was just generally surveyed. I just finished reading “forgotten soldier” which is the polar opposite. Combine that with sometimes weird text structure and grammatical errors. It’s a shame because had the author put more effort and detail this could’ve been a 5 star.

[Paul Janiszewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herbert Maeger - Lost Honour, Betrayed Loyalty.

Hitler's jockeying for absolute power hinged on the appeasement of the existing German Military establishment. Steps were taken to facilitate a favourable path to this end. The bloodletting of the "Night Of The Long Knives" eliminated what the military considered to be, its greatest threat, and one of Hitler's closest ally: Ernst Rohm and his legions of Brownshirts. As an added measure the military sought to limit Hitler's independent militia or private bodyguard, the SS Verfugungstruppe, (the origins of what came to be called the Liebstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and then subsequently expanded to the Waffen SS) by securing pre-eminence in the acquisition of manpower. The Wehrmacht hence laid claim to recruitment from the vast body of German born citizens. As the war progressed, the dwindling of manpower forced Hitlers appointed leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler to seek recruitment further afield. Volksdeutsche, non German citizens and allied countrymen from the occupied territories were driven into recruitment by any means, either through propaganda, coercion or plain thugery and came to constitute a truly Pan European military fighting force consolidated in the name of the Waffen SS.
It was in this context that many a youth were press ganged into service, and so too in 1941, 18 year old, Belgian born, Herbert Maeger was presented with the ultimatum of choice between service in the Waffen SS or deportation of his mother to the concentration camps. He entered service in the Liebstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, saw service on the Eastern Front in Kharkov and the Battle of Kursk. After being wounded and recovered a number of times he was recommended for medical officer training at the SS Junker School in Prague, and it was there that he found himself accused of subversion, and subsequently sentenced to punishment duty in the notorious SS Penal Brigade Dirlewanger on the Oder Front and the ensuing horror of the Halbe Pocket.
To follow Maeger's story solely in search of blood lust and suffering (of that he certainly describes) is to miss the value of one individuals human experience of the catastrophe of the human condition, in mind, body and soul. It is in these dire situations that our collective sense of ethics and morality are borne, and it is incumbent on our society, ever more relevant today, to relearn those lessons of the past. Indeed our modern lives today have become devoid of those challenges of our previous generations which facilitated and reinforced our innate human capability of 'Experiencing', 'Understanding', and 'Seeing', and as a result subsequently 'Actioning', into the mores and laws of our society. To that end I would dedicate the rest of this review with reference and extract.
North of Kharkov in the 1942 winter offensive Maeger's squad found themselves under attack in an impossible situation. For him It became a lesson in the conundrum of animal nihilism and introspective morality:
"The disaster began as a rash reaction to an alarm situation... It was obvious we had to act, and do so without long consideration... without any prospect of salvation. 'Therefore, there's nothing like attacking!' an SS Staff Sergeant from Battalion said and everybody got into open formation... It came as a surprise to us not to receive defensive fire... the Russians had panicked, swarming out of the cottages and making for the protection of the gully. To get there they had to cross open country, all 200 of them, running for their lives under a hail of bullets. I aimed my MG and fired without any reflection or thought, filled with a killing rage, which was totally foreign to me, against these Russians who had killed Ullrich and the others and tried to kill me. After I had exhausted my remaining supply of ammunition... I realized that I had fired on - at that time unarmed - fleeing soldiers, and I was overcome by a sobering sense of shame and the knowledge that it was a reaction to the overly tense situation and my own fear of dying. I had experienced that strange thing, the personal 'state of emergency', which the First World War front line veteran Ernst Junger declared to be the sublimation of the experience of blood, battle and horror, for which he employed the term 'heroic nihilism'.... Whatever it was it affected me deeply. It was a new experience for me, and one which I never repeated... The business was not at an end however. The force established in the gully was about four times the number of our two squads combined... The panzer wiped them all out. It was just a cruel slaughter... suddenly out of nowhere a figure rose in front of me. Instinctively I raised my pistol and shouted Ruki Vyersh! (Hands Up). Before me stood a young Russian, no older than myself who looked at me with wide eyes full of fear and raised his arms. What happened next I experienced in a split second like a film in slow motion: before I could say anything else a shot rang out from behind me: I saw the trace of hope in the eyes of the Russian fade in unbelieving horror and then he collapsed. In a fury I turned round to see Reimer, his carbine still at the ready, 'You absolute idiot', I shouted at him, 'Was that necessary?'. In his eyes I saw bewilderment and dismay. He seemed to be searching for words; finally he came out helplessly with: 'I didn't mean to'. Deep within me I realized that I believed him, this young man experiencing for the first time the horror of war."
In1944 upon attending training at the SS Junker School in Prague Maeger's moral compass was yet again brought to bear. Training consisted of the expected military program and the reinforcement of 'proper' thought including the theory of Eugenics (acknowledged worldwide at the time as science) and one of the important constituents of Nazi 'Instruction In The World View':
"The lecturer continued to reel off his repertoire... racial hygiene, the need to promote the positive elements in the body of the people (the collective), the mission of the state to cull the negative strain, in particular the sterilization of individuals whose progeny might be classified as unwholesome... He spoke of the medical operations practiced on the afflicted and then uttered a sentence abruptly which - for me - had unexpectedly dramatic consequences. 'We have decided', he said, 'on a measure to simplify the solution of the problem. Seriously mentally handicapped persons will, after the most thorough medical investigation, be passed on for euthanasia, the procedure will naturally be carried out through the scrupulous attention to humanitarian principles'. There was a rhetorical pause for this to sink in and the air in the room suddenly became icy. Then an SS Junker in the row to the left of me stood up and said in a calm, clear voice: 'I protest formally against this disregard of medical ethics and the Hippocratic oath, to which I feel myself bound as a student of medicine'. Two other young men rose with him... We all sat frozen: I had a sudden admiration for these three comrades... I wanted to jump up and exclaim: 'I too! I too!' but I was paralyzed, my throat blocked. I remained seated and was filled with bitter shame.' Later Maeger was to be overheard in conversation condemning the immorality and hence his subsequent punishment to the penal battalion.
Finally in 1945 in the terror of the Halbe pocket, amid the depths of despair and the innate nature of the evil contained within the extremities of human condition, he and his antagonists became as one in weight of the burden of haunting conscience:
"Everybody aiming to get to the west had to pass through the Halbe bottleneck, and Halbe was an inferno... the road was strewn with corpses; for hundreds of meters one could not set foot down on the ground for the dead. Soldiers fell around me under artillery barrage. Whoever was hit or tripped died crushed by panzer tracks literally dripping with blood. It was a scenario of hell beyond the powers of imagining of those who never experienced it... In a wood at Markisch Bucholz I had the most horrific and gruesome experience of my entire life. Because of the bombing raids on Berlin, Wehrmacht staffs had been evacuated to tents and Nissen huts with many female signals auxiliaries. Apparently they had been surprised by Soviet troops. So far as the eye could see, the wood was strewn with the naked corpses of hundreds of young women, each gutted from breast to pubis and left to die. I shall never be able to rid myself of the image for as long as I live. If I correctly interpret statements by Red Army veterans to the television cameras after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even for them the memory of what they themselves or their comrades did in uncontrolled blood lust - or often under the influence of alcohol - or from simple psychopathic vindictiveness, is a heavy burden on their consciences".
In conclusion Maeger concedes the essence of the lessons of a moral conscience, that I believe, to this day is diluted and conveniently reconstituted through the experience of a society swimming in the unparalleled safety, certainty, comfort, abundance and delusional trust of our modern day dream world:
"The pain of bodily wounds was much less for many than the agony of remembering unspeakable cruelties committed by people against other people forced to participate in an inhuman event."

[Erik Surewaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a good story that easily could have gotten a four star rating. It is however the translator that didn’t do a good job. I can imagine the book to be a very readable story in german, but this english translation just doesn’t capture my attention. It is as if you are reading individually translated sentences whereby the “flow” of the story is broken up. There are also many mistakes in the spelling, which could have easily been prevented.

If you are able to read german, I would recommend you to try the original german version (if it exists - probably it will).

The interesting thing of this book is that it shows you the 2nd World War from an SS soldier that has been on the eastern front. It gave me quite some learnings, but I also get the impression that the author left away many of his experiences. There are some war stories of the front, but only few descriptions of the real atrocities the author probably must have seen. Even when he worked as a medical aid in different situations, he must have heard and seen a lot. He however didnt’t share a lot of this I get the impression.

The book also contains some good photos. Since the author carried a photo camera as part of his early years as a soldier, there are some good photos.

This book gets three stars. It is close to four stars, but as mentioned this has more to do with the translator than the author (I guess).

[Alistair Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways this account of the authors service in the Second World War in the Waffen SS is and engaging and thoughtful story and a reminder that these things are never black and white but shades of grey. The author was a Belgian citizen but from the frontier province of Eupen-Malmedy which had been part of Germany until 1920 and was annexed back in 1940 (and returned again in 1945) and his divided loyalty is explained, his account of entering the SS is a little dubious but it seems like many young men he volunteered for a number of reasons and appears to have had few doubts about the rightness of Germany`s cause.
His account is one of the service of a private soldier, the comradeship and often brutal discipline, there are accounts of kindness and good relations with Russian civilians and justifying shooting individual prisoners (as the author points out the Soviets did worse and hadn`t signed the Hauge Convention.
There are a couple of editorial errors such as p51 where the date is given as 1941 which can`t be correct.
There is an underlying feeling and implication running through the text that there is a lot the author isn`t saying or is soft peddling but what there is seems to be an honest account of a front line soldier.
There are some good anecdotes such as an encounter with Sepp Dietrich.
Recommended

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a challenging book on a number of levels. The author, a member of the Waffen-SS, is seemingly in denial of the crimes committed during the war by the SS. He was a member of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, considered an elite unit, and involved in war crimes in all of the theatres they served in. This included actions against Jews.

The author repeatedly claims that the SS abided by The Hague convention, and that the Russians and partisans they fought against did not. The reputation of the SS is apparently down to revisionist historians. The author claims he hard of only one crime committed, and that officers were as a rule honourable.

Much of the story is suspect. The author was conscripted into the artillery, and allegedly was blackmailed into joining the SS. The story is thin at best. Details on the combat the unit was in, is often light, with the author’s role presented as benign almost always.

[Jack Bain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book extremely insightful. It must be said, the authors experiences and his incredible story of survival amidst one of the most brutal areas of history is poignant and page turning. I find the criticism in other reviews of the authors affiliation and “downplaying of SS crimes” unfair. Firstly, the authors actions are of mostly good conscience and he was punished for his opposition to the eugenics of the Nazi regime. Secondly his account was direct and honest, don’t read this book if you want an agenda, read it if you want a story that displays the atrocities, confusion and dark humour of a war from a rare perspective. I agree with others that at times the layout of the book is confusing but this is likely a result of the translation and not the fault of the author. Overall this is a great account of a taboo subject and an important read on why another war of its nature must not be fought.

[Haley Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have seriously mixed feelings about this book.. Generally I enjoy most books about the war and when I found this book I was so excited to read it because it was from a German Soldiers perspective..

I enjoyed the book because it was refreshing to hear of the war from the German point of view (not including concentration camps) and also about the Soviet Soldiers as it is rare to hear of their inhumane actions.

The reasons I didnt enjoy this book, firstly the author appeared to try and vindicate the germans and their actions committed during the war. Secondly, the author put a huge amount of blame onto others including the Russians and comrades of his own. Lastly, the text wasnt memorable to me. I can recall more detailed memories of his but the majority of the book was made up of sentences used to fill more space.. wordy and not in a good sense. Disappointed to say the least.

[Seamus Donnelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most reviews mixed feelings on the book. Too much generalisation of actions and experiences, though given the author was a member of the Waffen-SS for over 4 years and involved in many of it's campaigns, detailing all of this would need a trilogy of books. He also is selective in recording both his personal and the Waffen-SS's actions particularly in the eastern campaigns which saw the destruction of many villages, towns and entire communities throughout that region. Accept that what is recorded, generally is accurate and truthful and provides a view (the war for an ordinary German soldier) that is too often missing when looking back at one of the most momentous events of the 20th century.

[Grant S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Military History and really enjoyed this book.
The author tries to give justification for atrocities committed by both sides on the Eastern Front in the second world war.
It's a great story of survival at all costs.
Well worth a read by anyone who has an interest in the ww2.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read showing the particular brutality of fighting on the eastern front. While there are aspects of what the author says that I disagree with the writing is tight and provides an interesting and rather under reported account from the German side.

[Chris Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read, certainly a view from "the other side" as it were. Anyone can guess the ending though.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting to read from a different perspective, there are two sides to every story!

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

£6