Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front

Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front | Gunther K Koschorrek | Good read.

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Blood Red Snow: Th...

	Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front Gunther K Koschorrek Zenith Press, 2005 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

For the German soldier fighting under Hitler, keeping a diary was strictly forbidden. So Gunther Koschorrek, a fresh young recruit, wrote his notes on whatever scraps of paper he could find and sewed the pages into the lining of his winter coat. Left with his mother on his rare trips home, this illicit diary eventually was lost?and did not come to light until some 40 years later when Koschorrek was reunited with his daughter in America. It is this remarkable document, a unique day-to-day account of the common German soldier?s experience, that makes up the memoir that is Blood Red Snow.

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Blood Red Snow

"Blood Red Snow" is another excellent book written about the German version of War in the East, through yet another direct participant in that war (this book is "one more" excellent - German perspective from the many great books on WWII, within the Amazon publishings).
It's important to know one basic element about WWII before diving into these many WWII readings. That is; 7 out of 10 Germans killed in combat in WWII were killed on the Russian Front, not fighting American, British, or the Western Allies.
Regardless of how it is discussed in public today regarding the German Army in WWII, these books (there are many good ones on Amazon), help to offer the genuine insight to what these men and the various nations at war, went through during the amazing battles in the East. Many millions of dead "On both sides" were consumed in this cauldron of fire in the East. That alone is something that is hard to balance and comprehend, in your mind.
I have purchased books from Amazondotcom - on the Soviet perspective too. Another amazing learning, when you realize the many Soviet languages within the USSR, that had to be overcome, just to fight one battle. Simply moving the many Soviet armies forward as they pushed to take back their lands, in some sort of organized fashion,.... through the language challenge, was a struggle beyond words. The Soviets really did not fully get their arms around their language challenge, until the war was almost over (1944). Then to understand, how the soviets had to devise ways to speak with each other, to fight in concert with those language barrier orders of battle, through the beginning of the war to the end, is an eye opener. You will soon have a new respect for what the Soviet Army had to do, to win their war in the East. No small effort, in and of itself. The one Soviet word,.... or better stated, "their battle cry" HORAHhhhhhhhhhh !!.... Was not only a way for the Soviets to gather courage to attack, it was a way to find their mixed language troops and people, in the fog of battle. Once found, they then had to try and continue communicating as best they could, in one generic fashion, during the heat and confusion of battle. Setting aside for now, how we are taught to think about the USSR, when you consider how they struggled with the hundreds of languages and dialects the many nations that made-up the USSR had,..... you soon realize the scope of that challenge. It is wise to consider the battle cry - HORAHhhhhhhhh as being "the one phrase" they all could understand, and the one excellent way they had to communicate with each other, for many reasons, in WWII. When you understand that the soviet soldiers were forced to attack or be shot, this becomes an understanding about the basic soviet soldier, that requires you to know more about their day-to-day thinking and perspective on war. To take the time to understand these soviet conscripts, is to gain the vast knowledge about "the heart" of the war in the East. Again,.....Reading is learning.
These newly published or republished books on the German Army shows, that everything that has been written in the past about their discipline, training, and camaraderie are under-stated. Did you know that the German Army boot camp before WWII and leading up to it, could be more than 5 months long (depending on what branch they would serve in, during combat)? They were among the best-of-the-best Armys of the world, at that time, and up to that time in history.
It's amazing to note that these two armies (German/Soviet) fought in such harsh conditions,... for so long. Just to understand the weather conditions during battles (blizzards, mud, rain), is to understand one small element of their war. A night in the dark and vast Soviet lands, under 40 or 60 degrees below freezing temperatures and winds, is a sobering wake-up call, in iteslf. Then to imagine that they did this day-after-day, and night-after-night through the better part of four winters, is almost an anticlimatic thought. That to me, is personally - unimaginable. For many troops on both sides, they "were" in this struggle for 4 years, or until they were killed. Try to visualize sleeping outside in these extreme temperatures, for months,... without end. Even now, i want to think they (German and USSR troops) were housed in some warm cozy place at night, and only fought during the day, and always had enough to eat and drink. In reality, that thought would be far from the truth. When you consider the murderous land they fought on in the East, the failing food and ammunition supply lines that became thinner as the war went against the Germans,........ it soon becomes clear how the massive armies of Napoleon were erased in one campaign.
I suggest that it is not too late, or too soon, to buy books like these.
It is much better to KNOW history, than to have NO history.

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Good read.

I enjoyed this book and I recommend it. I've read "black edelweiss", "the good soldier", and "the forgotten soldier". I recommend forgotten soldier 1st, blood red snow 2nd.

A "Boots on the Ground" View

It's hard not to feel sorry for Gunter Koschorrek. He's 18 years old, it's October 1942 (the second winter of Hitler's ill-fated invasion of the USSR), and his replacement battalion has been assigned to Stalingrad. As the Wehrmacht pounds that shattered city, the Germans don't know it yet, but they've already lost the war. It's only a matter of time.

Koschorrek doesn't know it either. He arrives in Stalingrad, full of youthful enthusiasm, determined to fight bravely for Fuhrer, Volk, und Vaterland. But the bitterly cold weather, supply problems, and relentless Russian attacks soon change that. By the end of his first deployment, Koschorrek is determined only to survive.

Survive he does -- barely -- and after recuperating from his wounds and a stint fighting partisans in Italy, he's back on the Eastern Front. Things have gotten worse. The Germans are in a fighting retreat from Russia, and Koschorrek is there every terrifying, horrible step of the way.

This is where Blood Red Snow shines. Koschorrek gives a detailed "boots on the ground" look at the latter days of Operation Barbarossa. He explains what it's like to fight on an ever-shifting front line, retreating through viscous mud on murderously flat steppes, beside men who are sometimes paralyzed by fear and sometimes full of lunatic courage, against an enemy that seems as unstoppable as the Russian winter.

As a plainspoken fighting man's look at the German-Soviet war -- and as an addendum to the "big-picture" books that pontificate about the grand strategies and politics of WW II -- Blood Red Snow is highly recommended.

I do have two complaints about the book. First, it's shoddily typeset and edited, with numerous typos and punctuation errors. It also a British-centric translation, so the Germans, annoyingly, call each other "blokes" and "chaps."

Second, Koschorrek's credibility is sometimes undermined by public-relations puffery. For example, early in the book, Koschorrek is shocked (shocked!) when an officer kills wounded Russians instead of allowing them to surrender. Such behavior is un-German, Koschorrek suggests. And then there's Katya, a young Russian woman -- with "cornflower" eyes -- from a village they briefly occupy, who cries when her German soldier "friends" are killed.

Maybe Koschorrek is telling the truth. Maybe not. It's understandable that he would portray his fellow German soldiers in the most flattering light. Not every Nazi was a sadist. Some Russians did greet the Germans as liberators. Nobody is a villain in his own story.

But, curiously, for a book about a Nazi soldier, the words "National Socialism" don't appear until page 255. The words "concentration camp" aren't mentioned until page 264 (and then only in the context of anti-Nazi "dissidents").

Even if Koschorrek wants only to offer an ordinary soldier's view of the war, he can't ignore the fact that he was fighting for one of the most murderous regimes in the history of the world. He might claim he was pulling the trigger for patriotism, or for his fellow soldiers, or simply to stay alive. But the fact remains, he was a soldier for the tyrannical government that started WW II and murdered millions of people in cold blood.

For that reason, ultimately, it *is* hard to feel sorry for Gunter Koschorrek -- even though I enjoyed his book and admired him for surviving the hell he so vividly describes.

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Poorly written, inaccurate, but is within the norm of many WW2 German memoirs

I am fascinated and incensed by every memoir written by German serviceman. Fascinated because I am afforded an opportunity to glimpse into the personal experience of an enemy, but incensed because everyone (at least whom I've read so far) comes across like such a gentleman. For instance, author said that because one Russian soldier was unarmed he did not shoot him. He also said that he couldn't bear seeing his buddy shooting wounded Russians because he thought it was barbaric. Oh, the innocent German soldiers. Where were they in Dachau, Majdanek, Treblinka, Auschwitz, etc etc etc? How about inhumane treatment of Russian POWs or mass murders of Russian population on occupied territories? Did 26 million Russian souls perish in this war just on their own? I guess those who choose to write about their experiences either conveniently forget these parts of the story or are absolute exceptions from the norm. I tend to believe the former.

I have to agree with another reviewer (Jeffrey Thurston) that the author repeatedly names a weapon that Russian soldiers use as Kalashnikov quite incorrectly. The fact that this gun was introduced at least 2 years after the war makes the reading a bit confusing and, well, discredits the story somewhat.

On a side note, I guess the numerous typos should not be the focus of my review, since the book is not written by a "professional" writer. Yet one is left wondering what the editor was doing right before they cleared the final manuscript for printing.

In all, I found accounts of fear that Russian attacks instilled in Germans (at least on some occasions) utmost interesting to read, including calling the T-34 a steel monster (it wasn't a heavy tank by any means). As long as you don't think too much into the details (i.e., nonexistent weapon repeatedly used by Russians, confusing some Russian and Polish words), you'll find this book an OK read.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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