Five Years, Four Fronts: A German Officer's World War II Combat Memoir

by Georg Grossjohann

Book Overview

After Hitler's invasions of Poland and France came the Russian Front-and that's when the real war started. An infantryman who rose from the enlisted ranks to regimental command in combat, Georg Grossjohann fought on four different fronts during World War II, but saw most of his fighting-from 1941 to 1944-against Russians in the Soviet Union and Romania. He provides shattering glimpses of the horror and chaos of the war, as well as profound insights...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345476107
• ISBN13: 9780345476104
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Presidio Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.3" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Heartbreaker...

This one is an excellent book, with lots of nice and detailed stories, data, and more. It's hard to read and not become nostalgic, and sometimes envy, of those great men, all my respects for them, a beautiful story.

Interesting in its own unique way

There are any number of German memoirs from World War II. Most of them involve a German soldier who served with some storied unit (Grossdeutschland Panzer Division, SS, etc.) and fought in numerous campaigns, and somehow survived. This book is different: the author served five years with several different infantry divisions, and had a pretty mundane career, starting out a senior NCO and being promoted ultimately as far as Major. His superiors apparently thought well of him, because he was taking a class in how to command a regiment when the war ended, but his rise wasn't that meteoric, either. The title of the book is a bit deceptive: the author served only briefly in Poland and France, did two tours in Russia (separated when he got wounded, to end the first tour) and then fought out most of the rest of the war in Southern France and Germany. The interesting part, at least as far as I was concerned, involved how mundane and average his experience was. He fought with some skill, apparently, but wasn't a great hero or anything, and didn't win any major battles. The largest weakness of the book is the author's apparent lack of any notes or references from his service in the war. This means that on a couple of occasions (especially in Russian) he dismisses weeks of combat with a vague reference to "heavy fighting" instead of giving you any details. For what it's worth, this is a good book. If you're looking for something about the rest of the German army, other than the glamor units, this is probably something you should look into.

incredible insight behind 'enemy lines'

An incredible book that reveals the humanity of the 'enemy'.It makes the Germans humans, who also had feelings and fears just the same as their Allied counterparts.Traditionally, growing up in an Allied country one is tought that the Germans were all evil personified. This book gives insight to the fact that the German soldier was just an ordinary human being, being sent into battle to fight a politicians war.

Interesting book; disjointed presentation

An interesting and easy to read first person perspective from a former German officer. Grossjohann enlisted in the late 1920s and finished the war in 1945 as a major. It provides insight into what it was like to fight at the tactical level in Poland, the Russian Front, and the west. He fought against the Poles (limited action), the Russians (quite a bit), the Americans, and the French. Provides insight into the steadily decreasing capabilities of German units as the war progressed. Unfortunately the book is a bit disjointed as it jumps from experience to experience, with the odd sidebar thrown in. Fortunately there is an attempt to put Grossjohann's battles into the larger picture so the reader has some context.