Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross
by Albrecht Wacker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Albrecht WackerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-03
ISBN: 1844153177
Number of pages: 196
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Book Reviews of Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross
Book Review: Horror Show
Summary: 5 Stars
I admit that I had relatively low expectations for Albrecht Wacker's SNIPER ON THE EASTERN FRONT. The rather lame title led me to believe that this was a modern-day "Landser-hilfe", that is to say, a badly written, clichéd, guts-without-glory war tale of the type that proliferated on post-WWII German bookshelves. Nothing could be further from the truth. SNIPER is probably the most engrossing book I've ever read about life and death on the Eastern Front, and one of the harshest looks at war ever printed.
SNIPER is the story of "Sepp Allenberger", who served three years as a German Army sniper in Russia. The name is a nom de plume, since if Allenberger's identity were commonly known in Germany he would, given the antimilitaristic spirit of the modern-day Germans, suffer according social ostracism. (The unofficial compact w/WWII vets is, "You don't talk about your heroics, and we won't pillory you for fighting in Hitler's army.") Allenberger's military career began in wholly ordinary fashion; he was a drafted soldier from a small town who served in the infantry during the invasion of Russia. Not too long after he arrived there, however, Allenberger got his hands on a sniper rifle and demonstrated that he had a special talent for placing bullets precisely where he wanted them to go.
Young Sepp (he really was just a kid) was a self-taught hunter of human beings, the Germans being laggard in their understanding of sniping as a tool of modern warfare. By the time he was finally sent to sniper school, he was already an expert at killing from a distance. The book is unclear just how many Russians fell victim to his weapon, but in one day alone he accounted for twenty-one Red Army soldiers, so a figure of two or three hundred is probably conservative. As a sniper, he was marked for a very horrible kind of death should he ever be captured, and only after discovering the fates of several of his comrades did he learn that self-effacement would make him live longer. Much of Wacker's prose (which is often stiff, as he's a technical writer by trade) is spent describing the life, philosophy and methodology of snipers, but overall, the book is simply one soldier's tale of combat in the East. And a terrifying one at that.
There is probably no horror that can be committed by human beings that Allenberger didn't witness firsthand - the torture and mutilation of prisoners, the casual execution of innocent people out of sheer bloody-mindedness, the slow death of comrades from festering wounds, and in two of the books' most appalling sequences, organized cannibalism and a gang-rape/murder which was almost impossible to finish reading. Many people "get" that the Russo-German War (1941 - 1945) was an appalling massacre from start to finish, resulting in more than 32 million dead, but it is one thing to see the figures and another to be dragged through the bloody muck of the holocaust by one who was there. The suffering of the ordinary front-line soldier, who was underfed, poorly clothed, covered with lice, and perpetually exhausted even during "quiet" spells on the front, is hard to concieve, but Wacker, whose pen gets sharper as he warms to his subject, made me concieve it.
SNIPER is a terse and engrossing soldier's story which I would highly recommend to anyone looking for an honest understanding of the Eastern Front. But it is not for the faint of heart.
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Summary of Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, Knight's Cross
Josef "Sepp" Allerberger was the second most successful sniper of the German Wehrmacht and one of the few private soldiers to be honoured with the award of the Knight's Cross.An Austrian conscript, after qualifying as a machine gunner he was drafted to the southern sector of the Russian Front in July 1942. Wounded at Voroshilovsk, he experimented with a Russian sniper-rifle while convalescing and so impressed his superiors with his proficiency that he was returned to the front on his regiment's only sniper specialist.In this sometimes harrowing memoir, Allerberger provides an excellent introduction to the commitment in fieldcraft, discipline and routine required of the sniper, a man apart. There was no place for chivalry on the Russian Front. Away from the film cameras, no prisoner survived long after surrendering. Russian snipers had used the illegal explosive bullet since 1941, and Hitler eventually authorised its issue in 1944. The result was a battlefield of horror.Allerberger was a cold-blooded killer, but few will find a place in their hearts for the soldiers of the Red Army against whom he fought. REVIEWS "...a very unique story and experience worth telling of an Eastern Front Sniper."Sniper Central 06-07Military Books
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