Warrior Against His Will: A German Sapper's Account of World War One

by Anonymous, Julius Koettgen (Translator)

SHOOTING CIVILIANS IN BELGIUM NEARLY BURIED ALIVE ON THE BATTLEFIELD SOLDIERS SHOOTING THEIR OWN OFFICERS MARCHING TO THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE IN THE HELL OF VAUQUOIS AND MORE...

A vivid description of the life of a common German soldier. This soldier was a forced conscript in Kaiser's army despite disagreeing with it, but was nevertheless obliged to conform to the etiquette of war. He was a hater of militarism - for him there was no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality, grime and vermin, inhuman toil and degradation.

His story also contains the first German description of the retreat of the Teutonic armies after the battle of the Marne. He eventually deserted and fled to America as a stowaway in the coal bunker of a Dutch ship.

"Christmas in the trenches! It was bitterly cold. We had procured a pine tree, for there were no fir trees to be had. We had decorated the tree with candles and cookies, and had imitated the snow with wadding. Christmas trees were burning everywhere in the trenches, and at midnight all the trees were lifted on to the parapet with their burning candles, and along the whole line German soldiers began to sing Christmas songs in chorus. "0, thou blissful, 0, thou joyous, mercy bringing Christmas time!" Hundreds of men were singing the song in that fearful wood. Not a shot was fired; the French had ceased firing along the whole line. That night I was with a company that was only five paces away from the enemy. The Christmas candles were burning brightly, and were renewed again and again. For the first time we heard no shots.

"From everywhere, throughout the forest, one could hear powerful carols come floating over "Peace on earth—" The French left their trenches and stood on the parapet without any fear. There they stood, quite overpowered by emotion, and all of them with cap in hand. We, too, had issued from our trenches. We exchanged gifts with the French—chocolate, cigarettes, etc. They were all laughing, and so were we; why, we did not know. Then everybody went back to his trench, and incessantly the carol resounded, ever more solemnly, ever more longingly—"O, thou blissful—"

"All around silence reigned; even the murdered trees seemed to listen; the charm continued, and one scarcely dared to speak. Why could it not always be as peaceful? We thought and thought, we were as dreamers, and had forgotten everything about us. Suddenly a shot rang out; then another one was fired somewhere. The spell was broken. All rushed to their rifles. A rolling fire. Our Christmas was over."

Genres: History, World War I, Nonfiction, Memoir, War, Germany, Autobiography

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not really going to write a review of this short biography. Its not excellently written, the author was an under-educated German, and so the work also went through translation. It is, however, a story that horrified America when it was released in the papers. If you study military history it’s a must read for its close look at the brutality on the front’s of the first world war. Instead of a proper review, I’m going to post some blockquotes.

All that happened in seconds. The blood of the Belgian ran out of my friend's mouth; he was seized by a horrible nausea, an indescribable terror, the taste of the warm blood nearly drove him insane. That young, gay, lively fellow of twenty-four had been cheated out of his youth in that night. He used to be the jolliest among us; after that we could never induce him even to smile.

The distance between ourselves and the fleeing Frenchmen became greater and greater, and the spirit of our soldiers, in spite of the hardships they had undergone, became better and gayer. They joked and sang, forgot the corpses which were still filling the roads and paths, and felt quite at ease. They had already accustomed themselves to the horrible to such[ a degree that they stepped over the corpses with unconcern, without even making the smallest detour. The experience of those first few weeks of the war had already brutalized us completely. What was to happen to us if this should continue for months—?

At that time I began to notice in many soldiers what I had never observed before—they felt envious. Many of my mates envied the dead soldiers and wished to be in their place in order to be at least through with all their misery. Yet all of us were afraid of dying—afraid of dying, be it noted, not of death. All of us often longed for death, but we were horrified at the slow dying lasting hours which is the rule on the battle-field, that process which makes the wounded, abandoned soldier die piecemeal. I have witnessed the death of hundreds of young men in their prime, but I know of none among them who died willingly.

To be buried alive is just one of those horrors of the battlefield which your bar-room patriot at home (or in America) does not even dream of in his philosophy

All of us greatly feared those night patrols, for the hundreds of men killed months ago were still lying between the lines. Those corpses were decomposed to a pulp. So when a man went on nocturnal patrol duty and when he had to crawl in the utter darkness on hands and knees over all those bodies he would now and then land in the decomposed faces of the dead. If then a man happened to have a tiny wound in his hands his life was greatly endangered by the septic virus. As a matter of fact three sappers and two infantrymen of the landwehr regiment No. 17 died in consequence of poisoning by septic virus. Later on that kind of patroling was given up or only resorted to in urgent cases, and only such men were employed who were free of wounds. That led to nearly all of us inflicting skin wounds to ourselves to escape patrol duty.

[Gu Kun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even more impressive than All Quiet On The Western Front - because first-hand, unlike Remarque's second-hand account. The horrors of war. (The writer is an inveterate Marxist - well ... an impressionable and gullible young romantic - and then, this was 1914, well before the Marxist mass-murdering terror regimes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol, Kim and then some - so, I'm inclined to forgive him.)

[Phil Clymer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book goes places other authors ignore. The writer amply describes the ground war and daily activities associated with battle both in and out of the trenches, but he is also frank about the darker side of an already brutal affair. He tells of his unit's dispatching wounded enemy soldiers, the execution of prisoners of war, the unit's murder of unpopular officers, the shooting of civilians, and the rampant looting of food and valuables from the civilian population.

The author is not a professional writer but does a respectable job of presentation.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

The vivid hellish imagery in the book makes Dante's inferno pale. The appalling evil, brutality, absurdity, and abominable ugliness in the narrative seem to me running forever, as the darkness and agony are becoming simply unbearable, but it turns out that the author deserted in 1916, having born all that only during a year or two, and there was still to be several more years of miseries left on all other people in the war! For those who hold any romantic views of war this memoir can teach a very heavy lesson.

[Mathias · Rating 4 out of 5]

This LibriVox Audiobook has been at the back of my mind for a couple of years now. It was about the extremely important WWI told by someone who was actually there but had the guts as well as the moral compass to finally desert it. Reminding us of desertion as always being an option for a soldier to choose. Of course, this is easier said by a coach potato like me than done by a soldier having to fear military law.
From this stems my deep respect for those who have chosen this path to become deserters. They also have to live with militarists, nationalists and even stupid patriots who accuse them wrongly of cowardice while war criminals are treated like heroes. For me, and I dare to say, for reality itself, deserter's are the real heroes in non-defensive war.

But something about the book, maybe its title, maybe that its authorship was Anonymus were red flags to me. I suspected it was a propaganda work. I suspected it was about anti-German propaganda (Now don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way pro-German) by people or institutions (wall street banks) who wanted to see USA in action.

While I was correct in assuming that it was a Propaganda, my guess was totally off. It was only Socialist Anti-War propaganda. And while I'm against all forms of propaganda, anti-war is always better than pro-war. It's devastating that by that time no classic liberals were left, and the individualist anarchists (Tucker, Spooner) were always too few (but their importance for the long run is undeniable). So a a few people who cared about war and peace, which was easily the most important topic for true libertarianism looked for shelter under an anti-war tent, that was to a considerable part built by socialists.


So while I have only soft reservation against Socialist/Soviet propaganda going on in the USA regarding WWI, it's important to keep it in mind for the evaluation of this book. For example, does this anonymous person even exist? I doubt it. Unfortunately, there's almost no information about the book online. Maybe nobody had any use for it after the war was over?

Luckily, the LibriVox volunteers thought differently and created an audiobook (the review is based on this audiobook) out of it. Its narrator Lee Smalley does an excellent job reading the book, she's better than quite some professional readers on audible.

The reason why I now finally listened to the book, was Ralph Raico's World War I, which is a great external view on the war and I thought this internal view might go well with it.

The books has some good ideas, ideas that smell to me like they were planted into the head of this soldier (if he really existed) by the socialists.

The writer had the hope that this and similar books will lead to the end of all wars. Unfortunately, the 20th century saw exactly the contrary. Billions of liters of blood senselessly shed for the private gains of merchant's of death, for the honor of psychopathic politicians, for the instilled war patriotism of the masses.

The writer describes himself as an anti-militarist even before the war, so congratulation for that. In the Belle Epoque many had so much forgotten what war is, that they started to have childish ideas about it and even longed for it.

The writer makes a good point about compulsory conscription: With everybody in the army, or only those whose names start with certain letters, or whatever easy method they chose, they will by necessity have barbarians in it.

The writer says that it wasn't only the existence of barbarians that led to crimes by the army over the civilians. Another problem was the language barrier that led to dangerous or mortal misunderstandings.

He tells us that blind obedience can go only so far, because at one point, the body revolts. I found that to be very interesting, politics so at odds with human nature that even the biological level rejects the dogmas of these inhumane war communists.

Apparently, soldiers were left to do what they wanted. So there were lots of plunderings. Drunkenness and hunger lead some soldiers to hurt animals. In one case, a drunken soldier tried to kill a pig with a small knife over a prolonged time. The poor animal had to be shot in the morning.

Very interesting is the evidence given by this author, that war enables vertical violence. That is violence within one state and between different "classes" or levels on the army's hierarchy. We hear a lot of army propaganda about army discipline but according to this author there wasn't much to be seen of this. Rather, humans of higher army ranks were abusing (etc.) those of lower ranks. So much for Prussian discipline!

According to the authors, this way of living makes brutes out of soldiers, they stop being humans.

What shocked me, was that he said they started to be envy of the dead lying around them. Imagine that! That's the outcome of neglecting classic liberal principles, while having the technical advantages (guns, war equipment) that are the outcome of these principles. What he said they were envying, was not the act of dying, as this was oftentimes brutal, no medical assistance around, no pain meds, maybe, if you're lucky, a comrade saying some nice things to you. And that process of painfully dying could take hours.

While modern warfare is mostly about efficiency it was interesting to hear the author say that the wounded often didn't stay back because of fear of enemy. This must have slowed down the group, leading to less efficiency.

The book concludes with the author reading a socialist pamphlet, becoming a Socialist to, according to him, prevent the capitalists to use the wage-earners like pawns on a battle-field. This view isn't as wrong as some uninformed right-wingers might think. As Ralph Raico has pointed out in his book World War I, part 2, US banks have lent the entente powers 200M$ (uninflated!). There's an unholy link between big business and government. But the problem is not the unhampered market: By calling this system capitalism (rather than for example laissez-faire liberalism) and then pointing at evil capitalists, you're not making an argument. You're simply deceiving yourself with words.

That the book was released anonymously has to be understood. It was, as pointed out by Ralph Raico in his book that WWI was the low point for civil liberties: In 1917 the Espionage Act passed, which made it impossible to freely speak for peace and against war. The famous American socialist Eugene Debs was sentenced to and put in actual prison for what its said in this book. Wagner and Beethoven were boycotted by radio-stations. The teaching of the German language was banned in 14 states.
For more about the war communalism in this time I can recommend Rothbard's booklet War Collectivism

But I think it would have been prudent to let the reader known in the beginning that it's a socialist writing, that's why I subtracted a star from the five-star rating, for lack of integrity. That's maybe a bit harsh - at least he acknowledged he was a socialist. And the times were dismal, I can't blame unsuspecting youngsters joining the Socialists. Liberalism was almost dead. Happily it has been substantially, though far from commandingly, revived.
Today you can download the greatest thinkers (many for free), books and articles by people like Mises, Montessori, Spencer, Booker T. Washington, Darwin and Wallace, Robert Bednarik. Not all of them are (classic) liberals, but all of them will help you better understand man and his place in this world. I only wished more people would make use of this option.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book needs to be read in conjunction with Over The Top by Arthur Guy Empy. The two different perspectives give a very good dichotomy that make both books better as a result. This author obviously despises the act of war but is not a coward or pacifist. The war acts committed do not have the "rah rah! Yeah us!" that usually comes with military books. He views the French as just guys on the other side that would also rather be home with their families in peace than at The front line. The writing is ok and was originally in German so it has been through translation also. Clearly the guy is a socialist so be prepared for that.

[Kurt Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating memoir of a German soldier who fought in the trenches for the first 14 months of WWI before ultimately fleeing for the United States. His chronicle ran in the NY Times in 1917 but the author remains anonymous to this day (Koettgen is the translator). He gives a raw, seemingly un-edited account of what it was really like in the Flanders' trenches - ultimately laying waste to any romantic notions one may have of war. It's a solid read despite his blatant anti-war / anti-government agenda.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a LibriVox audiobook!


http://librivox.org/a-german-deserter...

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Regardless of the political persuasion, Julius Kottgen provides an interesting account of service in the First World War. Kottgen was an army Sapper (combat engineer) who participated in the initial invasion of Belgium and the First Battle of the Marne. He eventually became disillusioned with the war and deserted to Holland, where he would board a ship as a stowaway and head to America.

Kottgen was a socialist who developed anti-militarist beliefs prior to the war. From his writing, you can see clearly that his military service and political viewpoints conflicted him deeply. Because of his views, I'm surprised that he stayed in the war as long as he did. I would suggest reading this title with Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel" back to back to get two differing viewpoints of the German soldier in the Great War.

[Noel Mc Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent insight into WWI on the ground, as in man to man combat. Along with these incredible stories of temporary ceasefires, and enemies gathering together for libations and laughter....

Very thought provoking as to the whole issue of man's inhumanity.

[Felix Sun · Rating 5 out of 5]

great first account of a WW1. I enjoy every page of the book. almost as good as Rommel's Infantry Attack.
as you are nearing the end, the book winds down through a good flow and pace, however, the last message of ending was a bit vague / irrelevant / off point, but this may differ between readers.

[Oscar Lilley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best and most brutal private soldier memoirs on war. The author is frank and open without being prideful. He truly brings out the misery and absurdity of industrialized war.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An honest account of how brutal war is.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible insight

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

A German Deserter's War Experience by Anonymous and translated by Julius Koettgen describes the experiences of a German soldier in World War 1 from the beginning of the war through his escape to the United States in 1915.

The author tells his story in a matter of fact voice. As an enlisted man in Sapper Battalion Number 30, He participated in World War 1 for 14 months from August 1914 through much of 1915. Home on leave in 1915, he decided he had had enough of war and determined to desert. He made it across the Netherlands border under a hail of bullets.

The version I listened to is available free of charge at:
https://archive.org/details/german_de...

Archive.org has huge number of books and documents available free of charge in both text/pdf and in audio format.

I found it an interesting and useful description of the experiences of the enlisted men in the early part of World War 1. The English translation was quite good and natural. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in military history.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read. Captures a little of the misery of the soldier's life in WW1 and what one man did about it -- a little bayoneting of superior officers here, a little kindness to a war refugee there, and finally an escape to another country where he could start over.

[Frode · Rating 4 out of 5]

More interesting for what it is, than how it's written. A first hand account of horrors of the ongoing First World War. Definitely worth the read.