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.