Thorolf Hillblad

This was an interview/war memoir of a Swedish volunteer into a German WW2 unit fighting in the East against Stalin. Not a very common perspective to encounter, as most of the Waffen-SS were killed. Unclear how to really evaluate the fighting aspects of the book -- hard although conventional combat on a horrible front where everything was terrible for everyone, and from this soldier's account, many brave actions as well as many stupid actions, but no real way to establish veracity. Seemed like the entire conflict was after any reasonable chance of victory was gone, so it was just one holding action after another, but as this book basically only covered the last months of the war in Europe, even more so.

The more interesting part for me was after the war was winding down, and the politics/legality of non-German troops from neutral powers like Sweden, and how he'd get out of it (which he ultimately did).

Mostly it's an account of nasty fighting on the Eastern Front; worth reading if you don't know how bad that is, but otherwise probably redundant.… (mehr)