Do You like book Panzer Commander: The Memoirs Of Colonel Hans Von Luck (1999)?
I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. Luck certainly comes off as a decent enough fellow, not a bad word to say about anyone save for the Nazis and military officers who were overly loyal to Hitler. His explanation that the German army had a strong sense of loyalty, one that Hitler abused, comes off as particularly hollow. "We were just so honorable, and Hitler abused that." The minutiae of some of the battles are not particularly compelling to me, and that is what Luck knows best because he fought those battles. I still believe that the notion of "The Good German," is a bit of a myth. Luck alludes to crimes committed by the Nazis, and twice to the "notorious" Dirlewanger Brigade, but he never describes what those crimes were or why the Dirlewanger brigade was so notorious. That Dirlewanger's men slaughtered civilians in Russia and turned Warsaw into hell on earth after the uprising goes unmentioned. That's what makes his memoir so odd. For a man who fought in Poland, twice in France, Russia, North Africa, and in Germany at the end, there is surprisingly little blood, as if Luck were relaying someone else's experiences. It's an interesting read, but don't expect any sort of reckoning with Germany's crimes or the part that Luck, and officers like him, played in aiding and abetting those crimes.
—Patrick
Col. von Luck's memoirs are a fascinating account of a soldier that participated in almost every major campaign of the German Army during WWII. I have read many books on the 2nd World War, but this is the first for me on the German side. Col. von Luck was no Nazi, but rather a professional soldier from a long line of Prussian soldiers. At times I wish he went into more detail about particular engagements and his tactics, but that would be my only criticism. He was eventually captured and spent many years as a POW in a Soviet Camp. His time their was equally as fascinating as his time fighting the war. A great book.
—Pete
Hans Von Luck (pronounced like the English name "Luke" not the English word "luck") was a "good German," which makes his memoir an interesting story that has certain elephants constantly lurking in the back of the room. Luck addresses them a few times, though perhaps not to the satisfaction of those who really want to know about the moral calculus of serving as a willing officer in Hitler's army.I found his account compelling and sometimes riveting for his first-hand accounts of war and all its accompanying terror, as well as the years he spent as a prisoner in Russian camps at the end of the war, before he was finally released back to Germany.However, his war stories, while detailed, meticulous, and sometimes dreadful, were somewhat lacking in the technical and tactical details that made Japanese Destroyer Captain a much better read. If you want to know all about tank warfare and what is was like to drive Panzers, Luck talks surprisingly little about the machines and the maneuvers themselves. He covers the battles he was involved in as if giving an AAR (After Action Report), narrating his campaigns from the Eastern Front to North Africa, where he served under Rommel, and finally, to the bitter end defense of Berlin, which led to his being captured by the Russians and spending the next five years as a POW.In the foreword, he issues a plea for tolerance and peace in the hope of "never again" repeating the mistakes his country made, and throughout the book he gives the impression of being a conscientious man who always had his doubts about Hitler, but was just being a loyal soldier. He certainly wasn't anti-Semitic, as his girlfriend throughout the war was 1/8 Jewish, and they were told by the High Command that for that reason, he could not marry her. (He observes indignantly that reserve officers were allowed to marry a 1/8 Jew, but active army officers could not.) Actually, his romance with Dagmar became an ongoing "subplot" in the story, as he would frequently manage to speak to her briefly even while he was in the field and she was back in Germany (in areas being bombed), and at one point she basically hitchhiked through a war zone to meet him! Spunky woman. I won't "spoil" the ending by telling you whether or not they wind up marrying.All that being said - I experienced some skepticism about his studious disavowals that he or his fellow officers really knew what was going on with the Jews. Dagmar's own father was locked up in a camp (just a prison camp; they hadn't become death camps yet) and Luck tried to exercise his influence to free him. There are also an awful lot of stories about how noble and generous he and his men were to local civilians, and how grateful they were, and it was only in other places where less honorable German soldiers treated non-combatants with less humanity. Not that I doubt Luck's personal conduct — I'm sure he was a conscientious commander who followed the Geneva Convention. But still, he never seems to encounter anyone who actually dislikes Germans, or has reason to.Later, Luck relates the increasing desperation of the German army as they realize (from about 1943 onward) that the war is lost and they are fighting for survival and increasingly diminishing chances of being allowed something less than unconditional surrender. As this happens, he talks about how Hitler and the High Command were increasingly detached from the reality at the front, how Hitler was trying to micromanage divisions (which often no longer existed except on paper), and how the Nazi police state even affected officers at the front. At one point, one of Luck's platoon sergeants is summarily executed by one of the infamous "flying drumhead" judges who were going around shooting soldiers for any reason they could drum up. Luck is furious, but even a highly decorated colonel can't do anything about it.This was a good book for its look into the mind of a Wehrmacht officer, but I found the anecdotes like those above more interesting than the actual war, which Luck describes in dry detail. The chapters about life in a Russian labor camp were interesting too.
—David
