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We Germans
'An impressively realistic novel of German soldiers on the Eastern Front' Antony Beevor
'Starritt's daring work challenges us to lay bare our histories, to seek answers from the past, and to be open to perspectives starkly different from our own' New York Times
When a young British man asks his German grandfather what it was like to fight on the wrong side of the war, the question is initially met with irritation and silence. But after the old man's death, a long letter to his grandson is found among his things.
That letter is this book. In it, he relates the experiences of an unlikely few days on the Eastern Front - at a moment when he knows not only that Germany is going to lose the war, but that it deserves to. He writes about his everyday experience amid horror, confusion and great bravery, and he asks himself what responsibility he bears for the circumstances he found himself in. As he tries to find an answer he can live with, we hear from his grandson what kind of man he became in the seventy years after the war.
We Germans is a fundamentally human novel that grapples with the most profound of questions about guilt, shame and responsibility - questions that remain as live today as they have always been.
'Starritt's daring work challenges us to lay bare our histories, to seek answers from the past, and to be open to perspectives starkly different from our own' New York Times
When a young British man asks his German grandfather what it was like to fight on the wrong side of the war, the question is initially met with irritation and silence. But after the old man's death, a long letter to his grandson is found among his things.
That letter is this book. In it, he relates the experiences of an unlikely few days on the Eastern Front - at a moment when he knows not only that Germany is going to lose the war, but that it deserves to. He writes about his everyday experience amid horror, confusion and great bravery, and he asks himself what responsibility he bears for the circumstances he found himself in. As he tries to find an answer he can live with, we hear from his grandson what kind of man he became in the seventy years after the war.
We Germans is a fundamentally human novel that grapples with the most profound of questions about guilt, shame and responsibility - questions that remain as live today as they have always been.
208 pages, Paperback
First published June 11, 2020
124 people are currently reading
4143 people want to read
About the author
Alexander Starritt
11 books41 followersAlexander Starritt is a Scottish-German novelist, journalist and entrepreneur. Starritt was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. He came to public attention in 2017 with the release of his novel The Beast.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 293 reviews
September 16, 2021
So often, books about WWII are told from the point of view of the Allies, or the victims, or even the German citizens. This is one of the few books I can remember that deals with the German soldier. And it’s definitely the first I remember to deal with the Germans as they retreat from the eastern front.
Meissen is now an old man, his wife dead, when he writes his grandson a letter detailing his time in the German Army. In a weird twist, the Germans cross into Russia at the same river as Napoleon. And like Napoleon, suffer similar results.
Starrit captures the sense of the retreat in detailed prose, the disillusion, the hunger, the everyman for himself mentality. But he also captures the moral ambiguity of war. “When I ask myself whether we were all immoral, or whether having done wrong makes us evil men, I think that we were blemished by the consequences of what other people decided. No one ever has complete responsibility for his own moral balance. And the unforgiving truth, the severe, ancient truth, is that you can be culpable for something you weren’t even in control of.”
It goes without saying that this isn’t an easy book to read and that there are numerous gruesome scenes. But it fulfills my number one requirement for historical fiction, which is to teach me something new while telling a good story. It’s a book that makes you think.
My thanks to netgalley and Little, Brown for an advance copy of this book.
Meissen is now an old man, his wife dead, when he writes his grandson a letter detailing his time in the German Army. In a weird twist, the Germans cross into Russia at the same river as Napoleon. And like Napoleon, suffer similar results.
Starrit captures the sense of the retreat in detailed prose, the disillusion, the hunger, the everyman for himself mentality. But he also captures the moral ambiguity of war. “When I ask myself whether we were all immoral, or whether having done wrong makes us evil men, I think that we were blemished by the consequences of what other people decided. No one ever has complete responsibility for his own moral balance. And the unforgiving truth, the severe, ancient truth, is that you can be culpable for something you weren’t even in control of.”
It goes without saying that this isn’t an easy book to read and that there are numerous gruesome scenes. But it fulfills my number one requirement for historical fiction, which is to teach me something new while telling a good story. It’s a book that makes you think.
My thanks to netgalley and Little, Brown for an advance copy of this book.
July 21, 2020
The novel that presents insights into the last phase of WW2 on the Eastern Front written in a form of a letter to a grandson. The reflextions on the war, on the nature of this specific front and on the feeling of guilt lie at the basis of the novel. Four soldiers who find themselves on the retreat from Russia, witness atrocities committed by the German military on the locals and on fellow soldiers who were considered to be traitors.
This is more than just a dry account of the military life. It is an attempt to understand the evil any war is and to explain why the evil was embraced by the millions of German when the Nazis came into power.
I found this novel quite powerful and thought-provoking. The translation is very good as I had no problem following the narration.
*Many thanks to Alexander Starrit, John Murray Press and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
This is more than just a dry account of the military life. It is an attempt to understand the evil any war is and to explain why the evil was embraced by the millions of German when the Nazis came into power.
I found this novel quite powerful and thought-provoking. The translation is very good as I had no problem following the narration.
*Many thanks to Alexander Starrit, John Murray Press and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
October 8, 2021
Meissner was a German infantry soldier during WWII. His war was on the eastern front where he encountered savage behavior from all factions and endured physical hardships. He spent three years as a POW. Told in the form of a letter to his adult grandson, this book is an exploration of both Meissner’s war experiences and the “conflicted inheritance” of all Germans. The descriptions of the war were gritty and felt very authentic. There were no real battles, it was more of a slog that was as boring as it was harrowing. Even more intriguing was the way in which Meissner contemplated his guilt and shame and his consideration of collective guilt. At one point, he felt that not only was Germany going to lose the war, but that they should lose it. There are no definitive answers here, which is part of what made this a good book. I would definitely read more by this author. 4.5 stars
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
September 9, 2022
Using the grandson as a vehicle to tell the story of what it was like to fight for the Germans in WWII, Alexander Starritt has created a readable book with believable characters that move from the Eastern Front in Summer 1944 to war's end in a Russian prisoner of war camp and London in 2020.
Callum Emslie is the grandson, and his grandfather, known to him as Opa, who served in the Wehrmacht. Opa had written a letter, found after his death, that tells the story of a few days, with some digressions related to the events, where, what is left of his unit, is moving westwards closely followed by the Red army. The events are part experience of conflict in war, including being in contact with the enemy, and a race to escape; part experience of people at war and struggling mentally; it is also part love story [Callum's grandmother known as Oma] and is his grandfather's great love and also part questioning responsibility and culpability fighting for the Third Reich.
Each of those parts, I thought was well done and helped the characters tell the story with dialogue as well as words written after events.
The interaction between Opa and the men he is serving with shows behaviours, thoughts, mental state and hopes of men under stress. The descriptions of being in contact and engaging with the enemy are in the main well done, although there is one event that for me stretched a little, but that is a small criticism.
The events midway through the book that sees the men work together, argue and make decisions that may help them live, but possibly from what they see and do, haunt them, is good and helps pivot the book between memoire, war diary, confession, love of life and cathartic relief.
Recommended for those interested in WWII, human behaviours under war/stress, and also a good story.
Callum Emslie is the grandson, and his grandfather, known to him as Opa, who served in the Wehrmacht. Opa had written a letter, found after his death, that tells the story of a few days, with some digressions related to the events, where, what is left of his unit, is moving westwards closely followed by the Red army. The events are part experience of conflict in war, including being in contact with the enemy, and a race to escape; part experience of people at war and struggling mentally; it is also part love story [Callum's grandmother known as Oma] and is his grandfather's great love and also part questioning responsibility and culpability fighting for the Third Reich.
Each of those parts, I thought was well done and helped the characters tell the story with dialogue as well as words written after events.
The interaction between Opa and the men he is serving with shows behaviours, thoughts, mental state and hopes of men under stress. The descriptions of being in contact and engaging with the enemy are in the main well done, although there is one event that for me stretched a little, but that is a small criticism.
The events midway through the book that sees the men work together, argue and make decisions that may help them live, but possibly from what they see and do, haunt them, is good and helps pivot the book between memoire, war diary, confession, love of life and cathartic relief.
Recommended for those interested in WWII, human behaviours under war/stress, and also a good story.
December 13, 2020
Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book via netgalley!
There are always two sides of a story. This books gives the reader a glimpse Into the atrocity of war... from the German side. Something that is often not read about. Written in a sweet way as a letter from a grandfather to his grandson, it recalls the horrors or war and it’s lasting effects on humans. It reminds us that war, on any side, profoundly impacts human beings.
There are always two sides of a story. This books gives the reader a glimpse Into the atrocity of war... from the German side. Something that is often not read about. Written in a sweet way as a letter from a grandfather to his grandson, it recalls the horrors or war and it’s lasting effects on humans. It reminds us that war, on any side, profoundly impacts human beings.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 23, 2020
This book has been haunting me since I finished it a couple of days ago. It is, in a sense, a descendant of Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" and a cousin to David Benioff's more recent "City of Thieves," but more expansive than either and more riveting.
The frame of "We Germans" can be described easily enough. A heated discussion between a old man living in Germany and his grandson, who lives in England, prompts the grandfather to write about his experiences as a Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern Front. (Evidently, the story was inspired by the wartime experiences of Starritt's own grandfather) The book is a mixture of recollection about what he did and saw, and what he thinks about all that now, living in a current day retirement home. Interspersed with these reflections are comments and explanations composed by the grandson after his grandfather's death.
Within this frame lies a powerful examination of personal responsibility, judgment, morality, human nature, and guilt. And, of course, a meditation on what Germany was back then and what it is today. The stage is set on the first page as the old man addresses his grandson, on paper, after the argument:
I don't want to make you feel worse, but I did understand what you were trying to do: hear my stories about Russia before I get too addled to tell them... Your questions were ridiculous, though --awkward, faux naive. You should have seen yourself edging backwards to what you really wanted to ask: did you see terrible things? Let me answer that for you, now: yes, I did. And: did you do terrible things? It's hard to say, but certainly not in the way you presume.
The grandfather, a young man during the latter part of the Nazi years and never a member of the Party, was conscripted and sent to the Eastern Front. The narrative focuses on a brief period near the end of the war. It is clear that Germany has lost, and its armies are in retreat, chased by Russian tanks and infantry. There is chaos and desperation everywhere. Against this background, the narrator (the grandfather) and a handful of others wander away from their company in search of food. It's a motley group, diverse in age, background, and temperament, all of them ordinary. Their search for food leads to a sequence of incidents, some quite awful -- though, fortunately, Starritt never takes the horror too far, and all of the descriptions, filtered as they are through the lens of an old man looking back on his younger self, are set solidly in a moral context.
One of his recollections, appearing early in the book, defines the impulse shaping everything that follows: When I ask myself whether we were all immoral, or whether having done wrong makes us evil men, I think that we were blemished by the consequences of what other people decided. No one ever has complete responsibility for his own moral balance. And the unforgiving truth, the severe, ancient truth, is that you can be culpable for something you weren't in control of. And me, personally? That's what I'm trying to answer.
Or as he puts it more succinctly elsewhere, "Can you do real evil without meaning to?"
Such reflections shed light equally on his own experiences and the culture that gave birth and breath to those experiences. He remembers Nazi pageantry about Spartans and Richard Wagner's Nibelungenlied. Although he personally felt it was all, as he puts it, "hoo-ha and pathos," it did touch something real about how Germans saw themselves. He himself was somewhat moved by the theatricality of the propaganda even as he saw how fraudulent it was. (A commentary inserted by the grandson describes the Nibelungenlied as "one of the set texts of German culture, like a gloomy northern Iliad, except not as good. Show me someone who's read the whole thing and I'll show you someone with an exam coming up.")
The old man tries his best to be honest and forthright in his descriptions of events. He writes at one point about a man he killed (a man, the reader is likely to think, who surely deserved to be killed) and reflects, looking back, on "a family somewhere that still mourns him." At the time, though, what he felt was "the euphoria of survival... I felt strong, special, chosen. He was dead, and we were alive."
Another representative passage has him looking back and thinking about how his own father's Protestantism and the notions of right and wrong, good and evil, were inadequate to the times: "If you weren't a hero" -- that is, a German who refused to fight or serve the regime -- "you colluded by default." Morally, there was no neutral ground, no safe middle of the herd... I wore a uniform and fought, to the best of my ability. So I can't fault the concept of our collective guilt, I just don't feel it. The idea that I'm guilty for things I never saw and had no power over doesn't seem to me to meet the standards of natural justice. But I what I do feel, ineradicably, is shame." Unlike guilt, for which reparations might be paid, Shame can't be atoned for; it is a debt that can't be paid."
The grandfather's thoughts and memories about the war are accompanied here and there in the book by the grandson's sardonic observations about Germany itself, about how the Nibelungenlied has given way over the years to the "German equivalent of American country music" and a permanent production of The Lion King: The Musical and how the Spartan model of German manliness has been supplanted by "cycling or barbecuing or brewing their own beer." Certain songs, popular during the Nazi years, are now "taboo". Still, the taboo songs are all available on Youtube, uploaded by Nazi enthusiasts and recidivists. Most of them, he's convinced, are "harmless nerds" whom he can easily dismiss. ("Fuck those guys.") More disturbing to him are the "Eastern European skinheads who somehow succeed in believing that the Nazis were on the right track." He goes on to observe,"You can never fully divorce the artifacts of the Nazi era from the rest of German culture, uncomfortable though that is... Once you realise that, you see it everywhere."
Similarly, albeit in a very different tone, the narrator himself shares his observations about the complicated ways in which Germany views its past, in how he sees his own past as a German wholied through it all. "What a terrible time it was," he reflects. "What's changed is that it's now acceptable for Germans to talk about suffering. And people want to hear about it because they believe there is a connection between suffering and truth."
Elsewhere, curious about what happened to one of the soldiers in his company, he asks a young staff member at the retirement facility to help him do a computer search. Immediately upon requesting the help, though, he wonders if the young man sees him as "one of those old men the news always says have been 'living quietly.' The ones you see being trundled into court with heir respirators, trying to look as decrepit as they can."
There are many other passages I might share here. But I have to stop sometime. Alexander Starritt has accomplished something very impressive here, in successfully balancing a well-told story with moral, cultural, and historical reflection.
"We Germans" came into my hands courtesy of the publisher, Little, Brown, and Goodreads Giveaways. My sincere thanks to both. (And my apologies to GR friends and followers for the long review.)
The frame of "We Germans" can be described easily enough. A heated discussion between a old man living in Germany and his grandson, who lives in England, prompts the grandfather to write about his experiences as a Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern Front. (Evidently, the story was inspired by the wartime experiences of Starritt's own grandfather) The book is a mixture of recollection about what he did and saw, and what he thinks about all that now, living in a current day retirement home. Interspersed with these reflections are comments and explanations composed by the grandson after his grandfather's death.
Within this frame lies a powerful examination of personal responsibility, judgment, morality, human nature, and guilt. And, of course, a meditation on what Germany was back then and what it is today. The stage is set on the first page as the old man addresses his grandson, on paper, after the argument:
I don't want to make you feel worse, but I did understand what you were trying to do: hear my stories about Russia before I get too addled to tell them... Your questions were ridiculous, though --awkward, faux naive. You should have seen yourself edging backwards to what you really wanted to ask: did you see terrible things? Let me answer that for you, now: yes, I did. And: did you do terrible things? It's hard to say, but certainly not in the way you presume.
The grandfather, a young man during the latter part of the Nazi years and never a member of the Party, was conscripted and sent to the Eastern Front. The narrative focuses on a brief period near the end of the war. It is clear that Germany has lost, and its armies are in retreat, chased by Russian tanks and infantry. There is chaos and desperation everywhere. Against this background, the narrator (the grandfather) and a handful of others wander away from their company in search of food. It's a motley group, diverse in age, background, and temperament, all of them ordinary. Their search for food leads to a sequence of incidents, some quite awful -- though, fortunately, Starritt never takes the horror too far, and all of the descriptions, filtered as they are through the lens of an old man looking back on his younger self, are set solidly in a moral context.
One of his recollections, appearing early in the book, defines the impulse shaping everything that follows: When I ask myself whether we were all immoral, or whether having done wrong makes us evil men, I think that we were blemished by the consequences of what other people decided. No one ever has complete responsibility for his own moral balance. And the unforgiving truth, the severe, ancient truth, is that you can be culpable for something you weren't in control of. And me, personally? That's what I'm trying to answer.
Or as he puts it more succinctly elsewhere, "Can you do real evil without meaning to?"
Such reflections shed light equally on his own experiences and the culture that gave birth and breath to those experiences. He remembers Nazi pageantry about Spartans and Richard Wagner's Nibelungenlied. Although he personally felt it was all, as he puts it, "hoo-ha and pathos," it did touch something real about how Germans saw themselves. He himself was somewhat moved by the theatricality of the propaganda even as he saw how fraudulent it was. (A commentary inserted by the grandson describes the Nibelungenlied as "one of the set texts of German culture, like a gloomy northern Iliad, except not as good. Show me someone who's read the whole thing and I'll show you someone with an exam coming up.")
The old man tries his best to be honest and forthright in his descriptions of events. He writes at one point about a man he killed (a man, the reader is likely to think, who surely deserved to be killed) and reflects, looking back, on "a family somewhere that still mourns him." At the time, though, what he felt was "the euphoria of survival... I felt strong, special, chosen. He was dead, and we were alive."
Another representative passage has him looking back and thinking about how his own father's Protestantism and the notions of right and wrong, good and evil, were inadequate to the times: "If you weren't a hero" -- that is, a German who refused to fight or serve the regime -- "you colluded by default." Morally, there was no neutral ground, no safe middle of the herd... I wore a uniform and fought, to the best of my ability. So I can't fault the concept of our collective guilt, I just don't feel it. The idea that I'm guilty for things I never saw and had no power over doesn't seem to me to meet the standards of natural justice. But I what I do feel, ineradicably, is shame." Unlike guilt, for which reparations might be paid, Shame can't be atoned for; it is a debt that can't be paid."
The grandfather's thoughts and memories about the war are accompanied here and there in the book by the grandson's sardonic observations about Germany itself, about how the Nibelungenlied has given way over the years to the "German equivalent of American country music" and a permanent production of The Lion King: The Musical and how the Spartan model of German manliness has been supplanted by "cycling or barbecuing or brewing their own beer." Certain songs, popular during the Nazi years, are now "taboo". Still, the taboo songs are all available on Youtube, uploaded by Nazi enthusiasts and recidivists. Most of them, he's convinced, are "harmless nerds" whom he can easily dismiss. ("Fuck those guys.") More disturbing to him are the "Eastern European skinheads who somehow succeed in believing that the Nazis were on the right track." He goes on to observe,"You can never fully divorce the artifacts of the Nazi era from the rest of German culture, uncomfortable though that is... Once you realise that, you see it everywhere."
Similarly, albeit in a very different tone, the narrator himself shares his observations about the complicated ways in which Germany views its past, in how he sees his own past as a German wholied through it all. "What a terrible time it was," he reflects. "What's changed is that it's now acceptable for Germans to talk about suffering. And people want to hear about it because they believe there is a connection between suffering and truth."
Elsewhere, curious about what happened to one of the soldiers in his company, he asks a young staff member at the retirement facility to help him do a computer search. Immediately upon requesting the help, though, he wonders if the young man sees him as "one of those old men the news always says have been 'living quietly.' The ones you see being trundled into court with heir respirators, trying to look as decrepit as they can."
There are many other passages I might share here. But I have to stop sometime. Alexander Starritt has accomplished something very impressive here, in successfully balancing a well-told story with moral, cultural, and historical reflection.
"We Germans" came into my hands courtesy of the publisher, Little, Brown, and Goodreads Giveaways. My sincere thanks to both. (And my apologies to GR friends and followers for the long review.)
March 25, 2022
İkinci Dünya Savaşı’nda doğu cephesinde Ruslara karşı savaşmış bir askerin yıllar sonra gelen iç dökümü. Nazi ideolojisine bağlı olmasa da onlar adına savaşmış farklı hayalleri olan genç bir askerin kendisiyle ve yaşadığı toplumla hesaplaşması. Aslında yeni bir şey söylemiyor ama bazı gerçekleri o kadar sade ve çarpıcı biçimde dile getiriyor ki okuyucuda tokat yemiş etkisi bırakıyor. Asla ama’lara sığınmıyor, sessiz kalanların ya da görmezden gelenlerin de bu büyük suça ortak olduğunu açık yüreklilikle söylüyor. Tam bir utançtan başını kaldıramama anlatısı. Bu yüzden romanın adı Biz Almanlar çok isabetli bir seçim olmuş çünkü yazar bu büyük suçu sadece Nazilerin değil bütün bir Alman toplumunun işlediğini söylüyor. Biliyorduk diyor. Türkçesi gayet iyi. Israrla tavsiye ediyorum. 4.5/5
October 29, 2020
Very important book. Little has been written from the German perspective and this is a thoughtful, intelligent approach to the subject. Since it is presented as a fictional account ( although I have no doubts that the author has some first hand knowledge from relatives) it can deal more in depths with all the ambiguities this difficult subject.
I was interested in the book because I have a diary from my father as a juvenile soldier and was wondering how Mr. Starrit dealt with the subject matter. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those interested in German history, WWII history buffs and all those who want to explore the difficulties of great moral dilemmas.
My only reservation is about the wolf image on the cover. It would have not been my choice.
I was interested in the book because I have a diary from my father as a juvenile soldier and was wondering how Mr. Starrit dealt with the subject matter. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those interested in German history, WWII history buffs and all those who want to explore the difficulties of great moral dilemmas.
My only reservation is about the wolf image on the cover. It would have not been my choice.
July 29, 2020
I received a free publisher's digital review copy via Netgalley.
Meissner, a German World War II veteran revisits the two-and-a-half-year German retreat from Russia, focusing primarily on a few days he spent in 1944 with a handful of men from his unit, and their run-ins with the German army police and then the onrushing Red Army. The framing device is that he now long retired and writing to his (adult) grandson, Callum, in England, who has asked the fateful “what did you do in the war” questions. Meissner’s long letter is interrupted here and there by comments from Callum, usually to fill in information about Meissner and to describe Callum’s boyhood and young manhood experiences with his grandfather and grandmother.
I thought of Meissner’s tale of his retreat with his ragtag companions as a sort of nightmare picaresque. There are many colorful adventures, but they are almost all horrific. And while the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for Meissner, he’s no lovable rogue. He’s an ordinary German soldier caught up in the machinery of war, and a war in which he realizes his side has been appallingly wrong. He wasn’t part of a killing squad, nor the machinery of the Holocaust, but he knew that heading to the east to plunder from people much poorer than Germans was wrong and deserving of punishment.
Starritt’s descriptions are so vivid and piercing that I had to quit highlighting text to avoid having the book be practically all highlights. I have read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about World War II, and I don’t remember ever experiencing any writing that made this part of the war feel so real.
But in addition to the descriptions of the adventures, Starritt has Meissner write at length of his feelings about his and Germany’s part in the war. There is nothing facile in Meissner’s self-analysis. He doesn’t offer excuses, he views himself and his country as deserving of shame and punishment, but he doesn’t drape himself in the self-absorption of guilt.
I rarely give a book five stars, but this one deserves it. It’s one of the most impressive and thought-provoking pieces of historical fiction I’ve read in years.
Meissner, a German World War II veteran revisits the two-and-a-half-year German retreat from Russia, focusing primarily on a few days he spent in 1944 with a handful of men from his unit, and their run-ins with the German army police and then the onrushing Red Army. The framing device is that he now long retired and writing to his (adult) grandson, Callum, in England, who has asked the fateful “what did you do in the war” questions. Meissner’s long letter is interrupted here and there by comments from Callum, usually to fill in information about Meissner and to describe Callum’s boyhood and young manhood experiences with his grandfather and grandmother.
I thought of Meissner’s tale of his retreat with his ragtag companions as a sort of nightmare picaresque. There are many colorful adventures, but they are almost all horrific. And while the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for Meissner, he’s no lovable rogue. He’s an ordinary German soldier caught up in the machinery of war, and a war in which he realizes his side has been appallingly wrong. He wasn’t part of a killing squad, nor the machinery of the Holocaust, but he knew that heading to the east to plunder from people much poorer than Germans was wrong and deserving of punishment.
Starritt’s descriptions are so vivid and piercing that I had to quit highlighting text to avoid having the book be practically all highlights. I have read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about World War II, and I don’t remember ever experiencing any writing that made this part of the war feel so real.
But in addition to the descriptions of the adventures, Starritt has Meissner write at length of his feelings about his and Germany’s part in the war. There is nothing facile in Meissner’s self-analysis. He doesn’t offer excuses, he views himself and his country as deserving of shame and punishment, but he doesn’t drape himself in the self-absorption of guilt.
I rarely give a book five stars, but this one deserves it. It’s one of the most impressive and thought-provoking pieces of historical fiction I’ve read in years.
January 7, 2020
We Germans is a thoughtful and involving book from an unusual and revealing perspective. It is in the form of a letter from a German veteran of the Eastern Front in the Second World War, responding to his British grandson’s questions about the war. He concentrates on a period of just a few days in autumn 1944 when the long, ruinous retreat from Russia has turned into an undignified, exhausted, straggling scramble to evade the pursuing Russian forces. There are reminiscences and digressions which create a context and also some interventions from the grandson, but this is chiefly a stark, human portrait of defeat, the realisation that he has been fighting for something fundamentally wrong and his attempt to resolve and come to terms with his part in what has happened.
I found it readable and gripping, and also quite profound in places. The handful of main characters are convincing and human, as is their interaction with each other. There are some scenes of real horror and Alexander Starritt evokes very well the revulsion but also, after nearly four years of fighting, the jaded acceptance of his narrator. His analysis of the lack of guilt but sense of genuine shame is very shrewd, I think, as is his discussion of whether having fought for Germany under the Nazis automatically makes one an evil person. These are complex and nuanced questions which are too often seen as simple binary moral issues and I think Starritt brings a wider, thoughtful perspective to the questions.
I did find the interventions from the grandson a distraction and rather a clumsy, unnecessary device – although his thoughts on dealing with his mixed heritage are interesting and worthwhile. In spite of this, I found We Germans a very engrossing read which has left me wiser than I was, I think. Slightly flawed, but still very good and recommended.
(My thanks to John Murray for an ARC via NetGalley.)
I found it readable and gripping, and also quite profound in places. The handful of main characters are convincing and human, as is their interaction with each other. There are some scenes of real horror and Alexander Starritt evokes very well the revulsion but also, after nearly four years of fighting, the jaded acceptance of his narrator. His analysis of the lack of guilt but sense of genuine shame is very shrewd, I think, as is his discussion of whether having fought for Germany under the Nazis automatically makes one an evil person. These are complex and nuanced questions which are too often seen as simple binary moral issues and I think Starritt brings a wider, thoughtful perspective to the questions.
I did find the interventions from the grandson a distraction and rather a clumsy, unnecessary device – although his thoughts on dealing with his mixed heritage are interesting and worthwhile. In spite of this, I found We Germans a very engrossing read which has left me wiser than I was, I think. Slightly flawed, but still very good and recommended.
(My thanks to John Murray for an ARC via NetGalley.)
October 8, 2021
4.5 stars rounded up. A very thought provoking and gripping story, told mostly from the perspective of Meissner, a German soldier in WWII and mainly focusing on a few days in late 1944 when the Germans were in retreat from the Eastern Front. It’s actually told in letter form by Meissner in his later years when writing to his British grandson who has previously made enquiries of his grandfather about his wartime experience.
The story and the handful of main characters and the interactions between them are very authentic. The horrors and atrocities they witness is gruesome and sometimes difficult to read. It was fascinating to read an account from the German perspective, something we don’t get very often but I think the main strength of the book is its philosophical bent which is extremely well drawn. Meissner is in his fourth year of fighting and is somewhat jaded but accepts that Germany’s imminent defeat is right and just. He reflects on matters such as good and evil, right and wrong, shame and guilt (both collective and personal), the moral dilemmas one is exposed to, his own involvement in the machinery of war and the retribution against Germany and its people. I would have liked the book to be longer with perhaps a bit more on Meissner’s adjustment to life after the war, but this is a minor complaint and was probably not the author’s intent. I strongly recommend this to any fan of WWII historical fiction.
The story and the handful of main characters and the interactions between them are very authentic. The horrors and atrocities they witness is gruesome and sometimes difficult to read. It was fascinating to read an account from the German perspective, something we don’t get very often but I think the main strength of the book is its philosophical bent which is extremely well drawn. Meissner is in his fourth year of fighting and is somewhat jaded but accepts that Germany’s imminent defeat is right and just. He reflects on matters such as good and evil, right and wrong, shame and guilt (both collective and personal), the moral dilemmas one is exposed to, his own involvement in the machinery of war and the retribution against Germany and its people. I would have liked the book to be longer with perhaps a bit more on Meissner’s adjustment to life after the war, but this is a minor complaint and was probably not the author’s intent. I strongly recommend this to any fan of WWII historical fiction.
September 22, 2022
We Germans is a generational story in which an old man (Meissner) leaves behind a letter for his half German/half British grandson in which he tries to explain to him his experiences as a soldier in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front during World War II. The grandson also provides the reader with intermittent insights into the postwar lives of his German grandparents --- as well as some aspects of German culture.
July 10, 2024
This was an interesting little book that I enjoyed more and more as I read. It's basically about a grandfather writing a long letter to his grandson looking back on his past. A German, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent east during the Second World War.
This letter is not about forgiveness, but reflection. I think the book touches on some important themes and topics in how we view and remember the Second World War and those who fought it. There's an interesting discussion between pages 83 and 84 about collective guilt: "...that even if all you did in the war was serve lunches at a quiet rubber factory in the middle of Germany, your meals fed the workers whose rubber went into tyres that were fitted to trucks that carried people to their deaths." Our narrator doesn't feel guilty about things he didn't do or experience or know about, but he does feel shame.
The book also touches on the waste of life the war was. Of course we know about the deaths of the Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, etc. - the grandfather writes about it in his letter. But the war also hugely affected the young German men called up: "I'm not ashamed to say that I cried then, lying on that Polish earth and thinking of what my life had been used for. I would never be a professor; I would never make great discoveries..." Youth for many, many men and women was lost to the war in one way or another.
Towards the end, the grandfather again writes about the shame he feels, and having to live with what he had done. Should he see himself as a bad person? How does he weigh that collective guilt and personal involvement in the war?
Interspersed are small sections with input from the grandson as we go through the letter. There's a great discussion about neo-Nazis around page 130, drawing attention to the absurdity of Eastern Europeans who buy into that. Also, what the book calls "Nazism enthusiasts." I think we've all come across that guy, either online or in person, who's just a little too into the German military of WWII, right?
As the book goes into some of these aforementioned deeper themes, it also functions as a narrative. If it sounds like the book might be a random collection of thoughts, there is actually a story here. Some of the book is the grandfather recounting his time in the East. And I really loved these parts. It's just the grandfather and a few other soldiers who initially were trying to find a food depot. But we follow the small group a bit further and learn about what they went through and what they did. The interaction between characters was great; the characters themselves felt real. You really feel the stress and strain of the war while reading these parts.
To sum up: I thought the book was alright to start, but as I read on I really began to enjoy it. Although it's a work of fiction, it's quite thought provoking and touches on important topics. At just under 200 pages, We Germans was a very nice little surprise.
This letter is not about forgiveness, but reflection. I think the book touches on some important themes and topics in how we view and remember the Second World War and those who fought it. There's an interesting discussion between pages 83 and 84 about collective guilt: "...that even if all you did in the war was serve lunches at a quiet rubber factory in the middle of Germany, your meals fed the workers whose rubber went into tyres that were fitted to trucks that carried people to their deaths." Our narrator doesn't feel guilty about things he didn't do or experience or know about, but he does feel shame.
The book also touches on the waste of life the war was. Of course we know about the deaths of the Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, etc. - the grandfather writes about it in his letter. But the war also hugely affected the young German men called up: "I'm not ashamed to say that I cried then, lying on that Polish earth and thinking of what my life had been used for. I would never be a professor; I would never make great discoveries..." Youth for many, many men and women was lost to the war in one way or another.
Towards the end, the grandfather again writes about the shame he feels, and having to live with what he had done. Should he see himself as a bad person? How does he weigh that collective guilt and personal involvement in the war?
...I would say to myself, I was only young; I was doing my duty; I look after my children, I love my wife and I pay my taxes, how can I be an evil man? And yet, we are not talking about some youthful indiscretion... And how I've actually lived is that I haven't rationalised my way to innocence... I wear a mark of shame. Over the years I've realised that, instead of trying to wash it clean, I just have to carry on wearing it... No matter what anyone says, it was me who held the rifle, and it always will be... I was never close to being one of the era's few heroes, but neither was I one of its butchers or sadists.
Interspersed are small sections with input from the grandson as we go through the letter. There's a great discussion about neo-Nazis around page 130, drawing attention to the absurdity of Eastern Europeans who buy into that. Also, what the book calls "Nazism enthusiasts." I think we've all come across that guy, either online or in person, who's just a little too into the German military of WWII, right?
As the book goes into some of these aforementioned deeper themes, it also functions as a narrative. If it sounds like the book might be a random collection of thoughts, there is actually a story here. Some of the book is the grandfather recounting his time in the East. And I really loved these parts. It's just the grandfather and a few other soldiers who initially were trying to find a food depot. But we follow the small group a bit further and learn about what they went through and what they did. The interaction between characters was great; the characters themselves felt real. You really feel the stress and strain of the war while reading these parts.
To sum up: I thought the book was alright to start, but as I read on I really began to enjoy it. Although it's a work of fiction, it's quite thought provoking and touches on important topics. At just under 200 pages, We Germans was a very nice little surprise.
February 4, 2020
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I'm really glad that I've got the e-copy of this book and read it with a great interest. When I saw the description, I thought "well, this is another book about WWII" But when I began to read, I understood that this book is all about emotions, morals and attitudes. We have a lot of questions about the past and we blame each other for mistakes that were made in the past, but we never thought about the true reasons why all those things happened.
I'm really glad that I've got the e-copy of this book and read it with a great interest. When I saw the description, I thought "well, this is another book about WWII" But when I began to read, I understood that this book is all about emotions, morals and attitudes. We have a lot of questions about the past and we blame each other for mistakes that were made in the past, but we never thought about the true reasons why all those things happened.
May 9, 2022
A beautifully crafted novella!
‘We Germans’ is the story of a young British man who reflects on notes found from his German grandfather who served in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the final years of the Second World War.
Motions of guilt, accountability and shame lace the very human story of what it is like to fight on the wrong side of a war. Sobering subjects but the book remains visceral and propulsive. A heartbreaking story highlighting how ordinary people can be scooped up by fervour and propaganda.
What a little gem!
‘We Germans’ is the story of a young British man who reflects on notes found from his German grandfather who served in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the final years of the Second World War.
Motions of guilt, accountability and shame lace the very human story of what it is like to fight on the wrong side of a war. Sobering subjects but the book remains visceral and propulsive. A heartbreaking story highlighting how ordinary people can be scooped up by fervour and propaganda.
What a little gem!
January 13, 2020
This book comprises a long letter from a German grandfather to his British grandson about his final days on the Eastern Front as a Wehrmacht soldier retreating from the Red Army's onslaught.
As he acknowledges that Germany is about to suffer its final defeat, he realises that it deserves to. In telling of the confusion and horrors that he and his small band of comrades experienced in a few days, he tries to make sense of his part in blame for Nazi Germany's conduct throughout World War II in times of victory and defeat.
He writes of a sense of guilt but most of all, he feels shame for the part he and other "ordinary" Germans played.
The letter expands to cover the grandfather's experiences before and after the war. How he wanted to become a scientist and felt that the war robbed him of that chance. Later, he describes what happened after his capture and brief internment before returning home and meeting the woman who would become his wife. Large parts of the story are given over to his post war life and there are also occasional chapters in which the British grandson writes about his grandparents.
Basically, this is a memoir of World War II told from the point of view of a German soldier who does his best to explain his own involvement in Nazi Germany's war machine which led to the deaths of millions, mostly civilians who didn't die in battle but were brutally murdered. Whether this one man - and Germans like him - were good or evil is something the reader must decide. This is an absorbing read posing some disturbing questions, still relevant today, which have no easy answers.
As he acknowledges that Germany is about to suffer its final defeat, he realises that it deserves to. In telling of the confusion and horrors that he and his small band of comrades experienced in a few days, he tries to make sense of his part in blame for Nazi Germany's conduct throughout World War II in times of victory and defeat.
He writes of a sense of guilt but most of all, he feels shame for the part he and other "ordinary" Germans played.
The letter expands to cover the grandfather's experiences before and after the war. How he wanted to become a scientist and felt that the war robbed him of that chance. Later, he describes what happened after his capture and brief internment before returning home and meeting the woman who would become his wife. Large parts of the story are given over to his post war life and there are also occasional chapters in which the British grandson writes about his grandparents.
Basically, this is a memoir of World War II told from the point of view of a German soldier who does his best to explain his own involvement in Nazi Germany's war machine which led to the deaths of millions, mostly civilians who didn't die in battle but were brutally murdered. Whether this one man - and Germans like him - were good or evil is something the reader must decide. This is an absorbing read posing some disturbing questions, still relevant today, which have no easy answers.
February 9, 2022
Io, non so perche', ho sempre avuto molta simpatia per i soldati, e penso che alla fine sono "tutti figli di una madre" e mi intenerisco: stavolta pero' ho finito questo libro in concomitanza con la ricorrenza dell'Olocausto, e visto che questo libro parla di soldati tedeschi, intenerirsi e' risultato un po' piu' difficile.
Cio' nonostante il libro e' veramente bello, crudo ma credo sincero, ed ha aggiunto un altro prezioso tassello informativo alla mia eterna domanda: "ma i tedeschi nella II Guerra Mondiale, erano consapevoli di quello che stavano facendo?" e qui credo che ormai ho abbastanza evidenza per rispondere di si', ma la domanda piu' importante e' "cosa avrei fatto io, se fossi stata tedesca a quei tempi?" e qui, avendo letto libri e analizzato situazioni, e' sempre piu' difficile rispondere.
Cio' nonostante il libro e' veramente bello, crudo ma credo sincero, ed ha aggiunto un altro prezioso tassello informativo alla mia eterna domanda: "ma i tedeschi nella II Guerra Mondiale, erano consapevoli di quello che stavano facendo?" e qui credo che ormai ho abbastanza evidenza per rispondere di si', ma la domanda piu' importante e' "cosa avrei fatto io, se fossi stata tedesca a quei tempi?" e qui, avendo letto libri e analizzato situazioni, e' sempre piu' difficile rispondere.
Read
February 19, 2023“We did it first, and worse. In war, the mechanism of justice is retribution. Woe to the conquered. And justice was performed in aggregate, not for individuals. Each of us thinks, I didn’t set up the Nazi party, I didn’t declare war on anyone, I didn’t deliver people to the camps. But we did.”
“We Germans” by Alexander Starritt is a very thought provoking examination of how many of us think about the WW2 era German. The novel is presented as a long letter written by a Wermacht veteran, Meissner, detailing key moments of his service on the dreaded eastern front. In the letter, written to his British grandson Callum, Meissner seeks to justify his actions in the war while still acknowledging his shame with having been a participant. While reading the letter, Callum makes known his feelings as a young adult of German descent. It is difficult to make any sense of what those like Meissner were thinking and to sympathize with the excuses they made to justify their actions. However, this fast paced and at times disturbing novel made me think about the war and the German participants in a way that I hadn’t before.
“No matter how far you were from it, you incurred guilt, in a greater or lesser portion. The only exceptions were those few who refused to work or answer the draft, whom the country is now so grateful to have had. But if you weren’t a hero, you colluded by default. Morally, there was no neutral ground, no safe middle of the herd. And I didn’t make lunches; I wore a uniform and fought, to the best of my ability. So I can’t fault the concept of our collective guilt, I just don’t feel it. The idea that I’m guilty for things I never saw and had no power over doesn’t seem to me to meet the standards of natural justice. But what I do feel, ineradicably, is shame.”
Is Meissner justified in his inability to feel guilty? Is the shame that Callum holds warranted? I found myself re-analyzing my most steadfast beliefs on the subject after being presented with these dilemmas. However, while these complicated yet relevant questions are presented, there are no easy answers.
This could be read by someone with a passing knowledge of WW2 and would definitely be enjoyed by someone really into historical fiction (like me). While there are some intense battle sequences, it also includes a lot of philosophical sections and entertaining dialogue between the characters. I give this a 4.5/5 for its unique approach, relevance, and the way it challenged me to think about this from a different point of view. I also appreciate the ability it had to keep me turning the pages in my mind even after the story had ended, because in truth, the story never has and never will.
“We Germans” by Alexander Starritt is a very thought provoking examination of how many of us think about the WW2 era German. The novel is presented as a long letter written by a Wermacht veteran, Meissner, detailing key moments of his service on the dreaded eastern front. In the letter, written to his British grandson Callum, Meissner seeks to justify his actions in the war while still acknowledging his shame with having been a participant. While reading the letter, Callum makes known his feelings as a young adult of German descent. It is difficult to make any sense of what those like Meissner were thinking and to sympathize with the excuses they made to justify their actions. However, this fast paced and at times disturbing novel made me think about the war and the German participants in a way that I hadn’t before.
“No matter how far you were from it, you incurred guilt, in a greater or lesser portion. The only exceptions were those few who refused to work or answer the draft, whom the country is now so grateful to have had. But if you weren’t a hero, you colluded by default. Morally, there was no neutral ground, no safe middle of the herd. And I didn’t make lunches; I wore a uniform and fought, to the best of my ability. So I can’t fault the concept of our collective guilt, I just don’t feel it. The idea that I’m guilty for things I never saw and had no power over doesn’t seem to me to meet the standards of natural justice. But what I do feel, ineradicably, is shame.”
Is Meissner justified in his inability to feel guilty? Is the shame that Callum holds warranted? I found myself re-analyzing my most steadfast beliefs on the subject after being presented with these dilemmas. However, while these complicated yet relevant questions are presented, there are no easy answers.
This could be read by someone with a passing knowledge of WW2 and would definitely be enjoyed by someone really into historical fiction (like me). While there are some intense battle sequences, it also includes a lot of philosophical sections and entertaining dialogue between the characters. I give this a 4.5/5 for its unique approach, relevance, and the way it challenged me to think about this from a different point of view. I also appreciate the ability it had to keep me turning the pages in my mind even after the story had ended, because in truth, the story never has and never will.
August 1, 2020
We Germans was an interesting book, it reads like non fiction in a way, but it was very well done. I thought it would probably be just another book about the war, but this was something so much more, it’s about the emotions involved, the attitudes , the effects and on the difference in the generations dealing with this, the morals. It was such an interesting and moving novel, especially one of the few I’ve read not with the winning side being the focus. Interesting and I thoroughly recommend this.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion
June 17, 2022
An interesting first-person perspective into the WWII German front line. We're always reminded of the big monstrous events that defined that war: Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Invasion of Paris, the Holocaust etc. However, it will always be the smaller skirmishes where an individuals humanity is revealed. These are the horrors that linger in memory and will haunt soldiers until the end of their days. There are always more sides to the story and nothing is ever black or white.
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for the reading copy.
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for the reading copy.
December 15, 2024
Thought-provoking and sombre with hyper realistic flashbacks to the Eastern front - this short novel will really stick with me!
September 24, 2020
“We Germans”, by Alexander Starritt, is a novel told in two voices. It’s the story of a German grandfather, Miessner, who served in the Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1945, on the Russian front. Called to arms in Operation Barbarossa, he was captured at the war’s end and spent three years in a Soviet prison til he was released to East Germany. He met his wife in a convalescent hospital, and went on to have a prosperous life as a druggist, finally retiring to the beautiful hills of Heidelberg. The second voice is that of his grandson, who was raised in Scotland and is trying to figure out what his Opa did in the war.
Miessner was not a war criminal. He says in his letters to his grandson that he killed many people in his four years of battle, but they were other soldiers. He did not participate in murders in the killing fields in the east, nor did he serve in concentration camp. There were others who did that horrific work. Miessner served in the artillery and then as a common foot soldier.
Alexander Starritt’s novel is quite short - fewer than 200 pages - but he tells how a man can survive 4 years on the Russian front and three years in a Soviet prison camp and come back and make a life for himself and his family. Much of the book is devoted to a military mission in Poland in the final months of the war he and four other soldiers participated in. It’s occasionally humorous in a very macabre way, but basically a graphic look at the endless torture and killings of Russian and other German soldiers that happened when desperate men are fighting for their lives and futures.
There are no “good” people in Starritt’s book. It’s really a picture of how years of war and deprivation settle on a man as he tries to make sense of his life at the very end of it. It’s a beautifully written novel and one I can highly recommend. Incidentally, I began by reading the book but soon switched to listening to the Audible version.
Miessner was not a war criminal. He says in his letters to his grandson that he killed many people in his four years of battle, but they were other soldiers. He did not participate in murders in the killing fields in the east, nor did he serve in concentration camp. There were others who did that horrific work. Miessner served in the artillery and then as a common foot soldier.
Alexander Starritt’s novel is quite short - fewer than 200 pages - but he tells how a man can survive 4 years on the Russian front and three years in a Soviet prison camp and come back and make a life for himself and his family. Much of the book is devoted to a military mission in Poland in the final months of the war he and four other soldiers participated in. It’s occasionally humorous in a very macabre way, but basically a graphic look at the endless torture and killings of Russian and other German soldiers that happened when desperate men are fighting for their lives and futures.
There are no “good” people in Starritt’s book. It’s really a picture of how years of war and deprivation settle on a man as he tries to make sense of his life at the very end of it. It’s a beautifully written novel and one I can highly recommend. Incidentally, I began by reading the book but soon switched to listening to the Audible version.
June 15, 2020
would like to thank netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this book
this story is based on a letter written to by a german to his grandson who lived in scotland...its an insightful story as it deals with certain elements about the war and his guilt over what his nation had done ..
its quite a powerful read
this story is based on a letter written to by a german to his grandson who lived in scotland...its an insightful story as it deals with certain elements about the war and his guilt over what his nation had done ..
its quite a powerful read
October 22, 2021
I picked up this book in the library, and five pages into it and I had to own it. Once I got my hands on it, I read every word and unlined those sparkling sentences and made notes on a brand new note book. The cover is perfect, the tone is warm, the writing is incisive.
"But if you're disconnect from a nation's everyday collective life, you fall back on symbols, kitsch, and world history." Yes, yes!!
Deeply reflective, insightful and soulful. Thank you for writing this book!
"But if you're disconnect from a nation's everyday collective life, you fall back on symbols, kitsch, and world history." Yes, yes!!
Deeply reflective, insightful and soulful. Thank you for writing this book!
March 1, 2025
Human is so complicated, evil and goodness both lives among them.
January 12, 2021
It finally happened. A book tilted me enough to get me on Goodreads.
The story takes the form of a letter from a former Wehrmacht soldier, Meissner, to his grandson, Callum. Interludes from Callum periodically break up the letter for pages at a time, during which he provides inane details about his grandfather's later life. Almost nothing in these passages contributes to our understanding of Meissner, and in any case I don't imagine that many readers are particularly interested in what a half-German born in Scotland in the 1980's thinks about the war. Callum is entirely bland. One wonders if his narration was perhaps added to pad the book's length.
Meissner himself is entirely uninteresting. Despite his regular assertion that he withdrew into his "inner self" to keep his mind going through the war, we learn precious little about that self. The Meissner of the 1940's misses his family and wants to be a pharmacist. As the Germans retreat, he feels anger at the prospect of failing to live out his desire. That's all there is. The character is so flat that Starritt fails even to explain why, as the son of a minister whom he clearly admires, Meissner is an agnostic. This loss of faith isn't attributed to the horrors of war - it's simply presented as if it shouldn't raise any desire in the audience to know more. The passage of time fails to help the character, whose self-image after the war seems to rely heavily on his relationship with his nameless wife, a woman who liked to knit and play her grandson's 2D Prince of Persia platformer on PC. We learn no more about her.
Meissner's narrative itself falls flat as well. Despite his participation in the entirety of the war, he covers only a few days of Germany's collapse in 1944, during which he and a handful of fellow soldiers traipse about looking for food. The events he describes from this time sometimes strain credulity. The outcome of a particularly lopsided tank battle verges on ludicrous, while the decision of Meissner's group (each member of which is to some degree amoral, unhinged, and/or mentally absent) to send a pair of captured Polish prostitutes on their way untouched without a second thought is simply unbelievable.
Unsurprisingly, Meissner's ultimate conclusions about the war and his degree of culpability for Germany's crimes ring hollow. This isn't the kind of subject matter that empty characters can tackle. There's a great deal of quality literature about it out there, so I'd recommend that you pass on this book in favor of something more capable of grasping the era's complexity and tragedy.
The story takes the form of a letter from a former Wehrmacht soldier, Meissner, to his grandson, Callum. Interludes from Callum periodically break up the letter for pages at a time, during which he provides inane details about his grandfather's later life. Almost nothing in these passages contributes to our understanding of Meissner, and in any case I don't imagine that many readers are particularly interested in what a half-German born in Scotland in the 1980's thinks about the war. Callum is entirely bland. One wonders if his narration was perhaps added to pad the book's length.
Meissner himself is entirely uninteresting. Despite his regular assertion that he withdrew into his "inner self" to keep his mind going through the war, we learn precious little about that self. The Meissner of the 1940's misses his family and wants to be a pharmacist. As the Germans retreat, he feels anger at the prospect of failing to live out his desire. That's all there is. The character is so flat that Starritt fails even to explain why, as the son of a minister whom he clearly admires, Meissner is an agnostic. This loss of faith isn't attributed to the horrors of war - it's simply presented as if it shouldn't raise any desire in the audience to know more. The passage of time fails to help the character, whose self-image after the war seems to rely heavily on his relationship with his nameless wife, a woman who liked to knit and play her grandson's 2D Prince of Persia platformer on PC. We learn no more about her.
Meissner's narrative itself falls flat as well. Despite his participation in the entirety of the war, he covers only a few days of Germany's collapse in 1944, during which he and a handful of fellow soldiers traipse about looking for food. The events he describes from this time sometimes strain credulity. The outcome of a particularly lopsided tank battle verges on ludicrous, while the decision of Meissner's group (each member of which is to some degree amoral, unhinged, and/or mentally absent) to send a pair of captured Polish prostitutes on their way untouched without a second thought is simply unbelievable.
Unsurprisingly, Meissner's ultimate conclusions about the war and his degree of culpability for Germany's crimes ring hollow. This isn't the kind of subject matter that empty characters can tackle. There's a great deal of quality literature about it out there, so I'd recommend that you pass on this book in favor of something more capable of grasping the era's complexity and tragedy.
January 28, 2020
Know thyself
The Scottish grandson of a WW2 German soldier asks his grandfather what were his experiences in the war. The old man refuses to answer and sulks. Years later the grandson finds a letter left to him by his now deceased grandfather. In it is an account of his experiences on the Russian Front, focusing on a 24 hour period during the German retreat in the closing months of the war.
The novel is the old soldier’s letter, including footnotes and commentary by the grandson. The short period described in detail contains boredom, hunger, defeat, horror and death. Suffusing the events of a single incident are snapshots of the soldier’s protestant, middle class youth, his enthusiasm in the war’s early days, his increasing disillusion, his war weariness, his feeling of just reward when incarcerated in a Russian POW camp for years after the war, redemption and rebirth when he met the woman who was to be his wife, their final years together in a Germany which had chosen to forget its guilt, until the presumptuous request of a young grandson finally compels an old man to confront the past and at last to know himself.
The Scottish grandson of a WW2 German soldier asks his grandfather what were his experiences in the war. The old man refuses to answer and sulks. Years later the grandson finds a letter left to him by his now deceased grandfather. In it is an account of his experiences on the Russian Front, focusing on a 24 hour period during the German retreat in the closing months of the war.
The novel is the old soldier’s letter, including footnotes and commentary by the grandson. The short period described in detail contains boredom, hunger, defeat, horror and death. Suffusing the events of a single incident are snapshots of the soldier’s protestant, middle class youth, his enthusiasm in the war’s early days, his increasing disillusion, his war weariness, his feeling of just reward when incarcerated in a Russian POW camp for years after the war, redemption and rebirth when he met the woman who was to be his wife, their final years together in a Germany which had chosen to forget its guilt, until the presumptuous request of a young grandson finally compels an old man to confront the past and at last to know himself.
April 28, 2024
Sürükleyici bir yanı olsa da, bazı konularda çok detaya girilmiş. Savaş detayları okurken çok etkiliyor ve yoruyor. Ayrıca, o an konuşanın kim olduğunu anlamak için tam odaklanmış halde okunmalı.
July 20, 2021
Alexander Starritt’s We Germans tells the story of a small group of German soldiers retreating from the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1944. The German soldiers on the Eastern front know the war is lost. Pursued by the ruthless Red Army, they’ve retreated a thousand kilometers on foot and are crossing the Polish countryside they destroyed years earlier, when they looked and felt invincible.
The main character, Meissner, was drafted into the war at age nineteen as an artilleryman. He spent four years fighting in Russia before the tide turned decisively against the Germans. Retreating and in defeat, he begins to contemplate the atrocities of the war in which he’s participated.
The war on the Eastern front has been more savage and brutal than the war in the west. Meissner describes how he and other soldiers, told to live off the land, terrorized the peasants, going into their gardens to dig up potatoes and buried pickles. If the peasants didn’t tell them where the food was, the Germans started lighting things on fire–the shed, the barn, the house–until they gave up the information. Then the soldiers took the food and left the homeless families to starve.
Meissner asks why a wealthy country like Germany with it’s fine houses and paved roads would want to take from a poor country that could barely feed itself. But he and his fellow soldiers take nonetheless, because war has stripped them of civility and reduced them to their animal needs. He feels the shame of what he’s doing, but goes through with it anyway because it’s a matter of survival, and because he knows that the Red Army and the partisans harassing the German retreat are just as ruthless.
“What reason was there for any of the war?” Meissner asks. “In every answer the logic of the details only disguises the madness of the whole. I do not believe a historian’s analysis can explain what we were doing there in that Polish wood. Versailles, totalitarianism–these are the mechanisms, but they still fall short of why we actually did any of this in the first place… I think part of it was obedience, that we allowed ourselves to be led into the abyss.”
Meissner notes that just because the soldiers didn’t know what they were getting into doesn’t absolve them for what they did.
“Oedipus didn’t know that his mother was his mother when he slept with her. But what he’d done was nonetheless abhorrent, and he was destroyed for it. There’s a pitiless truth in that. Shame is not like guilt. It’s not a matter of reparations… Shame can’t be atoned for; it’s a debt that cannot be paid.”
The power of this book lies in its richly detailed description of the war on the ground, its vivid portrayal of chaos and courage and depravity in a civilization that has disintegrated, pitting everyone against everyone. No dystopian fiction can conjure a more horrifying world.
The narrative includes both cinematic action and deep reflection. When the soldiers fight, when they witness atrocities and when they commit them, the experience for the reader is visceral. You feel their fear, their desperation, their anger and aggression, their tenderness. You see and hear the tanks and planes, the guns and screams. Starritt’s writing brings everything to life. Even the wayward pony that the soldiers adopt in their wandering has a distinct personality.
The power of Meissner’s reflections comes from the Starritt’s ability to convey the intensity of the war. Meissner isn’t a philosopher in an ivory tower playing with abstract ideas. His ruminations are a direct response to what he and the reader have just experienced together. His thoughts have the weight of reality, of the brutal physical world.
We witness with him the scenes that haunt him most: an entire village hanged in the branches of an enormous tree, a woman raped and crucified at the hands of the German military police, soldiers slaughtering their own officers just to get a taste of the champagne and sardines they’ve been hoarding.
The war, says Meissner, “showed me what life looks like when not distorted by hope, or pinned in shape by laws: a vast teeming featureless crowd where some suffer and some have happy lives, and there is no reason… There is no right and wrong but what we decide to live by, and no ‘fair’ except what people effortfully construct. And lastly, it’s all so, so fragile. Governments, banks, cities and houses, it’s all so much more fragile than you would believe, as easily blown away as dandelion seeds in the breeze.”
The book deepens as it goes on. In the end, we find the elderly Meissner trying to make sense of the life he’s lived, not just during the war, but afterward, when love and generosity were the guiding forces of his existence. The final pages provide a deeply human and humane reflection on a long and complicated life.
This is a powerful, haunting book. The best I’ve read all year, by a long shot.
The main character, Meissner, was drafted into the war at age nineteen as an artilleryman. He spent four years fighting in Russia before the tide turned decisively against the Germans. Retreating and in defeat, he begins to contemplate the atrocities of the war in which he’s participated.
The war on the Eastern front has been more savage and brutal than the war in the west. Meissner describes how he and other soldiers, told to live off the land, terrorized the peasants, going into their gardens to dig up potatoes and buried pickles. If the peasants didn’t tell them where the food was, the Germans started lighting things on fire–the shed, the barn, the house–until they gave up the information. Then the soldiers took the food and left the homeless families to starve.
Meissner asks why a wealthy country like Germany with it’s fine houses and paved roads would want to take from a poor country that could barely feed itself. But he and his fellow soldiers take nonetheless, because war has stripped them of civility and reduced them to their animal needs. He feels the shame of what he’s doing, but goes through with it anyway because it’s a matter of survival, and because he knows that the Red Army and the partisans harassing the German retreat are just as ruthless.
“What reason was there for any of the war?” Meissner asks. “In every answer the logic of the details only disguises the madness of the whole. I do not believe a historian’s analysis can explain what we were doing there in that Polish wood. Versailles, totalitarianism–these are the mechanisms, but they still fall short of why we actually did any of this in the first place… I think part of it was obedience, that we allowed ourselves to be led into the abyss.”
Meissner notes that just because the soldiers didn’t know what they were getting into doesn’t absolve them for what they did.
“Oedipus didn’t know that his mother was his mother when he slept with her. But what he’d done was nonetheless abhorrent, and he was destroyed for it. There’s a pitiless truth in that. Shame is not like guilt. It’s not a matter of reparations… Shame can’t be atoned for; it’s a debt that cannot be paid.”
The power of this book lies in its richly detailed description of the war on the ground, its vivid portrayal of chaos and courage and depravity in a civilization that has disintegrated, pitting everyone against everyone. No dystopian fiction can conjure a more horrifying world.
The narrative includes both cinematic action and deep reflection. When the soldiers fight, when they witness atrocities and when they commit them, the experience for the reader is visceral. You feel their fear, their desperation, their anger and aggression, their tenderness. You see and hear the tanks and planes, the guns and screams. Starritt’s writing brings everything to life. Even the wayward pony that the soldiers adopt in their wandering has a distinct personality.
The power of Meissner’s reflections comes from the Starritt’s ability to convey the intensity of the war. Meissner isn’t a philosopher in an ivory tower playing with abstract ideas. His ruminations are a direct response to what he and the reader have just experienced together. His thoughts have the weight of reality, of the brutal physical world.
We witness with him the scenes that haunt him most: an entire village hanged in the branches of an enormous tree, a woman raped and crucified at the hands of the German military police, soldiers slaughtering their own officers just to get a taste of the champagne and sardines they’ve been hoarding.
The war, says Meissner, “showed me what life looks like when not distorted by hope, or pinned in shape by laws: a vast teeming featureless crowd where some suffer and some have happy lives, and there is no reason… There is no right and wrong but what we decide to live by, and no ‘fair’ except what people effortfully construct. And lastly, it’s all so, so fragile. Governments, banks, cities and houses, it’s all so much more fragile than you would believe, as easily blown away as dandelion seeds in the breeze.”
The book deepens as it goes on. In the end, we find the elderly Meissner trying to make sense of the life he’s lived, not just during the war, but afterward, when love and generosity were the guiding forces of his existence. The final pages provide a deeply human and humane reflection on a long and complicated life.
This is a powerful, haunting book. The best I’ve read all year, by a long shot.
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