The Forgotten Soldier

Also a term for an impassioned advocate of a political faction, “partisan” describes soldiers and in many cases armed civilians who conduct attacks far behind enemy lines, often operating in loose hierarchies relatively independent from a formal command structure. Partisan attacks on Germans were particularly devastating on the Eastern Front, where vast stretches of territory forced extremely long lines of transport and supply, which could be attacked at a wide variety of points. In addition to sabotaging rail lines or launching hit-and-run attacks on German bases, some partisans operated among the civilian population while conducting assassinations and bombings. It was German official policy to deal with partisans harshly, and to punish civilians suspected of harboring them, but these brutal tactics in many cases only hardened local resistance.

Sajer refers to certain officers as belonging to the SS, an abbreviation for the Nazi Party’s chief paramilitary organization, the Schutzstaffel. It began as a bodyguard for Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis during their initial bid for power. After the Nazis took power in 1933, and Hitler wiped out his internal enemies in 1934’s Night of the Long Knives, the SS replaced the previously dominant SA (Sturm-Abteilung or stormtroopers) as the party’s armed wing and began to oversee many functions of government, especially the police, forming the feared Gestapo. The SS also formed a parallel army, directly answerable to Party leadership rather than the Army High Command, which was not necessarily seen as politically reliable (especially after a group of generals attempted to assassinate Hitler in 1944). Many SS units fought in the major battles on the Eastern Front and elsewhere. They also focused on carrying out the party’s wishes regarding the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” and were at the forefront of what would later be known as the Holocaust.

In the latter chapters of the book, Sajer notices that the raw recruits at the training camps in Poland are starting to consist more and more of very young boys, some not even teenagers, and old men. As the Nazi war effort began to collapse under the dual weight of Soviet offensives in the East and the successful Allied landings in France, the regime undertook increasingly desperate efforts to mobilize the entire population and mount a campaign of “total war” against their materially superior enemies. Many such units were hastily assembled and poorly trained and equipped, and were therefore highly ineffective on the battlefield, but others fought to the bitter end, especially in the final battle on the streets of Berlin. Other Volkssturm units participated in the massacre of concentration camp prisoners as advancing allied forces prompted their evacuation.