LETTRES DE LA WEHRMACHT

Between 1939 and 1945, Wehrmacht soldiers wrote incessantly to their closest friends and family. In this selection of the most powerful and revealing letters, the reader discovers the Second World War, as seen from the inside. Preface by Timothy Snyder.

Around 17 million soldiers served in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, and nearly all of them wrote home regularly. These letters are among the invaluable documents that, as primary sources, provide an image of the war as seen from the inside. They are reproduced here for the first time in their entirety, adding immeasurably to our knowledge of the mindset and the actions of soldiers of the Third Reich. This is a description of the daily reality of warfare, fought on all fronts, from the invasion of Poland to the fall of Berlin. While the letters dating from the French campaign of 1940 or the beginning of Operation Barbarossa express a fervent hope to take part in the rebirth of Greater Germany, missives written in the wake of the defeat of Stalingrad are explosive in a different way. The reader absorbs the soldiers' disillusion and distress in the face of physical and material conditions that grow daily more unbearable and an increasingly dim vision of victory as they are overwhelmed by Russian and American enemies. But their weariness of combat and desire to go home are balanced by expressions of exaltation of their faith in Germany and in Hitler. For, contrary to the outdated image which nonetheless remains in some sectors, that of a clean-cut and dutiful army that was somewhat distant from Naziism, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were not ordinary soldiers. Most evident in these letters is the fact that many were the bearers of Hitler's ideology throughout Europe, the spearhead of Naziism in war. Specialists on the Third Reich and, specifically, the Wehrmacht, Marie Moutier and Fanny Chassain-Pichon both defended a thesis on the subject. Respected Germanists, they were granted access, sometimes for the first time, to the personal files of soldiers of the German army stored at the Deutsche Dienststelle, in Berlin.