Soldat Reflections of a German Soldier 1936 1949

This engaging, introspective memoir, coauthored with Bruslaw ( The Business Writer’s Handbook ) offers insight into the thinking and attitudes of a Wehrmacht officer. Knappe served in the artillery during the invasions of Czechoslovakia, France and the Soviet Union and as a staff officer during the Italian campaign and the defense of Berlin. Though he had moral reservations about the Czech campaign and was troubled by his government’s betrayal of its non-aggression pact with Russia, Knappe believed that his participation in combat was honorable and that the overriding purpose of the war was to correct the injustice perpetrated against Germany by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Only after he was captured by Soviet troops in 1945 did he begin to understand that he had been an “unthinking cog,” accepting without question Hitler’s might-makes-right philosophy. The memoir closes with an account of his release from a Soviet prison camp in 1949 and his reunion with his family in Leipzig. Knappe came to America in 1955 and is now a retired corporate executive in Ohio. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars Not Factual?
I ordered and read Knappe’s book, Soldat!. It isn’t a bad book, but I had to question some of Knappe’s accounts.

I’ll describe just one obvious factual error. Knappe writes about how his men had to dress in civilian clothing to fool the Soviet sentries as men and material were moved up to the line in preparation for Operation Barbarossa… the June 22, 1941 invasion of the USSR. No advantage of prior warning was to be given to the Russians.

Then, in referring to the night of the attack, Knappe goes into a description of his preparations on the night of the attack, which includes a lengthy and detailed account of the bright moonlight illuminating the forests and villages in his unit’s staging area. Knappe continues referring to the moonlight, calling it the “same moon” that has illuminated European armies throughout the ages.

As a former regular army officer myself, I know that for matters of secrecy and deception, major military operations are always initiated in the absence of moonlight whenever the tactical situation allows. As the initial attacker, the timing of the attack was certainly up to the Germans, who were not planning under pressure. Knappe, claiming to be a graduate of General Staff College, would have known that as well even if he had no memory of the invasion night.

But Knappe then describes how flares were used at the outset of the invasion to illuminate the enemy. Flares would of course been unnecessary if Knappe could have seen by moonlight all that he claimed to be able to see. The Germans were secretive and tactical to the point that they disguised the appearance of their soldiers during the pre-invasion buildup, only to attack in broad moonlight, but also needed flares to see? It doesn’t work like that.

I checked the moon calendar for Central Europe on the night of June 21-22, 1941, not that it was even necessary, and sure enough there was a new moon on the night of the invasion… not a scrap of moonlight. It isn’t fair to fault one for an imperfect memory about such a long ago event, and I’m not trying to do that. But, after considering the great detail of Knappe’s description, I don’t think the error is due to Knappe’s bad memory. I don’t even think it was an error… I believe it was by design. The emotional account of the invasion night was “filler” to make the book more interesting.

I’ve never read the operations order for Operation Barbarossa, but I’ll bet a steak dinner to a popsicle that the order mentions that the initial attack would be conducted under a dark, moonless sky. I know that from personal experience, and because I know that the German high command was the epitome of military excellence. In fact, our own weapons and tactics since WWII have been based on the teachings and practices of the German military.

I wondered at the time how much more filler is in the book? There’s no way to know; only Knappe knows that (or knew, since he recently passed on). But, it puts a burr in my enjoyment of any book once I begin to catch obvious untruths. Perhaps I’m expecting too much. Maybe these personal account books of the War are nothing more than personal war stories; maybe even novels.

5 Stars Superb!
This is one of the best ostfront-novels, right up there with Guy Sajers book, only Knappes comes of as more realistic and fells more truthfull. Sajers is a bit more first-person combat oriented, which I feel this book lacks a bit of. On the other hand, Knappe was mostly behind the frontline giving orders so there might not have been as much to tell. In fact, the book only descbribes a single really dangerous combat situation when Knappe is behind a weapon shooting at the enemy with a field-cannon. It’s perfectly written and easy to read. It’s never boring although never overly exciting either. Knappe was extremely lucky on quite a few occasions which no doubt saved his life. Among them where being halted from entering the incirclement at Stalingrad in the last hour and being called back to Germany before major russian attacks. Also, as an officer he was always amongst the first to retreat and obviously stod a much better chance at surviving than a front line fighting soldier running for his life with russian bayonettes tickling his back. I wonder if any front line grunt actuallt lived through the whole five year war? I suspect most of the survivors were officers like Knappe. The gruesome experiences after capture also struck hardest on the lowest ranking men, wheras Knappe recieved better treatment.

4 Stars Confessions of an Indestructable Everyman
When a fellow has as much story to tell as Siegfried Knappe, it’s easy to produce a book that’s nothing more than a tidal-wave of names, dates, and places, blurring together and hence failing to produce a clear picture of what the author actually experienced. This memior largely avoids that trap and thus SOLDAT is a helluva book, really a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the German Army under – and after – Adolf Hitler.

As a soldier, Knappe was fairly typical of the generation who came of age between wars and thus served as a kind of bridge between the era of Weimar and the following Nazi period. A casual admirer of Hitler as a young man, he nevertheless had a Jewish best friend, and went through the mill of Labor Service and drafted soldier just the same as countless other German youths. Serving in the horse-drawn artillery, he was recognized as having leadership potential given a rare opportunity for officer training, an experience which for him was so enjoyable that he decided to make the Army a career. Unfortunately the war intruded on what had been an idyll of ballroom dances, riding competitions and opportunities to lure women with his fancy uniform, and before too long he was in Russia for the opening day of the Russian campaign. There his romanticism died a painful death, and although he was grimly determined to carry out his duty to the bitter end, Knappe had an oddly lucky propensity to get wounded just badly enough to be removed from the fighting, but not badly enough to be crippled or killed. Eventually selected for service on the General Staff, he rose to the rank of major and finished the war helping to coordinate the defense of Berlin – an event that put him in close proximity to Hitler. Of course, “finishing the war” is a misleading expression, as Knappe spent many years slowly rotting in a Soviet POW camp, a subject covered in harrowing detail in the book.

As a read, SOLDAT has only one real flaw – the periods where, as narrator, Knappe gets bogged down in providing a strategic overview of the military situation in, say, 1945. Obviously as a General Staff officer this was part of his frame of reference, but it is somewhat jarringly academic compared to his personal experiences – this is a personal work, not a military history, and I wish the editor had seen fit to trim these interludes back. Other than that, however, it is an absolutely fascinating tell-all, not merely because of its intricate depictions of peacetime and wartime Army life, but because of its harrowing depictions of the aftermath millions of German soldiers had to live through as members of a defeated nation. The privations of the gulag were hard enough on Knappe, but the cruel psychological tricks the Soviets played on their German prisoners over their long years of captivity – denying their mail, lying about release dates, tricking them into committing crimes and then extending their sentences – are so exhausting and draining to read about that I can’t even imagine what it was like to endure them for ten years. By the time Knappe finally “escapes” to West Germany near the end of the book I think I was almost as glad as he was.

Overall, SOLDAT is a very strong entry in the field of German war literature and I would strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a fresh perspective – that of a staff officer during the climactic days of WW2.

5 Stars Fantastic book!
This book “Soldat” was a splendid read – It makes me feel like I’m going through the war with Herr Knappe…. I enjoyed it immensely and would have liked to have had the chance to say hello to the man. I highly recommend it!

5 Stars Soldat review
A very interesting account of the Second World War, coming from a lesser publicized perspective – that of a German career officer (albeit a very young one). Mr. Knappe did a masterful job of setting the scene of the years leading into the war and allowing us a rare glimpse into the German psyche. A moving account also of his years in the Soviet prisons – not that disimilar to the Nazi camps.

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