Eyewitness to Wehrmacht Atrocities on the Eastern Front: A German Soldier's Memoir of War and Captivity
Dec 2021 · Pen and Sword Military
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About this ebook
A German soldier deployed to Russia recounts his harrowing experience as both victim and perpetrator of Nazi atrocities in this WWII memoir.
Serving his country on the Eastern Front, Luis Raffeiner witnessed devastating acts committed by the German army that couldn’t be reconciled with the heroic propaganda back home. Caught up in the turmoil of the vast conflict, he struggled to make sense of the ruthlessness he witnessed—and the part he himself played in it. In this bracingly candid memoir, Raffeiner offers a detailed firsthand account of the Nazi war of annihilation in the Soviet Union.
Raffeiner chronicles his family life in a remote village in the Tyrol in the 1930s, his military service in Italy, his transfer to the Wehrmacht and his training as a mechanic on assault guns. He then proceeds to his march into the Soviet Union in 1941. There he experienced, as he says, ‘war in its brutal and cruel reality’.
Captured by the Red Army, Raffeiner barely survived as a prisoner of war. His dramatic and honest recollections shatter the myth of the clean conduct of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He testifies to vicious actions, including some in which he himself was involved. His memoir is not a heroic tale – it shows how a man from an ordinary background can come to participate in the horrors of war.
Serving his country on the Eastern Front, Luis Raffeiner witnessed devastating acts committed by the German army that couldn’t be reconciled with the heroic propaganda back home. Caught up in the turmoil of the vast conflict, he struggled to make sense of the ruthlessness he witnessed—and the part he himself played in it. In this bracingly candid memoir, Raffeiner offers a detailed firsthand account of the Nazi war of annihilation in the Soviet Union.
Raffeiner chronicles his family life in a remote village in the Tyrol in the 1930s, his military service in Italy, his transfer to the Wehrmacht and his training as a mechanic on assault guns. He then proceeds to his march into the Soviet Union in 1941. There he experienced, as he says, ‘war in its brutal and cruel reality’.
Captured by the Red Army, Raffeiner barely survived as a prisoner of war. His dramatic and honest recollections shatter the myth of the clean conduct of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He testifies to vicious actions, including some in which he himself was involved. His memoir is not a heroic tale – it shows how a man from an ordinary background can come to participate in the horrors of war.
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About the author
Luis Raffeiner grew up in Karthaus in the South Tyrolean Schnalstal. In 1939, aged 22, after serving in the Italian army, he transferred to the Wehrmacht. As a tank mechanic in a unit of assault guns, he went to war against the Soviet Union in 1941. He was captured by the Red Army, survived being held as a prisoner of war in the Caucasus and, in 1947, returned to the Tyrol. He then worked as a master plumber at a brewery and set up his own company. Late in his life he recorded his wartime experiences which were published in German and are now available for the first time in English in this edition.
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