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Sven Hassel: War Veteran Or Petty Criminal?

Victory

Justified & Ancient
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Danish author Sven Hassel's books have sold over 50 million copies.
They are gripping tales of life in penal unit of the Wehrmacht in World War Two.
I read them as a teenager.
Written from the viewpoint of a volunteer, who soon sees through the Nazis' evil and wishes he never signed up.
Seemingly autobiographical.

But there exist two caveats:

1.) Sven's real name was Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen.
His military service has been called into question, with strong allegations he was actually an informant for German intelligence who spent the war in Denmark.

2.) Aside from his initial novel "Legion of the Damned", some say that his other books were written by his wife.
Certainly the writing style in that book is quite different from the rest, much plainer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hassel
 
This is a very odd story, overall. The author's name is vaguely familiar to me, but it's over 40 years since I've read any of his books.

It reminds me in some ways of the infamous T. Lobsang Rampa controversy (a topic I somehow suspect might not have been discussed by anyone this century)

One of the most-curious extracts from the Wiki article you cite makes me wonder how Hassel seemed to think he could simply get the court to retrospectively amend reality for his (marketing?) advantage, via an openly-false conviction:

Wikipedia- Sven Hassel said:
According to Haaest, Saunte had explained that in court Hassel had insisted that the charges against him should be extended with a clause that he had also served as a German soldier, although he had obviously never done that. After insisting several times, the judge ended the discussions with a statement to the effect that she could no longer bear his insistence on this non-sensical front line service, but that he would also be convicted for that, although it would not add to nor detract from his prison sentence.

The old adage about history belonging to the victors is only partly true: a more-nuanced version is to say that history is often stolen from the dead by the least-entitled survivors, and; whilst truth is the first casualty of war, fiction is the first-born of peace.
 
It reminds me in some ways of the infamous T. Lobsang Rampa controversy (a topic I somehow suspect might not have been discussed by anyone this century)
Apart from us, obviously.

I read some Hassel when I was a teen: they were more like a ramped-up, more violent version of the Commando series than anything else. In terms of sophistication and plot-development Tolstoy it ain't, but it clearly hit a note somewhere, probably at the same sort of dog-whistle level that stirs the loins of people who believe we still have an empire when they read equally simplistic tales of Tommy Atkins' derring-do against the ghastly Hun.
 
Hassel's books were hugely popular when I was at school, as was the movie Cross of Iron (nothing to do with Hassel, I know), but I never read the books, and didn't watch the movie until many years later.

I found something unnerving about the covers, and I wonder now if it might have been down to the fact that, whereas most boys my age had fathers too young to have served in WW2, my dad was 20 years older than my mum - and had volunteered in 1939. He never spoke about his service - or, at least, very rarely - and I think I felt that if he didn't want to tell me what happened to him, then I had no interest in those who were technically his enemy telling me what happened to them. ('Technically' as in different fronts, but same political machine.)

The fifties and sixties were awash with fantasists writing about their 'real' experiences of WW2. Nigel West's Counterfeit Spies is an interesting read - the gall of some people is quite staggering, and must have been both heartbreaking and infuriating to those who actually did put their lives on the line.

For a more positive, and probably much more accurate look at the war from a Danish perspective, I'd recommend Hitler's Savage Canary, by David Lampe - and Bo Lidegaard's, Countrymen. Denmark's experience is often sidelined - but the effectiveness of it's underground, although without the glamour associated with the French Resistance (another bullshit magnet for post war authors), was in many ways remarkable.
 
Apart from us, obviously.

it clearly hit a note somewhere, probably at the same sort of dog-whistle level that stirs the loins of people who believe we still have an empire when they read equally simplistic tales of Tommy Atkins' derring-do against the ghastly Hun.

What interested me most where the descriptions of the paranoia and corruption amongst the crumbling Reich, and of the dynamics of resentment amongst the soldiers of a punishment battalion.
Of the defeats and retreats, lack of equipment and low morale.

When you have a mass of Allied war stories, to read the other side is interesting too.

Though, we now know, was fiction based on second hand stories.
 
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2.) Aside from his initial novel "Legion of the Damned", some say that his other books were written by his wife.
Certainly the writing style in that book is quite different from the rest, much plainer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hassel

My best friend and I both read the books extensively as teenagers. They definitely get worse, the last one I read was Blitzfreeze which is pretty awful.

We were strongly of the opinion that only 'Legion of the Dammed' had any chance of reflecting any truth. Some of the others read like an extremely violent and bawdy version of the Three Stooges set in a non-existant Nazi penal battalion.
 
We were strongly of the opinion that only 'Legion of the Dammed' had any chance of reflecting any truth. Some of the others read like an extremely violent and bawdy version of the Three Stooges set in a non-existant Nazi penal battalion.

My current thinking is that the "Legion of the Damned" is a standalone book based on the true war stores of a group of men who served together.

The others are spin-offs, where "Sven" has allowed his imagination to roam, and are written as if that same group of men had served in various theatres of the war and had full engagement in each of them.

I certainly do not regret having read the books, they are vivid and fascinating.
 
What interested me most where the descriptions of the paranoia and corruption amongst the crumbling Reich, and of the dynamics of resentment amongst the soldiers of a punishment battalion.

Of the defeats and retreats, lack of equipment and low morale.

When you have a mass of Allied war stories, to read the other side is interesting too.

Though, we now know, was fiction based on second hand stories.

I'd recommend Heinrich Gerlach's Breakout at Stalingrad – set during the final stages of the annihilation of the German 6th Army. The translation sometimes feels a little clunky – but this is something I’ve sometimes noticed in English translations of modern German novels, and I actually found that the occasional clunkiness added a kind of naivety to the narrative, which in turn seems to enhance the sense of tragedy.

There’s a lot about the day to day mechanics of staying alive, and of living cheek by jowl with other men in horrendous circumstances. Unsurprisingly, food is a common subject – and there’s something really quite moving about the quest for tiny home comforts in apocalyptic surroundings. At the beginning of the novel, when the action does occur it is sporadic, short and vicious – more of a side issue to sleeping, getting fed and surviving the cold than the main purpose of existence. Although, of course, that all changes.

There’s a lot on the internal feuding, both of men forced together in confined and lethally dangerous situations, but also inter rank resentments and hatred of the hypocrisy, the politics, and the politically motivated.

There’s also what might be described as a satisfyingly Fortean turn to the story of the novel itself:

Gerlach wrote his novel – based on his own experiences and that of other captured soldiers - while in captivity, and the manuscript was eventually confiscated by the Soviets. When he returned to Germany Gerlach read about recovering memory through hypnosis and sought treatment. This was allegedly at least partly successful (although it still took some years to complete).

The result of this process was the novel, The Betrayed Army (sometimes, The Forsaken Army). In 2012, decades after publication of The Betrayed Army, Gerlach’s original manuscript was rediscovered in Soviet archives, and was finally published as Breakout at Stalingrad.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever read these two novels side by side, and done a proper analysis to see if, how often, and how accurately the texts converge. Given that it may well be a unique situation – and probably impossible to replicate in any meaningful way - that would surely be a very interesting analysis to make in regard to the effectiveness, or otherwise, of recovered memory techniques

From a Russian point of view Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad is epic. And it's worth pointing out that although both novels are works of fiction, both authors were present at the Battle of Stalingrad, and used their own experiences and those of others as raw material. Also, there is possibly no coincidence in the fact that both Gerlach and Grossman were punished by their own sides: the Nazi authorities sentenced Gerlach to death, in absentia; Grossman’s manuscripts were confiscated – his writings on the Holodomor and his post war involvement in Soviet Jewish groups attempts to document the Holocaust meant that it was something of a miracle that he managed to avoid the camps.
 
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