German Infantryman At War 1939-1945 - Tapa dura

In 1939, the German Army was probably the best-trained and best-equipped army in the world, with high morale, excellent discipline and an entirely new way of tactical thinking enshrined in Blitzkrieg - Lightning War - which quickly had the armies of Poland, The Netherlands, Belgium, France and England reeling.
The backbone of the army was the infantry, still virtually unmechanized, having to march into battle with its supply trains and supporting artillery drawn by horses. By the time of the long Russian winter of 1941/2, the cream of the German infantry, veterans of the successes in the West, had perished just as Napoleon's army had done before them, heralding the inexorable slide to ultimate defeat - a slide that would take three years, massive casualties and all the horrors of total war.
German Infantryman at War 1939-1945 tells this story using many unpublished photographs taken by Gerhard Sandmann, a typical infantryman. Born at Vlotho on the River Weser on 25 June, 1918, he joined the German Army at Northeim in September 1939 and served as an infantry soldier until he was captured in 1944. The major difference between him and so many thousands of his compatriots was that he survived and so did his photographic record of the places he went.
Backing up the photographs are reminiscences and battle accounts from individual soldiers and official wartime reports. These examine every aspect of the daily life of a soldier - the bad times and the more fleeting good ones - the moments of sheer terror and those of comradeship. This book is not a tribute to war, but an honest attempt to explain what it was like to be a German infantry soldier during World War II.

German Infantryman at War looks at the lot of the average Landser, the German Tommy, who fought through Blitzkrieg, in the Western Desert, and in the horrific frozen wastes of Russia against the most implacable of foes. Most of the photographs in this book come from private collections and have not been published before, many from Feldwebel Gerhard Sandmann who joined the German Army at Northeim in September 1939 and fought from 9 May 1940, through Belgium, Holland and France. He was then involved in the capture of the Channel Islands, saw service on the Eastern Front, was wounded, and convalesced in Berlin before seeing service in the Occupation Army in Holland. He was captured by the US Army in Belgium in 1944. German Infantryman at War uses experiences such as these to evoke what World War 2 was like at the sharp end by way of the soldiers' own stories and images. For all those interested in the history of World War 2, this new book is an essential account of one of the most important, but often ignored facets of the history of war - the common soldier. It will appeal to all those with a broad interest in the strategy and tactics of the war.