Soldaten, Sonke Neitzel
Soldaten, Sonke Neitzel
List: $27.97 | Sale: $19.57
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Soldaten
On Fighting, Killing, and Dying

Author: Sonke Neitzel, Harold Welzer

Narrator: Simon Prebble

Unabridged: 14 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/25/2012


Synopsis

On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded and recently declassified. Neitzel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington, D.C. These were discoveries that would provide a unique and profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general—almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war.
 
 Collaborating with renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, Neitzel examines these conversations—and the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them—from a historical and psychological perspective, and in reconstructing the frameworks and situations behind these conversations, they have created a powerful narrative of wartime experience.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Scott on September 03, 2017

Yikes. Soldaten is chilling stuff. This is not bedtime reading. There are some grim truths in this book, grim truths about soldiering, war, and the complicity of many German soldiers in heinous war crimes. Even more shocking than revelations of actual crimes are the casual way they are discussed, som......more

Goodreads review by David on November 19, 2012

This is an important book. It makes one sit a little less complacently in one's skin. It has the courage to trace a line from ordinary humanity to the ordinary German soldier to the commission of atrocities. One is reminded throughout that it's a German academic book; infelicities of translation abo......more

Goodreads review by Charles on February 06, 2013

“They seized three year-old Jewish children by the hair, held them up and shot them with a pistol. The Latvians and German soldiers were standing there, looking on. The whole thing sounds just like a fairy story. If one were to destroy all the Jews in the world simultaneously, there would not remain......more

Goodreads review by Schubi on July 28, 2022

Interessanter Einblick in die Gefühlswelt und ideologischen Vorstellungen von abgehörten Soldaten in Kriegsgefangenschaft; durch das Zusammenspiel im "Referenzrahmen des Krieges" ist den Gedankengängen im Kontext gut zu folgen und es wird klarer, wie diese Vorstellungen und Äußerungen zustande komme......more

Goodreads review by Arthur on July 18, 2020

There is a lot of background and commentary leading up to the different sections of actual commentary from prisoners. At times it tedious but it does provide much useful context. One warning, you wont be hearing about the prisoners talking about their living conditions at their internment camp or the......more