Sven Hassel novels.

darkdubh

These were books that were quite popular during the 70s and were written from the German perspective during world war 2.The author was supposedly in the SS during the war and the novels had quite lurid covers and titles like SS General and liquidate Paris.I read a couple of them when i was young and they were quite graphic .Any one else read them?

Apolloyon

I remember reading these as a teenager. Historically acurate or not, most of them were a great read and gave me a difference perspective on World War 2. I think only the first book were written by the author and the rest were ghost-written or so the rumour had it! But it was interesting to find something where the germans weren't automatically the bad guys!

ikb

Read all of them many years ago. Entertaining, yes, Historically accurate... hmmm? No one man could have been is so many fields of conflict.The writer was not German, I think maby Danish or somesuch?
The Guys wern't SS, they were in a penal tank Regiment, which had the Deaths head emblem on their caps, and tankers wore black uniforms.
The first book (Wheels of Terror) was made into a Movie, and it was (probably) the best written of them, so maby Hassel didn't write the others.
If you want a good read, from the same perspective, read "The forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer.. (True Story).. if you can get your hands on it.

mikemac

I have one of these, yes the writer was Danish and he served in a penal battalion.
Very different to most war books. Now I know war is carnage and violent but most history books list facts but these books list horrific punishments and executions. The books are pretty graphic
The one that stuck with me was four soldiers ordered to crawl under a tank on wet ground and they were crushed when the tank sank.

If you google the author there are a lot of comments that the books are fiction but that are passed off as real.
I don't know either way, I'd say a lot of stories getting added in.

Good read though

Bearhunter

Read them all, too. Great stuff for a growing lad. Brutality, blasphemy and a sprinkling of shagging (or so I recall from the likes of The Bloody Road to Death, when Porta and Tiny spent half the book in a brothel). And I think only the first one (Legion of the Damned) was even remotely autobiographical.

darkdubh

Spotted a load of his books for sale at a flea market but coulden't fit all of them in the pic so heres one as an example.They always had the two ss's in his surname designed to look like the SS symbol.

ollaetta

I have most of them in my attic. Loved them at the time but God knows how they would come across now.

Edit: anyone remember the other guy who was kind of a watered down version, Leo Kessler? Total sham, wasn't a German veteran at all but some English guy using a nom de plume. Exciting books though if I remember correctly.

darkdubh

Interesting link on Hassel here,with the cover of "Blitzfreeze".
http://beingapartbeingapart.blogspot.ie/2010/05/sven-hassel.html

bnt

Sven Hassel died in September this year. I read most of his books in the 80s and 90s and enjoyed them a lot. They're "pulp fiction" in the best sense. I did notice a clear distinction between his first book (The Legion of the Damned) and the subsequent books: the first book covered most of the war and was probably closer to the true story, while the rest seemed more fictionalised & exaggerated versions of his experiences.