I have read this in German and in English - the translation is excellent, unlike many others which soften or "civilize" war stories. This is no "All Quiet on the Western Front", where recent ex-school boys are the principals. Most of the enlisted men are grown men, and have less fervor than the youth in Remarque's WW I novel. The ruthless "take very few prisoners" attitudes of Germans and of Russians add realism, pessimism, and terror to this story, as do the weight of years of WW I and WW II experience of Brandt, Fetscher, and Major Vogel in particular. As a former infantry enlisted man and officer, I see the reality of Steiner trusting only Senior Regimental Sergeant Major Fetscher among all of the rest. Unless one has knowledge of the history of the World War II Eastern Front and of the geography of southwestern Russia (the Black Sea area of Tuapse, the Kuban, and the Crimea), having a good map at hand and some reading (such as Seaton's book) will help in appreciating the distances and terrains involved.A terrifying look at grown men in fear, who doubt and yet hope. Both Heinrich and Remarque personally lived through the worlds of their books; their books are real.

Heinrich's anti-hero, sgt. Steiner leads his platoon through Soviet line to the relative safety of the German lines in the Kerch penninsula. The novel shows the Russo-German conflict for what it was - brutal, heartless, and desperate. Not only do Steiner and his men have to fight the identifiable enemy but they must fight against the enemy within their own ranks. Glory-seeking officers, die-hard Nazis, and the malaise that envelopes all when exposed to the brutal horrors of combat at its most most primitive. Telling is the section where Steiner is sent back to "civilization." Heinrich's book is a must for those who enjoy historical fiction and military fiction. It enlightens a part of the war about which most Americans know little.

This is one of Heinrich's numerous novels with the same characters. It was ,I think, originally called "The Willing Flesh" before Sam Peckinpah made a movie of it. It must be mentioned that the soldiers in the book, who were the main characters, were part of the Wehrmacht (the main German army) and in fact hated Nazis and SS. The content was very similar to the famous book "The Forgotten Soldier". Willi Heinrich manages to show German soldiers with some decency and an instinct for survival on the Eastern Front as a prime motive in a losing war. Steiner is a disobedient but brave soldier in this book and always seems to escape the most difficult situations. The story is well told with enough detail to entertain both lovers and haters of war books. The movie (excellent) only covers part of the book but shows some of the harsh realities only comparable to some of the more recent WWII films.

Not a big fan of these pulp-fiction war books, but thought I'd give this one a try, and all and all wasn't that disappointed. The story revolves around a rag-tag unit of the German army retreating through Czechoslovakia. As it happens, while stationed in the vicinity of the main protagonist's--Kolodzi--home village--the unit is detailed to search for a general that was captured by Czech partisans. Kolodzi therefore is torn between his duty and the temptation to desert and return home and shack up with his girl who he hasn't seen for ages, and who incidently has connections with the partisans, etc. Anyway, it is a gripping, face-paced book, and not all that bad, even if the title is a little, well, odd.

I have read this in both English and German, as in the case of his "Cross of Iron". This English version seems better to me.
Having been an infantry EM and officer, having had experience in
modern Eastern European history, and having been in the USSR and
Slovakia, the terrain (south of the Dukla Pass) seems realistic.
The decline of the German Army, with sergeants in company command
and lack of officer combat experience (Schmitt and Giesinger), also seems appropriate for late 1944. General Stiller is striking in his hardness, and in his role as a "fireman" at a
desperate juncture, as is the hardness of the Russian Nikolash,
who will use Margita and the Slovak anti-German partisans without
mercy but with ambition. This book shows the Slovaks and Volksdeutsche well, as does Heinrich's "Jahre Wie Tau" (never
printed in English), particularly Kolodzi in his desperate attempts to save Maria; Kolodzi eventually puts life over the
war, after 5 years; an effective ending from an author who never
deserted in his Eastern Front career. This novel is not as good
as the other two cited, but is certainly worth reading

I've just finished Crack of Doom by Willi Heinrich. My inititial impression was that it's an unpleasant book about a gruesome time and ultimately just that, unappealing, but within twelve hours of that first reaction I've settled into another response, more just, I think, because the characters have sat down, as it were, within me, and I think this might happen to you too. The strength of each of the major characters is their one dimension, some for survival, a couple for honor; some for their professional skills, others for their inexperience.

The blurb on the cover says the author came by his experience the hard way, and it shows. I came to the book in spots of reading stretched out over some months, so I had to go back and recall which character was which and consequently found it a slow start, but it has a hell of a second half!

The three classes of characters also bear watching, with their inside codes of behavior and their codes between each class: civilian, enlisted, and officer.

If, as they say, life is a story we intend to write one way that ends up writing us another way, there must obviously be no worse setting for it than wartime. These terrifying backdrops give the novel a chance to squeeze every inch of definition out of each character so that by novel's end there's a handful of painful character sketches that all deserve to be remembered: (in order of the vivid traces they've left within me, from the strongest first) Schmitt, Giesinger, Stiller, Margita, Kolodzi, Herbig. There's at least half a score of minor characters who, because they are so much in type, do more than most such in the few pages they appear: Matuska, Teltschik, Baumgartner, Nikolash, and the fat Gestapoman.

This book must certainly have done all its author could reasonably expect it to do. I give it one less star for the type it intends to put itself in: gritty with a kind of hunkered down marching forward through the inferno with little hope of a succeeding purgatorio, much less paradisio, but then, that's pretty much what I guess the real thing must have been like (though there is Schmitt's open sky and his admiration for wolves), and for that, on second thought, I should say, this book is as good as it can get.