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

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The translation was more faithful, so it some ways it felt like I was listening to a German with excellent command of English, but who spoke with German mannerism. This book is the diary turned memoir of Gunter Koschorrek who served on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. The author is introspective and at times compassionate when dealing with the enemy (something I have rarely heard about)and describes many times where the enemy is given medical attention and treated humanely. As two historians familiar with the subject matter informed me in response to my related inquiry, such massacres did in fact happen - but only in isolated cases and mainly in the areas that had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939/40, not on territory that had been part of the USSR before 1939.

From October 1942 until August 1944, he served in the 1 st Battalion, 21 st Panzergrenadier Regiment, 24 Panzer Division, seeing action at Stalingrad, the Nikopol Bridgehead and in Romania. The author gives a more balanced descriptions of his Soviet enemies than some German memoirs, largely avoiding the cliched descriptions of a mindless hordes advancing with commissars at the rear that blight other accounts. Given that this is also the (at least to my knowledge) so far only description by a German soldier of massacres committed by Soviet troops against Soviet civilians, I consider skepticism to be very appropriate. Blood Red, Snow White was favourably reviewed by the major British newspapers [3] and was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Children's Book Award.Overall if you are interested in WW2 and want to read about it from a different and personal perspective I would pick this one up. This is a very good account of a warrior's experience, an absolute must for anyone interested in personal accounts from WWII. He was also posted to Romania and Italy, assignments he remembers fondly compared to his time on the Eastern Front.

It seems unlikely that the Soviets would retake a village, massacre the civilians, and then lose the village again just before Koschorrek arrived.As a narrative, it is visceral, frank and is better written than many similar Wehrmacht veteran accounts. After mentioning this to my dad, he bought me two books; the famous "The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer and this book, which is less well-known. We do still get accounts of outnumbered German units holding off massive Soviet attacks, but it's clear that these were always hard-fought and close-run affairs, with the result often decided by luck. Kitabı zaman zaman roman okur gibi okudum çünkü gerçekten sadece kurgu olaylarda olmasını dilediğim anlar yaşamış yazar.