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

Product Information

For anyone seeking to understand the experiences of the ordinary German soldier during World War II, Blood Red Snow provides an excellent starting point. It is very easy to read as it has no fancy author trying to show you his education, except for the constant use of German terms for people's positions and rank. In addition, the maps used in the book are poorly drawn and don't really provide much of a sense of location to the battles described. For anyone seeking to understand the experiences of the ordinary German soldier during World War II, Blood Red Snow provides an excellent starting point - Military Illustrated A horrifying personal story of World War II's most savage front - Military Book Club (USA) Gunter Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on, storing them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave.

One was a heavy machine gunner for the German Wehrmacht and the second was a mortar gunner for the US Marine Corp. On the Front, he and his fellow infantrymen battled the enemy, the elements, the terrain, and hunger together. Gunter Koschorrek's claims go counter to what I've learned in Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943" and Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall: 1945" as well as Dan Carlin's Ghosts of the Osfront podcast.My perception was Korschorrek didn't embellish and try to paint the picture of being a hero: he was just a normal scared recruit trying to survive. Later, the horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit - their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, over five decades later, the fulfillment of a responsibility he feels to honour the memory of those who perished. Although wounded several times, author, Gunter Koschorrek, managed to survive spent almost the entire war as a heavy machine gun crewman engaged against the Russians on the imploding Eastern front. I have not read many accounts where the German soldiers, not driven by the evil ideology, describe what soldiers on every side were thinking.

Given such doubts about the accuracy and honesty of certain claims, my evaluation of this book cannot be a good one. It reminded me by moments of the bleak film Stalingrad from 1993, especially because one scene from the film was so strikingly like one in this book (the part were a German infantryman slips in the snow and falls before an advancing Russian T-34 tank and is flattened to death by it, if you're curious). The form will be sent to our Collections Management Team who will use it to improve our object records. Sedgwick’s use of the diction, rhetoric and devices of the fairytale transposes itself with remarkable ease to the contrasting courtly world of Russia and the raging discontent that powered the revolution. a brutal and detailed account of the fighting in Stalingrad and the frozen retreat of the German Army.

Korochorrek makes only a fleeting reference to German War crimes committed by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front; he suggests that both sides killed POWs and that Germans did some looting. As he explains, keeping a diary was forbidden, and though a lot of the situations he gets into seem too insane to be real, given the conditions of the war I can give him a pass on authenticity questions. I don't know if it's the translation from German to English or what, but several times the author refers to someone as a "bloke" or some other figure of speech one would completely associate with the British. Also, throughout the book I felt bombarded by German terms that lacked introduction, which left me feeling confused at times. In the second part of the novel, "One Night in Moscow", Ransome is haunted by the scenes he has witnessed.

It's amazing that he survived when so many on all sides did not,It's written so it flows quickley and it keeps you interested through out the whole book. His memoir relates these horrific experiences and it draws the reader in so that he feels that he too is in the frontline standing next to the author. Caught between the drama and pace of a thriller and the elegance and stature of folk-lore and fairytale, the novel is at once engaging and told with an extraordinary sense of lyricism. The eventual prevail of Soviets is explained only by the sheer number of cannon fodder thrown down on the Germans.It may be that Korschorrek, as a frontline soldier fighting for his life in the phase of German retreats, did not or only marginally get in contact with crimes of his own side. Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, European Union, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Republic of Croatia, Republic of the Congo, Reunion, Romania, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Sweden, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U. He becomes acquainted with the leading Bolsheviks and begins a romance with Trotsky's secretary Evgenia who will become his second wife. He kept a diary, wrote up events when on leave and put notes on scraps of paper that he put into a slit in his coat lining and he drew these elements together sometime in the 1980s or 1990s. He was also posted to Romania and Italy, assignments he remembers fondly compared to his time on the Eastern Front.