Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-Ss [Paperback]

 

 

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This book is quite exceptional for a WW2 memoir in that was written the year after the war, not years later. So it has a fresh perspective to it. The chapters go back and forth between the author as a POW and the author's life prior to being a POW. The author deliberately refrained from inserting his current, much more mature, thoughts into the manuscript. That's a bit of a shame, as I would have liked to have read those as an afterwords or something. In any case, here's the meat and potatoes of the book:

1- Tactics: This book does a reasonably good job of describing small-unit tactics from a machine gunner's point of view. Being posted to the far north of Finland, the author doesn't see as much action as other German units did further south. But he sees enough, and describes enough, to get a good sense of how his unit operated. The action is, again, relatively sparse but what's there is really thrilling stuff. The scene with the boats is particularly memorable.

2- Strategy: This book is light on overall strategy, although the author does get occasional glimpses from higher-ups, including an uncle who was close to the top of the chain of command. There's comments on the overall strategic situation amongst his fellow soldiers, but it's more rumor than elucidating strategy. So this isn't a strong point of this book.

3- The Little Picture: This book does an excellent job describing life as a soldier in the Far North, as well as life as a teenager before entering the Army, and life as a POW. The little details really help add up to create the big picture. Reading this book during winter, in the middle of a snowstorm, probably helped me connect with the author's experiences. Attention to the small details really makes this book worth reading.

4- The Big Picture: This is the strongest part of the book. Throughout the book runs the question- Was the Waffen SS a criminal organization? Clearly, they were involved with some of the worst crimes against humanity. But many (most) of them were simply elite, loyal soldiers who knew nothing of the horrors of the Final Solution. But some certainly did, as the author reveals in little blurbs and glimpses. As a naive 17-20 year-old, it's easy to believe that the author missed these signs. Still, his father, his uncle, and higher-ups all seemed to know that something bad was being done to Jews. If not the details, they knew it wasn't good. One even warns him that the SS is associated with "dark deeds". A wise and kind soldier warns the author to lie about being part of the SS when in a POW camp, so he escapes the fate of other SS members (by chance, he avoided the SS tattoo thanks to a chance visit from his Dad during training camp). The author uses family members, one aunt (sister?) and one uncle to demonstrate the German people's thoughts of the war. Some thought it was ridiculous (Uncle). Some thought it was a patriotic glory (Aunt/Sister). Most just kept their mouths shut, despite deep misgivings about the prospects of another horrible war (Mother/Father). The youth were mostly caught up in a patriotic fervor, although some recognized that this war was a bad idea- morally and strategically, and so the sought ways to avoid service and/or combat (e.g., becoming a Luftwaffe medic). The author was employed as a secretary by an American lawyer in Germany after the war, and he uses this opportunity to discuss the legality of convicting an entire unit (SS) based on the crimes of some of its members.

Overall then, this book does a fantastic job examining the moral questions surrounding Germany's participation in the war. It has enough action to justify it being a war novel, but its real value is in the more philosophical questions it presents. The author's conclusions and ideas don't really bring anything new to me, but the do confirm my general impressions of Germans in WW2. Most didn't really want the war, but they didn't care enough to try and stop those fanatics who did. Because of that, and because they were willing to let those fanatics run the show, they not only lost much of their country, they were also party to the most heinous war, and war crimes, in history. A very sobering lesson indeed, and this book can help teach it.

Black Edelweiss is a rare example of a personal WWII memoir written soon after the events (most of the draft was written while the author was a POW during 1945-46) with the emotional and historical breadth of a book written from a much greater distance of time and utilizing a variety of non-personal references. Johann Voss (a pseudonym) has put his life in the SS-Mountain Infantry Regiment 11 (given the name ï¿Reinhard Heydrichï¿ in 1942) to paper in a way that the reader can truly assess the actions of a single soldier, his immediate platoon members and larger Regimental force rationally without the baggage of bias. This is not to say that the author has created a typical post-war apologetic piece that draws empathy/sympathy from the reader. Rather, Voss draws the reader along in an honest forthright story of his experiences as a loyal soldier within a larger group of comrades who, although fighting for the Hitler regime, did so with heart and passion for comrades, unit and country, but with clear chivalry (or at least as much as can fairly be expected in war) and battle fairness. It is the very nature of when this book was drafted (and little changed by the author later although published 60 odd years after being drafted) ï¿ while the author was still feeling connection to and pride of unit ï¿ that makes this NOT a typical Nazi apologia book. The book was however written at a time when the author was learning (second hand) about the atrocities of the Nazi regime and the SS structure more particularly, and as such the author is able to place his military experiences in perspective of the regime he served. This creates both an honest look at combat and the emotions invoked upon finding for what and whom he and friends served and died for. Emotion is raw and real in this book.

Voss starts and ends the book in third person from the POW pen, but in between weaves an engrossing story of how a young impressionable German is compelled to join an elite SS-Mountain Regiment; how this decision positively affects his life; how he survives the cold and combat of service above the Artic circle, in the Vosges Mountains, and the last days of the western Reich frontier; and how his earlier decision to join this elite group of men affected his life upon realization that his combat unit has been wholesale lumped with the SS of the Endlösung. The stories of regiment combat are visceral in content and quite rewarding. One can feel the cold, stress, fear and adrenalin of the situations.

I highly recommend this book if you want a clear and apparently unembellished, time-unbiased picture of a German combat unit in action. If you want to double your pleasure read Black Edelweiss back-to-back with another Aberjona Press production, Seven Days in January by Wolf Zoepf. This latter book deals exclusively with the SS Nord Division and itï¿s combat both above the Artic Circle and the Lower Vosges and is pitched more from the pure combat history perspective.

An amazing book which is very well and thoughtfully written. The author carefully examines his own motives and actions, and then sets them against the background of his emerging knowledge of the holocaust after the war.

He and his unit were not involved in atrocities, and I have found no record of accusations against the Nord division. Part of this (or much of it) may be owed to the fact that they operated mostly in the Arctic and then on the Western Front during the final days of the war. They luckily never served in Russia or Poland, so were not in a position to be confronted with the war against the Jews. Despite this the author recognizes that he was involved in the organization that carried out the killings, and feels complicit to an extent.

Very interesting look at German homefront life, and the much ignored fighting in Finland on the Arctic front.

Not a trace of the self-pity and "look what the Allies did" that you find in some accounts of this nature, but also shows that not everyone in an SS uniform was a bloodthirsty monster. A view some will not approve of.

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3.0 out of 5 stars its ok
I own and have read several hundred books and the european war.This is an alright book.If you want to know a little about a secondary sector of the eastern front towards the end... Read more

Published on Sep 5 2006 by Shawn Currie

5.0 out of 5 stars Best memior yet!
"This incident was my first encounter with the dark side of the third riech, cruel and inhumane. I had seen a concrete example of what the persecution of the jews was like, what... Read more

Published on Feb 15 2006 by J. Harrison

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read
The best personal account from a German veteran of World War II that I have read.

Published on July 3 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Near the top in terms of German Memoirs
I have read several German memoirs - Soldat, The Forgotten Soldier, In Deadly Combat - plus several other studies of the Waffen SS, and I'd say this book ranks as good or better... Read more

Published on April 24 2004 by D. Roche

4.0 out of 5 stars Yeah It's Good
Good book, parts of the book are enthralling and vivid. Overall not up to 5 stars, however.

Published on April 5 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the buy
Received the book and started to read it the next day. I found that I couldn't put it down and finished it the next night. Read more

Published on Mar 8 2004 by Dan K

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Memoir
Stunning simply because its not a grand strategic memoir but rather the tribulations of one person in one small portion of the war. Read more

Published on Feb 28 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars This book changed my view of WW2
One of the most important books ever written regarding WW2. In a time where history is written by the victors, an honest accounting of the mindset of a german SS soldier sheds... Read more

Published on Feb 11 2004 by G. Hyman

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended - Very Personal & Different Perspective
All of the other reviews are spot on. I have read several books on World War II and this one is at the top of my list. Read more

Published on Nov 24 2003 by James Stroud

5.0 out of 5 stars View of the Waffen-SS from the other side
This book is the WW2 memoir of a Waffen-SS soldier written while in American captivity immediately following the war. Read more

Published on Mar 12 2003 by objectivereader

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