Frontsoldaten got tedious and I lost interest. It drew a lot from books I had already read, such as The Forgotten Soldier (Sajer) and Soldat (Knappe). ( )

This book is intense. There are points in the book I think back to my own experiences and see how much we have in common between common soldiers of different eras. This was an army that was absolutely dedicated to the fight and to be honest the type of military that every nation dreams of creating. I could of done without his rambling and thoughts at the end, for his ideas to me just didn't hold much water some of the times. Just give me the raw data, the everyday words of the everyday soldier. They speak to me much more than any historian of the war possibly could. ( )

The author goes to original sources (letters and diaries) of German ww2 troops to let them speak for themselves. The great advantage of his method is that it avoids later "interpretations" and reveals the startling reality of the Landsers in very rough conditions (mostly in Russia), dedicated to Hitler and 100% behind the classless Volksgemeinschaft national socialist revolution.
The effect is similar to the way Parshall uses exclusively original sources for a definitive reconstruction of the battle of Midway. ( )

2862 Frontsoldaten:The German Soldier in World War II, by Stephen G. Fritz (read 18 Apr 1996) This is a 1995 book on German soldiers in World War Two by a professor of history at East Tennessee State. It is a superlative book, analyzing the attitudes of German soldiers in the front lines, particularly in Russia. The author calls it "everyday history," since its sources are letters written by German soldiers from the front. He shows how the rigorous training Germans got in the Hitler youth organization and in the Army made them models of cohesiveness. It is really discouraging how widespread was Nazi belief among the common soldiers and how they were molded by the incessant propaganda. It is hard to believe those soldiers are all cured now--so it is surprising that democracy has endured in Germany. This has been a book which really told me a lot. Numerous books in the good bibliography intrigue. ( )