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With the German Guns: Four Years on the Western Front
At once harrowing and lighthearted, Sulzbach's exceptional diary has been highly praised since its original publication in Germany in 1935. With the reprint of this classic account of trench warfare it records the pride and exhilaration of what to him was the fight for a just cause.
This book is one of the very few available records of an ordinary German soldier during the First World War. "One of the most notable books on the Great War. It is a book which finely expressed the true soldierly spirit on its highest level; the combination of a high sense of duty, courage, fairness and chivalry." Sir Basil Liddell Hart
This book is one of the very few available records of an ordinary German soldier during the First World War. "One of the most notable books on the Great War. It is a book which finely expressed the true soldierly spirit on its highest level; the combination of a high sense of duty, courage, fairness and chivalry." Sir Basil Liddell Hart
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1998
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70 people want to read
About the author
Herbert Sulzbach
1 bookHerbert Sulzbach was born into a Jewish banking family in Frankfurt, Germany. He volunteered for the German army in 1914, served on the Western Front and was commissioned from the ranks. His 1934 book about his war experiences was translated and published in Britain in 1972 under the title 'With the German Guns: 50 Months on the Western Front'.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, Sulzbach was a partner in a paper factory near Berlin. He fled from the Nazis in 1937 and moved to Britain. In 1940, he joined the British army and became an interpreter who explained democratic principles to German prisoners of war. He was commissioned in 1945
In the 1920s and early 1930s, Sulzbach was a partner in a paper factory near Berlin. He fled from the Nazis in 1937 and moved to Britain. In 1940, he joined the British army and became an interpreter who explained democratic principles to German prisoners of war. He was commissioned in 1945
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 8, 2023
“See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.” -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934)
It took a decade after the end of World War I for the shock and grief to turn to anger. The Roaring 20s, it has been argued, was a collective attempt at amnesia, to drink and dance until the pain was dulled, if only temporarily. Only at the start of the 30s did people begin to come to grips with the war, and start asking what it had meant, why it had to go on for so long, and who was responsible.
Ten million dead. How could it have happened? Why did it happen? After the patriotic propaganda of fighting for civilization was stripped away, what was left? Did all those millions die just to assuage the hurt feelings of kings and emperors? And once it was clear that no end was in sight, that the generals had no plans other than throwing men at machine guns, why couldn’t the politicians find a way to a negotiated peace? Why should anyone ever follow them or their successors again? The more people thought about it the angrier they became, and books started to appear that defined the war as incompetence and madness, doomed courage and wasted lives.
It is books like these that have formed the collective memory of the war. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous, but the memoirs of Sassoon, Blunden, Graves, and Chapman are also classics, sharing common themes of courage and camaraderie, of lives pointlessly sacrificed to the whims of blundering generals safe in their chateaux miles behind the lines.
There was, however, an altogether different genre of war memoirs, books published as outraged responses to the depiction of the army as lions led by donkeys. Most of these are now long out of print and justly forgotten, but they were popular at one time, especially with readers desperate to find meaning in the sacrifice of their loved ones. One that remains in print today and is worth reading, especially for its detailed, almost hour-by-hour account of life in the trenches, is Sidney Rogerson’s Twelve Days on the Somme.
With the German Guns is another one of these books, uncritically supporting the Kaiser, the war, the generals, and unstinting in its praise of the courage and fortitude of German soldiers. It is, nevertheless, an insightful look at the life of an artilleryman who served for the entire war. I had an inkling that the book would not be critical when I read in the introduction that it was praised when it was published in 1935. By that time the Nazi government would never have allowed a book criticizing the army or the war to be printed. The irony was that they also did not know at the time that its author was Jewish. Two years later he was forced to flee Germany and settled in Britain, and had his German citizenship stripped from him. At the beginning of World War II he was interned as a stateless person but eventually joined the British army and served as an interpreter and interrogator of German prisoners. After the war he was a founding member of an association dedicated to improving the relations between the formerly warring nations.
It is easy to see why the Nazis had liked this book, since it is lavish in its praise. For instance,
But the book is not just war propaganda. Sulzbach genuinely believed in the German war effort, and in the men he served with, and knew the bonds of men under fire who become more than comrades, more even than brothers. Knowing how deeply he felt the connection to his fellow officers and the soldiers manning the guns helps the reader feel his grief as they are killed or wounded. It seemed like almost every page records another death, and by the end of the war none of his friends had survived and he was almost alone among the men who had fought in the initial battles of 1914.
He survived many harrowing encounters, and his descriptions of being under intense fire are some of the best I have read, of the ground shaking under continuous bombardment, the noise so intense that communications had to be via hand signals, and the battlefield so covered with smoke and gas that the gunners had no idea if the infantry in front of them were still there, or were dead and the gun position about to be overrun.
As he recounts the names of his dead comrades the reader gets a sense of randomness of death: some live, some die, without rhyme or reason. An entire gun crew wiped out by a direct hit from an enemy shell, or killed fighting hand to hand when an attack penetrates the infantry line. By 1917 field guns were positioned right behind the infantry, so that they could fire over open sights if tanks appeared.
Sulzbach joined up in the first days of the war. He was promoted to lance-corporal, then lance-sergeant before being commissioned and ended the war as a second lieutenant and adjutant in an artillery battalion where his five predecessors in that position had all been killed. In 1917 his unit was transferred to the Russian Front but he spent only one week there before being sent back to France as part of a draft of replacement officers. He also regularly got leave to go home to Frankfurt. In the British army divisions were rotated in and out of the line, and leave came up occasionally for all men, usually around once a year. The Germans kept their divisions in the line for months at a time, but rotated individual men in and out regularly, which explains why Sulzbach was able return home so often. For all the maelstrom of fire that he endured, he was never wounded during the entire four years of the war. His only time in the hospital came when he developed a rash that needed to be attended to.
Somewhat surprisingly he also never mentions what kind of guns he served on. Based on his description of how they were employed they were almost certainly the standard German field gun of the war, the 77mm, equivalent to the French 75s and the slightly larger 84mm British 18-pounders. but he never discusses them.
It was interesting to read that the steel helmet, the Stalhelm, was not issued to artillery troops until the fall of 1916. There are also some modern terms in the book which I thought might have been anachronisms introduced by the translator. The book mentions the Spanish Flu* of 1918, but that name started being used only after the influenza was so widespread people could compare case numbers from different countries. Also, in two places he refers to the start of an attack as “when the balloon goes up.” It is possible that the phrase dates from the First World War, and that is where it entered the language (as the phrase “over the top” did), but it sounds very modern for 1914-18.
Sulzbach also makes an oblique reference to an issue that historians of World War I have spent a lot of time discussing. Once the lines on the Western Front stabilized it was clear that traditional infantry attacks were not going to work, and indeed, until the spring of 1918 the lines never moved more than eleven miles one way or the other over four years of bitter fighting. The Anglo-French solution was new weapons, such as tanks and flame throwers, in coordinated assaults using tightly coupled air and ground units, and saturation barrages of poison gas, along with overwhelming superiority in men and machines. The German solution was to create the storm troopers, pulling the best men out of their units and giving them special assault training in infiltrating enemy lines and bypassing strong points that could be mopped up by the troops that followed.
The problem with this was that it took the best, most dedicated men out of their units, at a time when war-weariness had already set in and many of the soldiers just wanted to go home. The German attack in March 1918 almost split the French and British lines, leading Haig to issue his famous “backs to the wall” order, but it also resulted in heavy casualties among the storm troopers. In this book Sulzbach mentions a disappointing attack in July 1918 when the troops made no gains, and he wonders if they ever even left their trenches. He then makes a glancing reference to these soldiers not being the quality of the armies of yore, and it made me wonder if this was because their best men had been pulled out for storm trooper duty.
This is not one of the classic memoirs of World War One, but for those with an interest in the lives of the combat soldiers it is worth reading, and is available as an ebook via the Hoopla library service. Sulzbach was a dedicated, capable officer, who survived unscathed against incredible odds. His descriptions of life in and out of the line are detailed enough to get a feel for what the soldiers went through, the boredom, the tediousness, the tension, the terror, and the madness.
* Modern research indicates that the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic probably started at an American army base in the Midwest; most of the combatant nations greatly undercounted their cases so as not to affect morale, but Spain, as a neutral in the war, had no reason to do so and reported honestly. As a result they appeared to have far more than other countries, and people assumed the influenza must have started there.
It took a decade after the end of World War I for the shock and grief to turn to anger. The Roaring 20s, it has been argued, was a collective attempt at amnesia, to drink and dance until the pain was dulled, if only temporarily. Only at the start of the 30s did people begin to come to grips with the war, and start asking what it had meant, why it had to go on for so long, and who was responsible.
Ten million dead. How could it have happened? Why did it happen? After the patriotic propaganda of fighting for civilization was stripped away, what was left? Did all those millions die just to assuage the hurt feelings of kings and emperors? And once it was clear that no end was in sight, that the generals had no plans other than throwing men at machine guns, why couldn’t the politicians find a way to a negotiated peace? Why should anyone ever follow them or their successors again? The more people thought about it the angrier they became, and books started to appear that defined the war as incompetence and madness, doomed courage and wasted lives.
It is books like these that have formed the collective memory of the war. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous, but the memoirs of Sassoon, Blunden, Graves, and Chapman are also classics, sharing common themes of courage and camaraderie, of lives pointlessly sacrificed to the whims of blundering generals safe in their chateaux miles behind the lines.
There was, however, an altogether different genre of war memoirs, books published as outraged responses to the depiction of the army as lions led by donkeys. Most of these are now long out of print and justly forgotten, but they were popular at one time, especially with readers desperate to find meaning in the sacrifice of their loved ones. One that remains in print today and is worth reading, especially for its detailed, almost hour-by-hour account of life in the trenches, is Sidney Rogerson’s Twelve Days on the Somme.
With the German Guns is another one of these books, uncritically supporting the Kaiser, the war, the generals, and unstinting in its praise of the courage and fortitude of German soldiers. It is, nevertheless, an insightful look at the life of an artilleryman who served for the entire war. I had an inkling that the book would not be critical when I read in the introduction that it was praised when it was published in 1935. By that time the Nazi government would never have allowed a book criticizing the army or the war to be printed. The irony was that they also did not know at the time that its author was Jewish. Two years later he was forced to flee Germany and settled in Britain, and had his German citizenship stripped from him. At the beginning of World War II he was interned as a stateless person but eventually joined the British army and served as an interpreter and interrogator of German prisoners. After the war he was a founding member of an association dedicated to improving the relations between the formerly warring nations.
It is easy to see why the Nazis had liked this book, since it is lavish in its praise. For instance,
We receive orders issued by Ludendorff about experiences gleaned in recent actions, and these orders are so clear, precise and brief, hitting the nail on the head so accurately and invariably, and clarifying every action which is faulty or capable of improvement, that when you think of Ludendorff you can really feel struck dumb by admiration. (p. 164)
But the book is not just war propaganda. Sulzbach genuinely believed in the German war effort, and in the men he served with, and knew the bonds of men under fire who become more than comrades, more even than brothers. Knowing how deeply he felt the connection to his fellow officers and the soldiers manning the guns helps the reader feel his grief as they are killed or wounded. It seemed like almost every page records another death, and by the end of the war none of his friends had survived and he was almost alone among the men who had fought in the initial battles of 1914.
He survived many harrowing encounters, and his descriptions of being under intense fire are some of the best I have read, of the ground shaking under continuous bombardment, the noise so intense that communications had to be via hand signals, and the battlefield so covered with smoke and gas that the gunners had no idea if the infantry in front of them were still there, or were dead and the gun position about to be overrun.
As he recounts the names of his dead comrades the reader gets a sense of randomness of death: some live, some die, without rhyme or reason. An entire gun crew wiped out by a direct hit from an enemy shell, or killed fighting hand to hand when an attack penetrates the infantry line. By 1917 field guns were positioned right behind the infantry, so that they could fire over open sights if tanks appeared.
Sulzbach joined up in the first days of the war. He was promoted to lance-corporal, then lance-sergeant before being commissioned and ended the war as a second lieutenant and adjutant in an artillery battalion where his five predecessors in that position had all been killed. In 1917 his unit was transferred to the Russian Front but he spent only one week there before being sent back to France as part of a draft of replacement officers. He also regularly got leave to go home to Frankfurt. In the British army divisions were rotated in and out of the line, and leave came up occasionally for all men, usually around once a year. The Germans kept their divisions in the line for months at a time, but rotated individual men in and out regularly, which explains why Sulzbach was able return home so often. For all the maelstrom of fire that he endured, he was never wounded during the entire four years of the war. His only time in the hospital came when he developed a rash that needed to be attended to.
Somewhat surprisingly he also never mentions what kind of guns he served on. Based on his description of how they were employed they were almost certainly the standard German field gun of the war, the 77mm, equivalent to the French 75s and the slightly larger 84mm British 18-pounders. but he never discusses them.
It was interesting to read that the steel helmet, the Stalhelm, was not issued to artillery troops until the fall of 1916. There are also some modern terms in the book which I thought might have been anachronisms introduced by the translator. The book mentions the Spanish Flu* of 1918, but that name started being used only after the influenza was so widespread people could compare case numbers from different countries. Also, in two places he refers to the start of an attack as “when the balloon goes up.” It is possible that the phrase dates from the First World War, and that is where it entered the language (as the phrase “over the top” did), but it sounds very modern for 1914-18.
Sulzbach also makes an oblique reference to an issue that historians of World War I have spent a lot of time discussing. Once the lines on the Western Front stabilized it was clear that traditional infantry attacks were not going to work, and indeed, until the spring of 1918 the lines never moved more than eleven miles one way or the other over four years of bitter fighting. The Anglo-French solution was new weapons, such as tanks and flame throwers, in coordinated assaults using tightly coupled air and ground units, and saturation barrages of poison gas, along with overwhelming superiority in men and machines. The German solution was to create the storm troopers, pulling the best men out of their units and giving them special assault training in infiltrating enemy lines and bypassing strong points that could be mopped up by the troops that followed.
The problem with this was that it took the best, most dedicated men out of their units, at a time when war-weariness had already set in and many of the soldiers just wanted to go home. The German attack in March 1918 almost split the French and British lines, leading Haig to issue his famous “backs to the wall” order, but it also resulted in heavy casualties among the storm troopers. In this book Sulzbach mentions a disappointing attack in July 1918 when the troops made no gains, and he wonders if they ever even left their trenches. He then makes a glancing reference to these soldiers not being the quality of the armies of yore, and it made me wonder if this was because their best men had been pulled out for storm trooper duty.
This is not one of the classic memoirs of World War One, but for those with an interest in the lives of the combat soldiers it is worth reading, and is available as an ebook via the Hoopla library service. Sulzbach was a dedicated, capable officer, who survived unscathed against incredible odds. His descriptions of life in and out of the line are detailed enough to get a feel for what the soldiers went through, the boredom, the tediousness, the tension, the terror, and the madness.
* Modern research indicates that the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic probably started at an American army base in the Midwest; most of the combatant nations greatly undercounted their cases so as not to affect morale, but Spain, as a neutral in the war, had no reason to do so and reported honestly. As a result they appeared to have far more than other countries, and people assumed the influenza must have started there.
April 7, 2013
He was young, idealistic, and totally taken in by the propaganda. No wonder Nazi Germany liked this memoir when it was first published in 1935...until they figured out that he had Jewish ancestors. You can tell that he was "sanitizing" his diary for the folks back home (to whom he sent each notebook as he filled it up), because he says nothing about the rats and the lice and only makes brief reference to the unburied dead. But it fills in a lot of other details I was interested in learning about.
March 6, 2018
Recognized as one of the penultimate first hand histories of German artillery units on the 4 yrs and 2mths of the 4 yrs and 4 month long First World War.
The story too of the authors personal journey from German soldier, to British Captain in the Second World War, to respected German statesman post 1945 is summarized in the edition read
If you want an insight not only into the German soldiers mind, but indeed into the general german mind and persona of the second decade of the 1900’s, much is to be found in this excellent historical work.
The story too of the authors personal journey from German soldier, to British Captain in the Second World War, to respected German statesman post 1945 is summarized in the edition read
If you want an insight not only into the German soldiers mind, but indeed into the general german mind and persona of the second decade of the 1900’s, much is to be found in this excellent historical work.
January 8, 2025
A good and thoughtful read
Very compelling and historical from the perspective of a first line soldier on the western front who managed to stay alive throughout the entire conflict.
Very compelling and historical from the perspective of a first line soldier on the western front who managed to stay alive throughout the entire conflict.
November 19, 2014
The author, Herbert Sulzbach, lived an interesting life to say the least. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main in 1894, he volunteered for war service and spent a full four years fighting in the German army, almost entirely in the Western Front save for a very short stint in the east. Regardless of having served his country during the war, he fled Germany in the 1930s when the Nazis came to power. After struggling to make a living in England, he eventually joined the British Army during the Second World War. After this he essentially spent the rest of his life trying to make good in German-British relations. All in all, he seemed like a very good man. With the German Guns: Four Years on the Western Front is his account of his time with the artillery during the First World War.
The book is written diary-style, meaning it's basically small/small-ish paragraphs broken up by date. I don't really think I enjoy this style very much. To me, it breaks up the flow of the story. I do enjoy it in some instances, as, for example, we get to see what occurred in a day for someone on the front. However, I think it takes away from the excitement a bit too. This guy was in some of the most major battles on the Western Front and yet none of that really comes through in the book. Most of the time, of course, he wasn't on the front line, so it is partly understandable. As far as a war memoir goes, to me this one was a bit lacking. I never felt much excitement or fear or sadness - it was simply relaying what occurred. I did really like his friendship with Kurt and there are some great passages in here, such as:
I think, overall, this type of writing doesn't really characterize the book. I mostly felt detached from what the author was experiencing. He says a few times that it's difficult to put into words exactly what he's seen and gone through. I have no doubt, but as a reader I still felt the book was lacking.
In the end, I wasn't super thrilled by this book. It's not bad by any means and I did like the insight given into daily life for someone on the Western Front. If you are looking for a gripping war story, however, you will not find that with this book. I wouldn't say to skip this, but I would not recommend it as a first choice for German First World War memoirs. All in all, Sulzbach seemed like a very good man, his positivity is definitely something to be admired, and it's incredible that he managed to not only survive the war, but make it out unwounded.
The book is written diary-style, meaning it's basically small/small-ish paragraphs broken up by date. I don't really think I enjoy this style very much. To me, it breaks up the flow of the story. I do enjoy it in some instances, as, for example, we get to see what occurred in a day for someone on the front. However, I think it takes away from the excitement a bit too. This guy was in some of the most major battles on the Western Front and yet none of that really comes through in the book. Most of the time, of course, he wasn't on the front line, so it is partly understandable. As far as a war memoir goes, to me this one was a bit lacking. I never felt much excitement or fear or sadness - it was simply relaying what occurred. I did really like his friendship with Kurt and there are some great passages in here, such as:
We stand beside the guns with the horses. A dreadful night comes down on us. We have seen too many horrible things all at once, and the smell of the smoking ruins, the lowing of the deserted cattle and the rattle of machine-gun fire make a very strong impression on us, barely twenty years old as we are, but these things also harden us up for what is going to come.
I think, overall, this type of writing doesn't really characterize the book. I mostly felt detached from what the author was experiencing. He says a few times that it's difficult to put into words exactly what he's seen and gone through. I have no doubt, but as a reader I still felt the book was lacking.
In the end, I wasn't super thrilled by this book. It's not bad by any means and I did like the insight given into daily life for someone on the Western Front. If you are looking for a gripping war story, however, you will not find that with this book. I wouldn't say to skip this, but I would not recommend it as a first choice for German First World War memoirs. All in all, Sulzbach seemed like a very good man, his positivity is definitely something to be admired, and it's incredible that he managed to not only survive the war, but make it out unwounded.
November 15, 2013
I found this book disappointing. The jingoistic tone jarred, and the combination of the high sense of duty, fairness and chivalry seemed vaguely reminiscent of some schoolboy comic. Perhaps this is a true reflection of the spirit of the times?
It is interesting that the author was forced to flee the "new" Germany in 1937 and became a British subject.
It is interesting that the author was forced to flee the "new" Germany in 1937 and became a British subject.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews