German Military Fiction
Explore gripping German military fiction with our curated list of top books. Dive into thrilling war stories, historical battles, and heroic tales from Germany's military past. Perfect for history buffs and fiction lovers!
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Cross of Iron
by Willi Heinrich
CROSS OF IRON is the thrilling story of a German platoon cut off far behind Russian lines in the second half of World War II. A resourceful and cynical commander somehow manages to coax his men through the bitter hand-to-hand fighting in forests, trenches and city streets until eventually they regain the German lines. But safety is only temporary. After the tension of waiting for the last overwhelming Russian advance the platoon is forced into futile counter-attacks and murderous house-to-house fighting until its final decimation becomes inevitable. A modern classic of war fiction both as a book and a film, this is a strikingly realistic story of action on the Eastern Front, where the grimness of combat seems to have neither pity nor end.
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All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
The masterpiece of the German experience during World War I, considered by many the greatest war novel of all time—with an Oscar–winning film adaptation now streaming on Netflix. “[Erich Maria Remarque] is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank.”—The New York Times Book Review I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . . This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive.
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The Road Back
by Erich Maria Remarque
The sequel to the masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back is a classic novel of the slow return of peace to Europe in the years following World War I. After four grueling years, the Great War has finally ended. Now Ernst and the few men left from his company cannot help wondering what will become of them. The town they departed as eager young men seems colder, their homes smaller, the reasons their comrades had to die even more inexplicable. For Ernst and his friends, the road back to peace is more treacherous than they ever imagined. Suffering food shortages, political unrest, and a broken heart, Ernst undergoes a crisis that teaches him what there is to live for—and what he has that no one can ever take away. “The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.”—The New York Times Book Review
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The Legion of the Damned
by Sven Hassel
Convicted of deserting the German Army, Sven Hassel is sent to a punishment regiment on the Russian front. He and his comrades are regarded as expendable, cannon fodder for Hitler's war. Outnumbered and outgunned on the frozen steppe, they fight for survival against the implacable Red Army. This novel is based on the real life experiences of the author.
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SS General
by Sven Hassel
It was said that Stalingrad had been burning since August, ever since the first German bombs were dropped... Sven Hassel and his comrades are plunged into the maelstrom of Stalingrad. Radio Moscow reports that one German soldier dies every minute. Trapped by the Russian counter-attack, starving soldiers must resort to cannibalism to survive. But 'Tiny', Porta, the Legionnaire and Sven attempt to break out, to fight their way across the frozen steppe. Their leader: an SS general who takes no prisoners. SS GENERAL is the definitive Stalingrad novel, a gripping portrait of war's brutal realities.
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Monte Cassino
by Sven Hassel
The thunder of the guns could be heard in Rome, 170 miles away . . . Having survived the horrors of the Eastern Front, the 27th Penal Regiment are posted to Italy. Hitler has ordered that every position must be held to the last, and every lost position recaptured by counter-attack. Monte Cassino - a major look-out post on the German defensive line - is under attack. In the face of overwhelming Allied firepower, Sven Hassel and his comrades are ordered to hold the fortress at all costs... Monte Cassino is a classic Sven Hassel novel, a no-holds-barred account of frontline combat. Sven Hassel based his unflinching narrative on his experiences in the German army. He ended World War Two in a prisoner of war camp, where he wrote his first novel Legion of the Damned.
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Blitzfreeze
by Sven Hassel
It was supposed to be Hitler's glorious conquest of Russia... The 27th Penal Regiment have been ordered to invade the Soviet Union. They are half-starved and ill-equipped. To reach Moscow they must defeat the fearsome Red Army. But instead, they find themselves at the mercy of an even deadlier enemy: the killer cold of the Russian winter. As they advance across the icy wastes, they think only of survival.
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Wheels of Terror
by Sven Hassel
Stationed on the Russian Front and now equipped with armoured vehicles, Sven Hassel and his comrades from the 27th penal regiment fight on remorselessly... All of them should be dead: life expectancy on the Russian Front is measured in weeks. But Sven, Porta, Tiny and The Legionnaire fight to the end, not for Germany, not for Hitler, but for survival. Wheels of Terror is a sobering depiction of war's brutalities, and the violence and inhumanity that the history books leave out. Sven Hassel's unflinching narrative is based on his own experiences in the German Army. He began writing his first novel, Legion of the Damned in a prisoner of war camp at the end of World War Two.
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Reign of Hell
by Sven Hassel
A sudden curtain of silence fell over the burning city. All that could be heard was the steady crackling of flames... Hitler's penal regiments advance on Poland. Himmler has given the order: Warsaw must be razed to the ground. But the Polish Home Army are not willing to give in to the German troops so easily. As the city erupts into an inferno of flames and gunfire, Sven and his comrades find themselves caught between the sadism of the SS and the guerrilla warfare of the Polish Resistance... Reign of Hell is a gripping insight into the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and the bloodshed that ensued as the Polish tried desperately to liberate themselves from the German occupation.
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Comrades of War
by Sven Hassel
There were not so much people as animals. Sometimes small and frightened, huddling together in cattle cars, wounds gaping, tongues swelling even as they licked the moist frost from the walls... Grievously wounded - having survived the operating table and the perilous journey West on a freezing freight train - Sven Hassel and his comrades find themselves behind the lines in a Hamburg hospital. The Reich is a hotbed of lies, betrayal and propaganda. Disgusted by the Nazi cause, the comrades drink themselves into oblivion, visit brothels where women dance naked on saloon tables and reach for home comforts before they return to the dreaded Russian Front. Because Hitler's war must go on... COMRADES OF WAR is a gritty portrayal of war's harsh realities and the fear and fanaticism at the heart of The Third Reich. Sven Hassel's unflinching narrative is based on his own experiences in the German Army. He began writing his first novel, LEGION OF THE DAMNED in a prisoner of war camp at the end of the Second World War.
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Liquidate Paris
by Sven Hassel
I had a grenade in my hand. So, no doubt, did the English private. I tore out the pin with my teeth. Lay there and counted. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four... It is Hitler's last chance to save The Third Reich... Millions of Allied troops have landed in Normandy. The orders are clear: Sven and his comrades, hardened by a savage war that has led them from the bloody steppes of the Russian Front, to the slopes of Monte Cassino, are ordered to withdraw to Strasbourg and destroy Paris on the way... Liquidate Paris shows the eruption of the Second World War in its most brutal and cruel phase, as allied troops advance upon Paris and the penal regiment retreat.
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Das Boot
by Lothar GĂĽnther Buchheim
It is autumn, 1941, and a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. Over the coming weeks they must brave the stormy waters of the Atlantic in their mission to seek out and destroy British supply ships. But the tide is beginning to turn against the Germans in the war for the North Atlantic. Their targets now travel in convoys, fiercely guarded by Royal Navy destroyers, and when contact is finally made the hunters rapidly become the hunted. As the U-boat is forced to hide beneath the surface of the sea a cat-and-mouse game begins, where the increasing claustrophobia of the submarine becomes an enemy just as frightening as the depth charges that explode around it. Of the 40,000 men who served on German submarines, 30,000 never returned. Written by a survivor of the U-boat fleet, Das Boot is a psychological drama merciless in its intensity, and a classic novel of World War II.
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The Blue Max
by Jack D. Hunter
The most coveted decoration in all of Germany, the Blue Max was the symbol of power, fame and prestige beyond ordinary mortals. This is the story of the men who killed for it--and died for it. This is a special collectors' edition of the classic novel of World War I air combat. Available again on the 40th anniversary of its original publication in 1964.
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The Hessian
by Howard Fast
Telling the story of the capture, trial, and execution of a Hessian drummer boy by Americans during the Revolution. This novel provides an opportunity to explore the difficult moral positions of war, along with the complications of the Quaker family who hid and sheltered the boy.
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A Soldier's Legacy
by Heinrich Boll
In 1943 Wenk, a German soldier guarding the Normandy coast, finds himself in a war where the main enemies are loneliness and misery. Corruption is rampant in the High Command: supplies are being siphoned off, and the starving, exhausted soldiers must cross their own minefields to steal potatoes from nearby farms. Against all army rank and protocol, Wenk becomes friends with Lieutenant Schelling, whose protests on behalf of his men have incurred the wrath of another officer. When the company is transferred to the Russian front, heightened fear, suspicion, and mistrust explore the soldiers' barely maintained order into a chaos of desperation. "The great strength of this short novel is its steadfast refusal to glamorize. . . . The clear-eyed wisdom that emerges from it makes it a remarkable achievement." --William Boyd, New Republic "Böll is a master storyteller." --New York Times
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The Silent Angel
by Heinrich Boll
This long-supressed first novel from a Nobel Prize-winning author summons the full horror of war, while affirming the heart's capacity for love. Just days after the end of World War II, a German soldier returns to bombed-out Cologne, carrying the coast and will of a dead comrade's coat to his widow. Soon he begins a tentative romance with the woman, and together they seek a future in the ruined city.
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The Forsaken Army
by Heinrich Gerlach
On November 22, 1942, Russian forces closed around the 270,000 German soldiers who had come to take Stalingrad. Only a handful of these men ever returned to Germany: Heinrich Gerlach was one of them, and he determined to spend the rest of his life telling the world how his fellow soldiers had been sacrificed to Hitler's megalomania. Though a novel, every episode, every character, every detail of description is thoroughly authentic.
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The Night of the Generals
by Hans Hellmut Kirst
The famous novel about three Nazi generals and a brutal wartime sex crime—and the inspiration for the celebrated 1967 film. “Superb... appalling.”—New Yorker. “The sentences snap and detonate like muffled howitzers across the battlefield; and they rarely miss.”—Sunday Times. “A very funny, very serious book.”—New Statesman.
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Officer Factory
by Hans Hellmut Kirst
The unfolding drama at the officers' training school is an incomparable picture of a conflict between honourable men and a barbaric regime in wartime Germany. THE OFFICER FACTORY is where the cream of Germany's youth are moulded into soldiers ready to fight for the Fatherland. But the training is not only military but ideological, and when a murder occurs inside the school all the underlying tensions begin to surface. A gripping story of wartime Germany by the internationally renowned author of GUNNER ASCH and A NIGHT OF THE GENERALS.
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Forced March
by Leo Kessler
This is the first in the fictional series The Dogs of War, by Leo Kessler. It is 1942, and the Vulture's eyes gleamed as he watched the exhausted men crawling up the slope through the slippery mud, under the knee-high barbed wire. The SS Assault Regiment Wotan was training and recuperating after its gruelling struggle in Russia and they were glad to be out of the fray for a bit, but it would not be for long for what none of those men, straining up the grassy slope under the eyes of their commander, Colonel Horst Geier, knew was that already they had been singled out for a new mission. The German High Command knew that the British would launch an attack on Dieppe and the crucial element was time. There was only one regiment that could be trusted to get there fast enough to defend the vital coastal battery: the Soldiers of Wotan were on the move again.
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Devil's Shield
by Leo Kessler
This is the second in the fictional series The Dogs of War, by Leo Kessler. In the grey September of 1944, colonel von Dodenburg's SS battle group Wotan became the Fuhrer's Fire Brigade, the crack unit of the German Wehrmacht, to be thrown into any battle as a last desperate measure to redress the balance. As the Allied armies closed in on Germany's holy city of Aachen, even the most optimistic said that Hitler's war was lost. Only Colonel von Dodenburg's black uniformed troopers, with their dreaded silver death's head badge, were convinced that they could still save the day.
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Claws of Steel
by Leo Kessler
This is the fourth in the fictional series The Dogs of War, by Leo Kessler. They had taken the most impregnable fortress in Europe, faced Stalin's cadets in the screaming inferno of the Russian front, and returned with only a handful of survivors. They were Hitler's elite, dedicated, relentless men, for whom death held no fear, Assault Regiment Wotan. Their next mission was a lightening blow at Kursk in the very heart of Soviet Russia. As they advanced across the burning steppes after the fall of Stalingrad, the men of Wotan found the bodies of German soldiers, hanged, tortured, and mutilated, and they swore they would not leave Russian soil until they had taken their revenge.
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SS Panzer Battalion
by Leo Kessler
It was January 1940. The Western Front was still paralysed, but, at the Adolf Hitler Kaserne, a new battalion of SS troops were being put through the most gruelling training programme in the history of the German army. SS Assault Regiment Wotan were preparing for a mission so secret that it was known only by its codename, Zero.
