An arresting and unusual portal into the mind of a fighter in the Nazi forces.
A debut memoir chronicles a German soldier’s travails during World War II.
Recollections of World War II are usually told from the side of the victors, often Americans detailing their heroic triumph over a barbaric adversary. Pappert, however, served in the German Wehrmacht and fought against the Allied forces, an experience that provided him with a unique vantage point from which to parse the violence and chaos. The author’s father was a staunch and prominent Christian as well as a principled critic of Nazi tyranny. As a result, Pappert’s eyes were opened wide to the depths of Hitler’s depravity, and he found solace in a faith outlawed by Nazi ideology. In 1942, the author was compelled to join the RAD, essentially a national labor service, as a prelude to his induction into the military at the young age of 18. After working as a “war reporter,” a job that relieved him of more tedious manual labor, Pappert was eventually sent to France, Clermont-Ferrand in particular, and was hypnotized by the beauty of the country, including the magnificence of Paris. (The book is translated from French into English.) He lived in constant peril—one day he was shot in the neck from a sniper in a tower, though thankfully the wound turned out to be a minor one. Later, he was nearly killed by grapes poisoned by the French Resistance. The author also constantly feared the Gestapo, who zealously scrutinized even its most decorated soldiers. In a stroke of luck, he was chosen to decamp for Italy rather than the much more dangerous Eastern front, though he knew this only delayed a terrifying encounter with the much more powerful American military. Pappert’s prose is by turns charmingly humble and affecting. He was riven with internal conflict—a devoted Roman Catholic who despised the Nazis, he still considered it wrong to show disloyalty to his own nation at war. At one point, he was given the chance to flee and join the French Resistance, and he demurred: “I am a German soldier and while I detest the Nazis that does not mean that I would betray my country. Even if I did, the Resistance would always look at me askance, a deserter who cannot be trusted. I cannot accept your proposal.” The first of two volumes, this is a beautifully crafted remembrance that depicts an underrepresented perspective.
An arresting and unusual portal into the mind of a fighter in the Nazi forces.Pub Date: May 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5328-6144-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: WAMFAM Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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