Frontsoldaten

Description

This isn’t a book about war as in such chronicles are usually understood; rather, it concerns the idea of men at war. Without a doubt, war serves as merely the background against which human activities and feelings can be illuminated. As a result, I don’t take a customary “top-down” approach, relying on authentic reports and evaluations of occasions, yet rather approach history from the “base up,” from the point of view of the regular battling man. This approach, obviously, has certain constraints, first among them the fact that the expansive key range of conventional military history is missing. Nor is there any of the typical guess over issues of strategies, initiative, command decisions, or the overall benefits of different weapons. Not just have those matter been managed somewhere else by different students of history, however, seeking after them here would negate the whole aim of ordinary history. My motivation is to permit average german warriors to talk, with at least outer impedance;