A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944

by Willy Peter Reese

A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-44 is the haunting memoir of a young German soldier on the Russian front during World War II. Willy Peter Reese was only twenty years old when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead. Bearing witness to-and participating in-the atrocities of war, Reese recorded his reflections in his diary, leaving behind an intelligent, touching,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374139784
• ISBN13: 9780374139780
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Terror, boredom, revulsion, obedience...life as cannon fodder.

A remarkable book which left a deep impression on me. At once literary in style and harrowing in its descriptions of life as cannon fodder, albeit thinking, passionate, feeling cannon fodder. Willy Peter Reese was no hero. I am not even sure he was brave. However, as a good German boy he did his duty to the fatherland. First he trained to put on the "mask" of the soldier. Then he went of to war in Russia, mask in place. He passed through a land where atrocities were the reality. He pillaged food from the starving. During the German Army's massive, fighting retreat Reese's unit was always among the last to get the order to fall back. His young eyes took in the full terror of the Nazi's scorched earth terror tactics. And he was part of it. Along with his comrades, he routinely drank himself into some other world. When there was no other way to move it, he and his fellow soldiers relentlessly dragged the unit's artillery piece. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. All the while, his young mind processed what he witnessed. Temperatures so cold he could only cry. A body infested with parasites. Legs and feet with open oozing wounds. Taking shelter in hand dug hovels. Corpses hanging from trees, lying in ditches, everywhere. In between the bouts of horror and killing, however, were sights of beauty and moments of mental and spiritual clarity. His writing only stopped when his life ended. Yes, Reese was trying to write like a writer. His loves were Rilke and others of that ilk. His book though, must be taken as a whole. To dissect it, to say this part is too wordy or that part is too introspective, is to miss the point. No, Willy Peter Reese was not a hero. He did his duty as he saw it. He tried to stay alive. He was not brave. Surely, then, he was the typical German male of the day who was thrust into a situation over which he had no control. He did not rage against his lot nor did he relish it. He simply existed through it as best he could.

first rate

reese's book is a collection of personal writings never intended for publication as they appear in 'a stranger to myself' (some of the other reviewers may want to read the book's preface.). not a history book, not a collection of anecdotes about slaying the 'russian hoards', not even a memoir but rather the thoughts of an individual knowingly trapped in death's grip w/no hope of escape. little of the 'flash, boom, bang' most war memoirs offer but 'astm' far exceeds any other title in putting us in the "secret chambers of the soul". a book of what the author thought and felt rather than what he saw or did. absolutely first rate...

A literary gem

Like some personal combat accounts, e.g. the U.S. marine E. B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed," this is an in-your-face and vividly graphic account of front-line combat. Contrasted with raw accounts like Sledge's however, "A Stranger to Myself" is exquisitely literary. It portrays the action, experiences, and inner thoughts of an insightful young German foot soldier of considerable intellect undergoing progressive disillusionment accompanying Wehrmacht defeat on the Russian front. Willy Peter Reese's portrayals are both graphic and poetic -- sparse in adjectives and rich in imaginative metaphor. Reese reveals remorse in passages like, "I was partly responsible for this devastation and the grief it brought the people, responsible like all the nameless victims, like all the soldiers." Almost in the same breath however, he reveals contortions of mind that permit him to continue to perform under absurdly difficult circumstances and to find meaning and worth within his increasingly tortured, war-skewed experience. Some reviewers seem to see this as merely the combat diary of a Nazi pawn. I see the work as an evocative combat diary, but equally importantly as a short literary gem. One can but wonder where this young author-philosopher's life might have led had he not perished on Germany's Eastern Front at the tender age of twenty-three years.

A fascinating read

I stumbled on this book why visiting some sites about Stalingrad. It was mentioned by a couple posters so I decided to give it a read. I was not disappointed. This is not a book looking for hard facts about places and people. It's the writings of a man coming to terms with war and how it changed him. There is a great deal where the author goes into vivid descriptions about feelings, memories, and impressions of his surroundings. This could annoy some people. Do not look for detailed descriptions of tactics and strategy. What makes this book interesting is the contrast of hope and despair. The prose that starts a chapter changes to despair over time. There are ample descriptions of soldiers abusing people, looting, and drinking. Reese tells of his own actions and in the end drinks heavily. He even decided to get himself killed or wounded by standing up from a trench. There is no propaganda in the book. He does not preach the glory of Hitler. Yet, he also doesn't mention other things such as the holocaust. There is even a reference to a friend in Auschwitz. Towards the end of the book I got the impression he decided to die in Russia. There isn't anything obvious to state this idea. It's just how it read to me. There are photos in the book ranging from his early days, joining the army and even a Red Cross report telling where it is thought that Reese died. It is a good thing this book was published. The mother held his writings till she died. One aspect that is useful is that it goes contrary to a belief that the German army was clean in it's actions in Russia. I have read more then a few comments from people that argue the Germans were noble while the Russians were savage. Probably the most prophetic comment was the end of the book: "The war went on. Once more I went out there. I loved life."

"We are war. Because we are soldiers

I have burned all the cities, strangled all the women, brained all the children, plundered all the land. I have shot a million enemies, laid waste the fields, destroyed the churches, ravaged the souls of the inhabitants, spilled the blood and tears of all the mothers. I did it, all me. I did nothing. But I was a soldier." Thus begins Willy Peter Reese's "A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944. Winston Churchill may have said that history is written by the victors, but the recent discovery and publication of these memoirs provides some evidence that history's `losers' sometimes also have a chance to contribute. A Stranger to Myself is a valuable addition to our collective memory. Willy Peter Reese was a recent high school graduate and a trainee bank clerk when he was drafted into the German army in the spring of 1941. The German invasion of the USSR, Operation Barbarossa, began during Reese's basic training. Like many of his fellow soldiers, Reese thought he would be home by Christmas. Reese was quickly disabused of this notion once he found himself in the middle of what may be the most brutal fighting in the history of humanity (or inhumanity). Not only was the war on the eastern front fought between armies but it was a war in which brutality was inflicted on the civilian population on an unprecedented scale. In addition to the Holocaust inflicted on the Jews of Poland, the Ukraine, and Belarus, millions of other Poles, Ukrainians, and Russian civilians lost their lives through hunger or murder, along with millions of Red Army and German prisoners. As noted so aptly in the Preface, Reese found himself in the "greatest abattoir in human history". This memoir emerged in 2002 and represents the reflection of Reese on life in the abattoir. Reese kept a diary during his time as a soldier. He'd set out his thoughts on every scrap of paper he could find. He would write during lulls in the horror or sitting in an army field hospital after being wounded. He wrote long letters home to his mother and father. Sent home in late 1943 after being wounded, Reese took his diary and those letters home and turned it into a manuscript. He left his manuscript with his mother and returned to the front. He was killed in 1944. His mother kept all his documents as a shrine to her dead son. A Stranger to Myself was published in Germany in 2002 and has now been translated (very capably by Michael Hoffman) into English. Reese was well-read and considered himself a poet. As such these memoirs are unusual for its florid prose. The writing is not terse but extravagant in its description of Reese' desperate mood swings during his time on the front. However, the ornate prose, which would seem utterly pretentious in a piece of fiction, serves as a stark and compelling contradiction to the horrors that Reese writes about. Reese does not spare himself. He is brutally honest about the loss of his soul, his absorption with the efficiency