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3.5
Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying
ByPublisher Description
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesSoldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying Reviews
3.5
“If this book doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you aren't paying attention. What makes this book so compelling, is not the fact that Nazis (regardless of the branch of the military in which they served) were uniquely evil in their penchant for killing, but that at the core, it is a problem of all of humanity.
This book transcribes and dissects the conversations from German POWs during WWII, who were recorded surreptitiously, with the goal of gaining information about the enemy that was not possible from direct interrogation. One does have to view the information with a grain of salt, as the POWs could have been lying or exaggerating for various reasons. However, the preponderance of certain behaviors and attitudes cannot be ignored. But the authors never attempt to isolate these beliefs to this particular war (while also not minimizing or excusing the abominations that were committed). They simply recognize that people have behaved in heinous ways throughout many conflicts, and want to utilize the data at hand in order to understand its origins better. This analysis is done from a historical, sociological, and psychological perspective.
I only gave it 3 stars because I felt as thought it was rather dry, and not necessarily enjoyable to read (to the extent that such a topic could or should be enjoyable). It is an important book, and one I would recommend others to read, even if its a bit of a slog.”
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