I've read a lot of books set in WW2, and most are from the POV of either the Jew, the resistance fighter, or the Allie. This one is told from the perspective of a starved, exhausted Nazi wandering the Eastern front with his small group, seemingly forgotten by the German army. It's raw, graphic, and honest - something I very much appreciated. It's about not only the German soldier sorting out his role, his shame, and his guilt in the war but also that of his grandson who also struggles with inherited shame.

Starritt did not hesitate to paint the atrocities committed by the Nazis, the Russians, and the partisans with such vivid strokes that there were times I could almost feel the suffocating heat, smell the rotting corpses they found hanging from trees. It might be too much for some readers so if you're delicate with this kind of thing, proceed with caution. Excellent read and I'd recommend to anyone.

Alexander Starritt's "We Germans" is an "All Quiet on the Western Front" from the perspective of a German soldier on the Eastern Front in the waning months of WWII. Structured as a letter from narrator Meissner to his half-English grandson Callum, and bookended by Callum's memories and reflections about his opa, "We Germans" grapples with questions of accountability, morality, guilt and shame arising from the extreme brutality of the war, specifically the war in Russia. "I'm not trying to clear my conscience," Meissner writes. "What's on it is on it." Rather, he is trying to interrogate his memories to answer the question that has haunted him his entire life: "Can you do real evil without meaning to?"

Starritt, who based this book in some part on his own grandfather's wartime past, is brilliant at capturing the horror of war. "In the east," he writes as Meissner, "prisoners of war didn't amuse themselves with escape committees and counterfeit documents; they ate their friends. I saw, with these eyes I still have now, strips of jerky cut from our comrades' thighs and tied to barbed wire to dry." In recounting how, upon entering a village whose inhabitants are hanged from a single tree "in bunches, like swollen plums...rotting where they dangled," Meissner confesses that "it never occurred to me to cut them down, or do anything for them at all," so desensitized is he by the pervasiveness of death all around him. Instead, he and his small squad of fellow soldiers stumble through their days, concerned only with staying alive--and sometimes not even that.

I can't say that I exactly enjoyed "We Germans"--it's not that kind of book. I admired it, rather, for meditating on questions of accountability that are still relevant in every era. "When I ask myself whether we were all immoral or whether having done wrong makes us evil men,' Meissner writes to Callum, "I think that we were blemished by the consequences of what other people decided. No one ever has complete responsibility for for his own moral balance. And the unforgiving truth, the severe, ancient truth, is that you can be culpable for something that you weren't in control of."

Thank you to NetGalley and to Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

Spare, powerful, and haunting. A Scottish millennial introduces and provides commentary upon his grandfather's memoir of serving in the Wehrmacht in Poland in 1944, as his small band of demoralized soldiers flees westward from the Soviet invasion. Written at the very end of his life, Meissner's ruminations on collective guilt and shame, and his own moral culpability in acts of violence, are honest and searing, almost Sebaldian.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

A thoroughly engrossing and revealing tale from a viewpoint that is rarely discussed. Much heavy-lifting is required to even broach a book based on the experiences of a German soldier in WWII, but this book does well at addressing and not papering over atrocities. The overall theme of the book, in the micro and macro comes down to, what responsibilities do Germans bear for Nazism, and what responsibilities do soldiers in general bear for the nations they fight for. This all ties into a plot that plays out to shows the brutality of the eastern front. The one thing this book does not strive for is empathy for the Germans, but it does bring attention to a facet of WWII that has rarely been shown in fiction.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book via netgalley!


There are always two sides of a story. This books gives the reader a glimpse Into the atrocity of war... from the German side. Something that is often not read about. Written in a sweet way as a letter from a grandfather to his grandson, it recalls the horrors or war and it’s lasting effects on humans. It reminds us that war, on any side, profoundly impacts human beings.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. I dove into We Germans with eager anticipation and was not disappointed. It is not your typical WWII story, but instead, a story told from the perspective of a remorseful German who participated in the atrocities of the war. His descriptions of the horrors are clear and realistic. I've had the pleasure of meeting a dear, sweet, German man that had to become a Nazi soldier to save himself and his family, and based on our conversations, the feelings/emotions Alexander Starritt presents in this novel are point on. It is a very eye opening and fresh prespective to a horrific time.

Very important book. Little has been written from the German perspective and this is a thoughtful, intelligent approach to the subject. Since it is presented as a fictional account ( although I have no doubts that the author has some first hand knowledge from relatives) it can deal more in depths with all the ambiguities this difficult subject.
I was interested in the book because I have a diary from my father as a juvenile soldier and was wondering how Mr. Starrit dealt with the subject matter. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those interested in German history, WWII history buffs and all those who want to explore the difficulties of great moral dilemmas.
My only reservation is about the wolf image on the cover. It would have not been my choice.

Meissner was a German infantry soldier during WWII. His war was on the eastern front where he encountered savage behavior from all factions and endured physical hardships. He spent three years as a POW. Told in the form of a letter to his adult grandson, this book is an exploration of both Meissner’s war experiences and the “conflicted inheritance” of all Germans. The descriptions of the war were gritty and felt very authentic. There were no real battles, it was more of a slog that was as boring as it was harrowing. Even more intriguing was the way in which Meissner contemplated his guilt and shame and his consideration of collective guilt. At one point, he felt that not only was Germany going to lose the war, but that they should lose it. There are no definitive answers here, which is part of what made this a good book. I would definitely read more by this author. 4.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy. I hard time getting into this book. It just didn’t catch my interest.

Alexander Starritt’s We Germans consists largely of a letter written by an elderly German grandfather in a retirement community to his British grandson, who had once asked what his grandfather had done in the war. Taken aback by the question, Meissner, the grandfather, refused to answer. After his grandson Collum had returned home from the visit, Meissner began to think. After seventeen months, he sets pen to paper to begin his answer.

Meissner explains his refusal to answer and expresses his concern that Collum may have later felt guilty about asking. He acknowledges that he is now of an age when he might soon be unable to tell stories but adds that he would not have been able to answer properly when asked. Over the years, he had reduced his war experiences “to something that can be said over coffee”—to a couple of sentences about it having been a “cruel time to be alive” and about current times being better.

He talks about how Collum had jump-started his memory, gradually causing repressed thoughts to resurface. Determined to convince his grandson that he was not a Nazi although he served in Hitler’s army, Meissner wants Collum to know that he never saw a concentration camp but was, instead, sent to the Eastern Front. Inserted in Meissner’s long account are Collum’s own comments, quickly revealing that Collum had received the letter years later following his grandfather’s death.

Teenage German exchange students, three of whom have lived in my family for a year, have been surprised by the daily Pledge of Allegiance at school and the many flags flying outside American homes. They have explained that Germans do not make a similar pledge, fly flags, or express pride in their country. Doing so would cause others to accuse them of being neo-Nazis. Today’s exchange students do study World War II in school, but German students in the mid-1960s, when I was in high school, said the war was not taught because Germans felt ashamed of the Holocaust.

These students’ words came back to me as I read We Germans. As Meissner records his memories, he repeats the words “we Germans” several times as if to emphasize the Germanness of his actions and thoughts. Starritt’s novel is about collective guilt and shame mixed with the need to survive. Although Meissner writes little of atrocities the Germans committed on the Eastern Front, he emphasizes that later Soviet atrocities inflicted on German soldiers and civilians were fair revenge for what German soldiers had inflicted upon them.

Following his thoughts, Meissner occasionally jumps back and forth through time, sometimes talking about his long retreat from the Eastern Front, sometimes talking about his good life and happy marriage after the war, only to return again to his experiences on the Eastern Front, Some memories spark laughter and terror.

Repeatedly, Collum inserts his comments--explanations of a German word or place his grandfather has mentioned, longer memories of his boyhood or young adult visits to his German grandparents, and thoughts about what those vacation memories had meant to him. As Meissner grapples with what “we Germans” did and how that part of his life fit in with the happy years that followed, Collum ponders how his German heritage has made him who he is.

World War II books flood the market today. Women’s book clubs frequently read and discuss those focused on female spies or members of the resistance. Only rarely do readers--men or women--encounter a story told from the German point of view, even more rarely about the Eastern Front. Alexander Starritt’s We Germans is the only book I have read told not only from the German point of view, but also from a non-German descendant’s point of view, both men seeking to understand each other and themselves. Although a relatively fast read, We Germans makes readers think.

Thanks to NetGalley, Little Brown and Company, and Alexander Starritt for the advance reader copy.

So often, books about WWII are told from the point of view of the Allies, or the victims, or even the German citizens. This is one of the few books I can remember that deals with the German soldier. And it’s definitely the first to deal with the Germans as they retreat from the eastern front.
Meissen is now an old man, his wife dead, when he writes his grandson a letter detailing his time in the German Army. In a weird twist, the Germans cross into Russia at the same river as Napoleon. And like Napoleon, suffer similar results.
Starrit captures the sense of the retreat in detailed prose, the disillusion, the hunger, the everyman for himself mentality. But he also captures the moral ambiguity of war. “When I ask myself whether we were all immoral, or whether having done wrong makes us evil men, I think that we were blemished by the consequences of what other people decided. No one ever has complete responsibility for his own moral balance. And the unforgiving truth, the severe, ancient truth, is that you can be culpable for something you weren’t even in control of.”
It goes without saying that this isn’t an easy book to read and that there are numerous gruesome scenes. But it fulfills my number one requirement for historical fiction, which is to teach me something new while telling a good story. It’s a book that makes you think.
My thanks to netgalley and Little, Brown for an advance copy of this book.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

We Germans by Alexander Starritt is a novella which follows a long letter a German grandfather written his grandson about his thoughts on fighting on the wrong side of the war in World War II against the Russians. Mr. Starritt is a Scottish-German novelist, journalist and entrepreneur

This novella is told from the viewpoint of both the grandfather and the grandson. When the grandfather was alive, his grandson, now in England, asked him about the war and fighting on the wrong side. After the grandfather’s death, a long letter is found telling of his experiences on the Eastern Front knowing that Germany is going to lose the war, and deservingly so

This novella reminded of the famous scene, later a meme, from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb about Nazi soldiers that ask “are we the baddies?”. While We Germans by Alexander Starritt is not as direct, the realization is clear as the grandfather pontificates on his reflections on war.

The grandfather and his three friends are in the midst of retreating from Russia, witnessing atrocities committed by their own forces against the Russian population and their own forces. The grandfather talks about his feelings of guilt and lies, coming to the realization that he’s been on, what basically amounts to, a fool’s errand.

This is a thought provoking book, as it goes into why an obviously evil regime was embraced by millions of Germans, as well as a person who is suddenly confronted with a good, hard look into a mirror and doesn’t like what he sees. I think that the questions on lack of guilt and shame are very relevant in today’s political climate around the world.
Maybe those questions never even went away?

The grandfather, Meissner, and his exhausted companions are living a nightmare for two and a half years. Somehow barely surviving, committing war crimes and treason as they make their way back home in order to live another day. Meissner is a small cog in the machine of war, he’s just a grunt, not part of killing squads, had nothing to do with the Holocaust, but his realization that he is no only on the losing side, but on the wrong side as well, is crystal clear.

This is not a war journal per say. The author’s descriptions are vivid, the characters are humanized and colorful. While Meissner does come across as a sympathetic figure, he is by no means a lovable one.

Among the grandfather’s profound analysis there are comments from his grandson, which I found to be clumsy and an exact opposite to the grandfather profound pontifications. There are some validity to the story, his struggles as grandson to a German soldier living in England could not have been easy, but by and large I found them to be a distraction.

I enjoyed reading this book and its attempt to come to terms with the banality of evil. There are many other books, fiction and non-fiction, which talk about the subject, ranging from the German high command’s realization that all is lost, to ones like this where the grunt on the field realizes that.

Sometimes you read a book and it stays with you forever. We Germans is such a book. It was an easy read. It was a most difficult read. I never once thought about what it would be like to be a German soldier on the Eastern front as opposed to a GermanSoldier on the Western front. The content is not for the faint of heart. I was touched by what happens to people when pressed to the edges of their humanity. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Read if you: Want a fictional analysis of World War II from a German's soldier perspective.

Written in the form of letters to a a grandson, this is an aging German soldier's bleak and relatively honest recollection of war on the eastern front. Several scenes of brutality against civilians are brutal to read.

Librarians/booksellers: Purchase if harsh and realistic literary fiction about World War II is popular.

Many thanks to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for a digital review cooy in exchange for an honest review.

Meissner, a German World War II veteran revisits the two-and-a-half-year German retreat from Russia, focusing primarily on a few days he spent in 1944 with a handful of men from his unit, and their run-ins with the German army police and then the onrushing Red Army. The framing device is that he now long retired and writing to his (adult) grandson, Callum, in England, who has asked the fateful “what did you do in the war” questions. Meissner’s long letter is interrupted here and there by comments from Callum, usually to fill in information about Meissner and to describe Callum’s boyhood and young manhood experiences with his grandfather and grandmother.

I thought of Meissner’s tale of his retreat with his ragtag companions as a sort of nightmare picaresque. There are many colorful adventures, but they are almost all horrific. And while the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for Meissner, he’s no lovable rogue. He’s an ordinary German soldier caught up in the machinery of war, and a war in which he realizes his side has been appallingly wrong. He wasn’t part of a killing squad, nor the machinery of the Holocaust, but he knew that heading to the east to plunder from people much poorer than Germans was wrong and deserving of punishment.

Starritt’s descriptions are so vivid and piercing that I had to quit highlighting text to avoid having the book be practically all highlights. I have read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about World War II, and I don’t remember ever experiencing any writing that made this part of the war feel so real.

But in addition to the descriptions of the adventures, Starritt has Meissner write at length of his feelings about his and Germany’s part in the war. There is nothing facile in Meissner’s self-analysis. He doesn’t offer excuses, he views himself and his country as deserving of shame and punishment, but he doesn’t drape himself in the self-absorption of guilt.

I rarely give a book five stars, but this one deserves it. It’s one of the most impressive and thought-provoking pieces of historical fiction I’ve read in years.

hank you Net Galley for the free ARC.

Traveler if you go to Sparta, tell them you saw us lying here as the law commanded.
Stalingrad, 1943

Callum's German grandfather fought on the eastern front and leaves behind a memoir of some of the events he remembers. The story the grandfather wrote reminds of the "The Things they carried"; it is a highly personal account of the atrocities and universal insanity of war.

The parts Callum interjects are extremely helpful and authentic in explaining how he perceived the legacy of World War II as a grandchild of Germans. How do I know it's authentic? I am child of Germans that emigrated to the USA in my early twenties, in some ways because of the shame associated with being German after WWII.

We Germans is a wonderful book fulfilling the expectations of a variety of readers. . First, as a war novel it brings to life all the tedium , suffering , humor, horror and compassion of war. If you want a psgeturner in the pure bestseller sense it delivers. More important, at a time when Americans are examining our responsibility for slavery it states the question from the viewpoint of the German soldier in a Nazi army. I was both moved and challenged by this book. It deserves a wide readership.

For anyone who enjoyed "The Things They Carried", this is your next read! Where O'Brien gave us insight into the physical and psychological reality of the Vietnam conflict, Starritt does for the eastern front of WWII. The book is told via a letter written in modern day. The letter is penned from a recently deceased Nazi soldier to his his adult grandson in an attempt to explain what he experienced during the war. However, rather than glorify his actions, he explains the tragedy of the eastern front's brutality and consequently, how he lived with those memories for decades afterwards. Whereas the book is very grim through descriptive explanations of war savagery, it is well researched and accurate-- thus creating a great historical fiction for the seldom published topic of the Nazi soldiers' downward psychological spiral from conqueror to hunted prey.
Only criticism would be the length... Too short! I would have loved to know more about the time he spent in Russian captivity. He refers to it so often that I assumed the story would be told, but it's not. Maybe a follow-up?!?!

*I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.