I remember really enjoying this book. There is some controversy over the authenticity of the accounts presented in the story. Maybe treat the book like historical fiction because of that.

An innocent 17 year old boy goes to war on the eastern front of WWII, and comes home starved, dirty, and shattered. The story of his harrowing time in Russia is heartbreaking, horrifying and the best argument for pacifism I've read. This is incredibly well-written. If it doesn't make you hate war, no book will.

Great book, a lot of detailed military actions, as well as dismissal of the Soviets as a "horde" and uncivilized. One thing that caught my eye was the Nazis attitude towards the awful behavior they had against the Soviets as the "we're protecting Europe against the slav hordes", seeing themselves as protectors of whole Europe.

Love love love! Never heard anyone describe the indescribable

Anyone who thinks of war as an adventure, or thinks that a video game can portray the realities of war, should read this book. While reading, I wondered how the rest of Sajer's life turned out. He was sixteen when he joined up and nearing twenty when the war ended for him. He suffered such extreme depths of cold and malnutrition, living on the border between life and death for three years. He survived the war, but the damage to his body and mind must have been insurmountable.

Nihilism saturates every page. Like many soldiers, Sajer passed caring about the whys of war, only seeing the problem in front of his face, and sometimes not even that far. As graphic as the book is in its accounts of the physical horrors of the Russian front, it is the turning of his mind that elevates this book above other WWII memoirs.

For about a year I’ve been constantly reading about World War Two, especially about the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Out of the 14 on my WWII Goodreads shelf, this book has been my absolute favorite.

It’s definitely not a book that's pleasant to read. In fact it's exhausting and sickening at times to read. It's a vivid account of a young man’s experience in the largest and most horrific war in history. In a war between two absolute monstrous totalitarian regimes, the mostly mythic line between good guys and bad guys erodes to only a line between victims wearing different uniforms.

While It may have been a political decision by the author not to include any mentions of his allegiance to National Socialism or to Adolf Hitler, you don’t get a sense of this man’s motivation to go to war being anything to do with Nazi ideology. Certainly his motivation while at war is strictly his own immediate personal survival and the survival of his comrades. This is the fact that really begins to humanize the people who were fighting for and living under the certainly evil ideology of the Nazis. While humanizing “the enemy”, it shouldn’t ever excuse the atrocities of the Wehrmacht and the SS but it should at least evoke a sense of empathy. The Forgotten Soldier certainly puts you in the shoes of a foot soldier of the Wehrmacht and helps any human with a shred of decency understand why someone would continue fighting for Hitler's army.

Utterly superb, Sajer tells of his first hand experience of the Russian front in simple and eloquent terms that don't hide a single emotion or feeling, from the pride him and his comrades feel when they first enter the army to the moments of utter despair and devestation and feelings of abandonment and loss. This book will challenge every view you've ever held on life on the frontline of war showing it in all its glory and all its shame as orders are received from those with no idea of the realities of the front and of the orders they give. Sajer holds nothing back, either as part of his own actions or those of his friends and enemies, showing how war can change even the most hardened character. This is a must read.

Well that was brutal. The Forgotten Soldier is Guy Sajer's account of his time serving in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in World War Two from his early days running supplies to combat service in the Grossdeutschland division.

I don't know what to say, I can't offer criticism to a man's account of his 4 years in Hell. This book was deeply moving, horrifying and occasionally, bleakly funny.

This was the first memoir I've read of a German soldier's experience in the Second World War and the first about the Eastern Front too. It's rather sobering to be reminded that the 'bad guys' suffer in war as well.

As a final note, according to Wikipedia, Mr Sajer has been accused of fabricating the story in this book. Apparently some of the details about what unit was where and when and various details of life in the Wehrmacht are incorrect in The Forgotten Soldier. On the other hand, some historians and German veterans claim that the claims of this book are believable. I'm not a historian or a veteran of the Second World War so I make no claim either way.