BLOOD, DUST AND SNOW: DIARIES OF A PANZER COMMANDER IN GERMANY AND ON THE EASTERN FRONT is a unique historical document in two regards. Firstly, its author, Friedrich Wilhelm Sander, was a low-rank officer, who recorded his day-to-day observations without the intent of ever publishing them. Thus, he didn't try to sugarcoat the deficiencies of the German military machine or hide his racial prejudices (which he considered a norm, of course). For example, Sander openly dismissed any possible love affairs with Russian women on the basis that they belonged to a different race. As the war in Russia progressed, he started to question the logic behind it, yet he had never lost faith in Hitler's ideas.

Despite having not completed education due to his family's lack of finances, Sander writes with acuity and clarity. Though diaries haven't been combed or changed in any way to suit a modern reader, their language is one of clear delivery. Sander describes his relationships with comrades and people on the occupied territories; he notices the beauty of the surrounding nature and fantasizes how he could have used the fertile lands.

A knowledgeable person who read about the atrocities against Jews and commissars on the Soviet territories, of Nazis brutally killing children and women in Ukraine may be shocked to find the difference with which German soldiers treated some categories of the Soviet population. In his diary, Sander separates racially purer Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Finns from original Russians. These nations, only recently incorporated into the Soviet Union (and Finland was Germany's ally), acted friendly toward Germans, who, in turn, distributed food rations and kept locals' property intact.

I'd recommend the book to anybody who wants to see the other, down-to-earth (I almost said 'human'), side of a German rank-and-file. A little knowledge of German would be useful since military ranks and names of military units are not translated into English.

I received an advanced review copy through Netgalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A visceral account of combat on the Eastern front. At times the descriptions are brutal, bloody and completely realistic but if they weren't we wouldn't understand the suffering as well as we might.

This is the first diary I have read and as you might expect, at times it doesn't flow. Combine that with missing pages and sections, and the narrative can fragment. That said, this book does not suffer as a result. In fact, it adds an air of authenticity.

You can sense and feel the challenging environment it was written in. You smell the cordite, the blood, the frozen and sodden earth. You hear the screams of terror, of pain, of suffering. The descriptions are detailed, graphic and create images in the mind of incredible clarity.

Given the diary starts pre-war, the pace is somewhat slow initially and that may put some readers off. Don't be deterred, as it picks up pace and grit quite quickly. Recommended

An intriguing look at the war in the eastern front during WW2. The use of diary entries to give a first hand insight into the thoughts and feelings really makes the book interesting and gives you a feeling of being there. A great read for the WW2 enthusiast

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

An account of the real war fought by a German soldier. No excuses and banter about right and wrong just some guy trying to get through a true disaster of monumental proportions. This book starts with the training of a panzer soldier in the late 1930s before the Russian front and the carnage to come. The story is a war diary found after the war and thank goodness it survived. No one would believe the circumstances the armies on both sides endured and the fact that so many never made it home on both sides is disturbing. If you want to read a truly action packed book with actual war time exploits then IMO this is one of the best. The German soldier who wrote it ends his diary in 1943 severely wounded. This book breaks the myth that the German army soldiers never had written accounts after the battles for security reasons. Maybe its true but read this if you want to know the carnage and bravery of war. Its amazing there were survivors at all.

“Blood, Dust & Snow: Diaries of a Panzer Commander in Germany and on the Eastern Front,” by Robin Schäfer, NetGalley Shelf, Pen & Sword, Greenhill Books, ISBN 9781784388300, Pub Date 31 Oct 2022, earns five stars.

Few war diaries will present events, experiences and the thoughts of combatants as effectively as this wartime diary does though a riveting, very personal narrative that describes the combat experience and sense of the participants moment by moment. His photographs and maps of the time further add to this diary’s historical value.

Interestingly, the writer is a Panzermann (tanker) and, depending on emergencies in combat, an infantryman, but also a dedicated National Socialist who grew up from his earliest years in that environment. However, upon his transfer to the bloody Ostfront (Eastern Front, i.e., Russia, et.al.) and his long, tough service there, he realizes increasingly becomes aware that the assertions and promises of the Third Reich are at odds with what he is experiencing. Thus, the diary not only talks about his daily experiences in war, but it also reveals the evolution in his thinking throughout it all.

Sincere thanks to the author, and Kindle Edition (PDF) and Pen & Sword, Pen & Sword Military, for granting this reviewer the opportunity to read this Advance Reader Copy (ARC), and thanks to NetGalley for helping to make that possible.

An interesting book based upon the diary of the author, a German tank commander serving on the Eastern front.
The book gives a fresh insight into the war from a German perspective with all the hardships of warfare in a very tough area to fight in - Russia,
As the book is based upon a personal diary, its clear it hasn't been penned by a professional writer, but still, the book has merit and is a valuable read as it gives a new insight into warfare on the Eastern front in World War Two.
Sadly the diary is missing pages and also sometimes the diary jumps several weeks with gaps in the narrative.
Also there a a number of words still written in German which can sometimes lead to finding it hard to understand.
An interesting book, but one with flaws.

In the foreword, historian Roger Moorhouse says that what sets this WWII memoir apart is that the diarist is a keen observer and a gifted writer. And in his own foreword, the translator of these diaries, Robin Schäfer, says that the one outstanding aspect of this diarist's writings is that he doesn't write for an audience or has an agenda, has no mindset to record this for posterity or to tell his side but merely to write for himself and for catharsis.

Having read other memoirs by German combatants, I agree with Schäfer. It's not all that unusual for other WWII veteran authors to have a keen eye or be excellent writers, there's a few on both sides, so that the author of "Blood, Dust, and Snow" is observant and writes well isn't of any particular import to me. That he, so unlike others that fought for Germany, is clearly and openly a Nazi is.

Think of the memoirs of two famous panzermänner whose books you probably have heard of: Otto Carius and Hans von Luck. Both tankists are great and eagle-eyed writers, both were at the frontlines, and both make you feel and suffer with them through the horrid experience that was the Eastern Front. You could even argue that both are more interesting as individuals than the author of this diary, Carius was one of the highest-scoring panzer aces in history and von Luck had a life worthy of an action film. But, both write with an agenda, having survived the war and thus aware of having to publish under the shadow of Germany's defeat, navigating the murky waters of post-war denazification and the public opinion's horror at Germany's crimes. So Carius doesn't even mention the dirty laundry of the panzertruppe in his book, and instead complains about how Germans were treated; and von Luck, an aristocratic career officer with more of the gentlemanly Rommel about him, uses his book to appeal to the victors' sensibilities for reconciliation and consideration for those amongst them (he himself was anti-Nazi) that weren't ideologically-driven but did their duty for home and country.

That's not so for Friedrich Wilhelm Sander, the young lieutenant of the 11th Panzer Regiment that wrote the diary here translated and published by Schäfer. Enlisted a couple of years before the start of the war, Sander was a NSDAP card-carrying member and a convinced if not a fanatical one. He became an officer in the then newly-created tank regiment in time to participate in the invasion of Poland, then France, and finally the Soviet Union. His diaries, which do have missing pages but read quite smoothly, start in 1938 at the panzer training facility for his regiment, and end in late 1943 at another training facility for panzers in Bulgaria. There's symmetry in that, I'd say.

The part before Barbarossa isn't that interesting, but helps you get a feel for Sander's style and personality. You notice he's open about his emotions, has something of a temper, and a tendency to observe the most curious things you'd not expect him to note down, and has a certain sense of humour that is perhaps the most unexpected discovery. When was the last time you laughed out loud reading the war diary of a German? I don't think I have before, but I did whilst reading this. The anecdote of the Russian barber and Krakow cracked me up, and it wasn't the only time something in this book made me smile.

When the panzer divisions roll into the Soviet Union in 1941, the diary gets the most interesting. Sander doesn't hold back, his disregard for the rules of journaling on the front is amusing at times (he writes whilst on the turret of his tank), and spares no thought for what posterity would think. Perhaps it's this lack of expectations about publication what freed him to write what he really thought, because you can see he's doing this to get it off his chest. He's blunt and so casual about some horrific aspects of the war, you can see his lack of empathy and his Nazi-informed worldview without filters on; and that is why this diary is so unique.

Sander writes to casually about gunning down POWs because there's no time for them in the tanks' rush forward and forward, about the medics drugging the tired soldiers with amphetamines, about hanging "suspicious" civilians because they might be partisans. He also puts his racist ideology in full display when describing the poverty he sees in the Baltics and the Soviet Union, ascribing it to a moral failing on the part of those races. He makes no secret of his support for the Lebensraum doctrine of the Nazi Party when he says that good German farmers should go and take over the rich land of the Soviet Union because the locals are dirty and don't know proper farming & animal husbandry. He, being a young man, is prone to falling in love easily everywhere his troops go, but he scolds himself twice for "falling in love with a Russian." This boy doesn't notice that one of the girls is Ukrainian, but it wouldn't make a difference: it's still an "inferior" Slav, and he can't mingle with those people, the Nazi racial laws say so and Sander is mindful of them.

So, indeed, Sander is a convinced Nazi. He doesn't participate in the great massacres of the Eastern Front as his unit wasn't involved in them, but he is very aware of what he's fighting for, what Germany's objectives are. He even writes about reminding himself why he's fighting for. But he isn't fanatical to the point of unquestioning, he does slip in criticism of his officers, rails against using the men as cannon fodder, he questions Goebbels' propaganda about the Russians and says he doesn't believe that, etc. And yet, you won't get a soul-searching admission that this war is wrong or that what they do to the Jews (who he witnesses being used as slave labour) is fundamentally wrong and abhorrent. No appeals to the mercy of the victors or the judgment of history, no "Good German" postwar persona. He wouldn't have seen himself as doing wrong, in one passage he comments on anti-Nazi sentiments by his fellow Germans and says drily that they are the problem.

In so many ways, Sander is another good example of Christopher Browning's "ordinary men." Average, unremarkable, a life story and a personality like you and I and our neighbour, but moulded by an extremist political ideology into being part of the oppressive forces of totalitarianism, indoctrinated into being a cog in the monstrous machinery. To me, it's been far more fascinating, and instructive too, to read about the war from someone without the pollution of hindsight.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!


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While providing a rare glimpse into the mind of a German Panzer commander in one of the bloodiest and most protracted conflicts, I found myself wondering what the original author of the diaries would of thought of them being published. Schafer did an excellent job translating the diary entries into English, in such a way that you feel as close to the action as it's possible to get without actually being there. You experience the biting cold, and all the hardships associated with the infamous Eastern Front. This is an excellent reading choice for those, like myself, who enjoy reading first hand accounts.