I Fought in the SS and the Wehrmacht. Veterans of the Eastern Front

"The trench truth" of German soldiers and officers who survived the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, to tell what it was like to fight against Russia.

"Winter came, and morale dropped. Imagine: 40 degrees below zero, and instead of winter clothes you only have a thin greatcoat without lining. No fufaek with cotton! We didn’t even have winter hats. Only pilot caps—we wrapped them on our ears, but it didn’t save us. It was p…k cold! When you freeze like that, you stop thinking about the war and start thinking about how to survive…"

"Russian soldiers were very brave and enduring, but their command was mediocre. They kept repeating the same thing. All the time the same thing. I remember the Red Army trying to take a bridgehead—again and again, attack after attack, without any changes. Our division knocked out 200 tanks there one after another! It was absolutely pointless. They knew it! But Stalin ordered it, and they attacked again and again, suffering huge losses… Then, in 1944, 45—the command improved. They learned how to lead big formations and advance quickly…"

"The most dangerous Russian weapon, without a doubt, were the T-34 tanks, with which at first we could barely do anything. Even their five-centimeter anti-tank guns didn’t stop them—only the anti-aircraft ‘acht-acht’. It was an excellent tank—no doubt about it—which until 44 totally outclassed all types of our armored vehicles—until we got the ‘Panthers’ and the ‘Tigers’. For tank breakthroughs, the T-34 was perfect…"

"We had long known the war was lost, but we couldn’t talk about it. During the retreat from the Oder, in every village I saw the so-called ‘Hitler’s oak’—a tree in the market square where soldiers who had deserted from the front were hanged…"