Description
Book SynopsisThere were not so much people as animals. Sometimes small and frightened, huddling together in cattle cars, wounds gaping, tongues swelling even as they licked the moist frost from the walls...
Grievously wounded - having survived the operating table and the perilous journey West on a freezing freight train - Sven Hassel and his comrades find themselves behind the lines in a Hamburg hospital.
The Reich is a hotbed of lies, betrayal and propaganda. Disgusted by the Nazi cause, the comrades drink themselves into oblivion, visit brothels where women dance naked on saloon tables and reach for home comforts before they return to the dreaded Russian Front. Because Hitler's war must go on...
COMRADES OF WAR is a gritty portrayal of war's harsh realities and the fear and fanaticism at the heart of The Third Reich.
Sven Hassel's unflinching narrative is based on his own experiences in the German Army. He began writing his first novel, LEGION OF THE DAMNED in a prisoner of war camp at the end of the Second World War.
Trade ReviewIn essence this is an expose of the absurdity of war, and a moving plea for peace. As such, it takes its rank with far milder books, such as ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT - NEWSDAY
Hassel's books of war are the most powerful I have ever read
He is graphic, at times brilliantly so, but never brutal or bitter. He is, too, a first-rate storyteller - WASHINGTON POST
In an almost magical way Sven Hassel unites the powerful style of Ernest Hemingway with Remarque's unique way of writing. The unknown soldier of the Second World War has got his monument - MORGENAVISEN, Norway
