Last Letters from Stalingrad

By Franz Schneider and Charles Gullans

Book Overview

Book by Schneider, Franz, Gullans, Charles This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0837172403
• ISBN13: 9780837172408
• Release Date: March 1974
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 142 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Truth or Fiction

Last Letters from Stalingrad contains a collection of some very compelling letters written by German soldiers in the last few days before their death or final surrender in Stalingrad. But are the letters authentic or phony? Maybe I've been naive but I've always assumed they were actually written by the soldiers themselves. Certainly the forward to the books I've read represent them this way. Now I see reviews under this heading asserting they were all written by a German war correspondent. But none of these reviews cite a source or any authority for this claim. These reviews may well be right but until some kind of proof is provided, I think it's more reasonable to believe those who claim to have collected the letters and put them in book form than it is unsupported claims to the contrary.

The Last Letters are true in the abstract...

Although the letters in this book are forgeries, that doesn't mean they aren't true. The man who wrote these letters was a German war correspondent, named Heinz Schroeter, who reported from the Stalingrad pocket. He also wrote the greatest book about that battle, called Stalingrad; To The Last Bullet. Schroeter wrote the letters from the point of view of the German soldiers he had come to know during the siege. He was intimately acquainted with how the soldiers thought and felt in Stalingrad and I believe he accurately portrayed how the "Last Letters from Stalingrad" would have actually sounded, had they been written. For sheer depth of human emotion, nothing comes close to this book. It will personally move you, and isn't that what all great books have in common?

Heart wrenching stories of German soldiers

For years in the 1970's & 1980's a local radio celebrity read the "Letters" during the three weeks before Christmas. He added background music of "Little Drummer Boy". We listened every night and "felt the despair and hope of the soldiers who knew they would never return home. The "Letters" have stayed with me through the years. We have searched for a copy of this book and are heartbroken that it is unavailable, even on the secondary market. If you find a copy, you have a treasure.

This is a book of compelling, riveting letters .

This book is a selection of letters written by soldiers of the German Sixth Army near the end of its defense of the Stalingrad pocket. The authors of the letters knew that their situation was hopeless, and most did not expect to survive. So the letters are final farewells. The attitudes and viewpoints of the soldier-authors differ widely, but invariably the letters are compelling. Common themes include a widely felt sense of betrayal, hope that the continued struggle in the pocket would have some military benefit elsewhere, and the poignant sense that these letters represent the last words of the soldiers to their loved ones. The letters of these doomed soldiers provide an opportunity to think about not only the Sixth Army's final struggle but war in general as a human experience. Goebbels' propaganda ministry read the letters to determine the attitudes they revealed and then suppressed them. This is a book you will read and re-read.