Customer Reviews

Grandfather's Tale: The Tale of a German Sniper

5 star:		(122)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

You cannot believe how bad this book is. It purports to be the story of a 12-year-old who in 2000 listens to his 80-year-old great-grandfather's tales of having been a one-man sniping army for the Wehrmacht.

I must admit I bought "Grandfather's Tale" by mistake: I was under the impression it was an actual memoir. There was nothing about the book, it's jacket, "blurb" or description by Amazon to inform the buyer that it was fiction. Indeed, it was paired with a genuine memoir for sale at a special price. I assumed from all available evidence the book had been written by the grandson of a Wehrmacht sniper. I realized I had been taken - by the author.

I was first surprised by the almost juvenile style of writing in "Grandfather's Tale". Now, it's not unusual for World War II memoirs to be less than literary gems, because rarely is the author a professional writer. But we devotees of the war memoir make allowances in order to read about the true experiences of combat veterans of World War II. Veracity is what we prize most, and style is secondary.

But even by the relaxed "military memoir" standard, "Grandfather's Tale" is barely readable by an adult. The vocabulary, style and sentence structure employed is usually seen in books meant for readers who are 11-13 years of age. Indeed, the novel's voice is a 12-year-old boy. The events described however, kill after kill after kill of a sniper's victims, are far from appropriate for middle-schoolers. So I am left puzzled as to the age group for whom the book is intended.

More troubling is the fact the book is rife with glaring grammatical and typographical errors. Most maddening is author Timothy Erenberger's complete ignorance as to the proper form of the first person objective. (Hint: it's not "I") Several times I read with disgust lines such as, "He gave Koenig and I something to eat". That this kind of complete ignorance of basic rules of English grammar can be overlooked in a book advertised and sold by the world's largest book retailer amazes me.

Finally, it is the plot itself that gave away the fact I was reading a figment of someone's imagination rather than a truthful account. In Erenberger's world, German snipers were organized in units of 20 or so, as snipers, as early as the campaign in Poland. According to the author German snipers took up a single advantageous position and stayed there for kill after kill - perhaps 50 over the course of an afternoon. In Erenberger's world snipers routinely made one-shot between-the-eyes kills at 600 meters, and attempted shots out to 2000 meters. In "Grandfather's Tale", the sniper can somehow control recoil so well that, even at extreme distances, he can observe his shots as they hit right between the eyes of his targets. And finally, Erenberger apparently discovered a WWII telescopic sight that could somehow be attached to and detached from various rifles as easily as if they were made of Velcro. (I don't think Erenberger has ever heard of drilling and tapping a rifle for a telescopic sight.) Oh, and Erenberger's sniper somehow made it into every major combat on the Eastern and Western Fronts from Poland to Berlin.

This is an astoundingly poorly written and researched book by an amateur author who has unintentionally revealed how little he knows about sniping, the Wehrmacht, or even World War II. The reader interested in these subjects would do far, far better to purchase "Sniper On The Eastern Front" by Sepp Allerberger...a real memoir, intelligently written by a man who knew what he was writng about.

I bought this book a few years ago, thinking it would be an interesting historical fiction in the vein of "War of the Rats" or even the impressive "Black March."

This book is just bad. Factual errors, misspellings, poor punctuation, and non sequiturs are rife in this book. Couple this with what appears to be a remarkable lack of knowledge about WW2 and the German Army in general makes this book nearly unreadable for anyone who has even a veneer of knowledge about the Second World War.

The first error I noticed was that the main character, Georg Frick, claims that he was only 18 years old when he was drafted into the German Army in 1937. Fine - that would make his birthdate sometime in 1919. However, Frick mentions that his father was a German soldier killed in the First World War, which ended in 1918? Huh? I guess maybe he was conceived in a late-war furlough, but I digress.

Second, the Wehrmacht did not extensively use snipers until later in the war, and certainly did not have entire platoons of scope-equipped snipers during the invasion of Poland in 1939.

Third, Frick's mentor, a sniper named Ellis (strange name for a German, no? - kind of like a Briton being named Ratzenberger, but again, I digress) claims to have been a sniper in WW1, where he had "over a thousand confirmed kills." That is patently ridiculous. It would be like writing a story about fighter pilots and saying some guy had shot down 1,000 enemy planes - all confirmed.

I'm surprised by the enormous amount of 5-star reviews this book received, because anyone who has read anything about the Wehrmacht and WW2 history in general would just laugh at this book and its 8th-grade level research and writing.

This book really surprised me in many ways. It begins in the modern USA with a boy going to visit his grandfather, who at first seems to be nothing more than an old man. When the boy and his grandfather go target shooting, the boy quickly recognizes that his grandpa is no ordinary marxman, as he nails one bullseye after another.
One thing leads to another, and the boy finds an old box of German war medals. Rather than being upset with the boy for snooping around in the attic, the old man decides that he should finally pass on the story of what happened to him during the war, so that the memory would live on.
At this point, the story goes back in time, to (I believe) 1938. The grandfather, Georg, is a young man in Germany. He is working at his mother's Bakery when he recieves a draft notification. The world suddenly changes for the baker as he joins the German Army and is trained to be a soldier.
Next comes the annexation of the Sudetenland, where young Georg rolls into Czechoslovakia along with thousands of troops. Not much happens here in the way of combat, but it is an omen of things to come.
A few months later, the army rolls into Poland in the first real blizkrieg of the war. Jeorg experiences combat for the first time as he picks off enemy Polish soldiers with extremely long-range shots with his scoped Kar 98K rifle.
The Polish campaign surprised me, as I have always been told that the Polish were incompitent soldiers, charging the German machinegun emplacements with cavalry. In Grandfather's Tale, the Polish cavalry behaves much differently. They dismount for combat and are very well armed and trained. The Poles also have an airforce (although a very outdated one), tanks and artillery. It is more the tactics of the Germans than their technological advantage that they prevail over the Poles.\
During the Polish campaign, Jeorg is befriended by a master sniper, named Ellis. This man teaches him tricks he learned during the First World War. The two of them make an amazing sniper team as they pick off enemies from hundreds of yards away, concentrating upon soldiers using heavy weaponry.
After the Polish campaign, Jeorg and Ellis join the Fallshirmjager, which is the equivilent to the US Airborne. As paratroopers, they participate in the taking of Eben Emael, the greatest single fortress in the world, which is located in Belgium. Here, a mere force of 85 paratroopers overcomes a garrison of 1500 men. This enables the remainder of the German Army to take Belgium and France.
Next the story moves on to the invasion of Crete, a small island south of Greece. Here, the English Army is waiting for Georg and his fellow paratroopers with a deadly trap, for they have already cracked the German Enigma codes. Though the enemy is waiting for them and thousands of their fellow paratroopers are killed, the Germans manage to take a small pocket on the island, enabling reinforcements to land on a newly captured, crater-filled airstrip.
Just when you think Georg and his buddies could not possibly go through anything worse than that, they are informed that they'll be participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union!
This begins with an enormous, 3-million man army thrusting into Soviet Poland (Since the Soviets took the eastern portion of Poland). Jeorg and the other snipers participate in battle after battle, moving ever closer to the capital, Moscow.
The army is bogged down in the mud, which dellays them for about a month. Only days after the mud begins to dry, the army is frozen in an arctic blast of cold, which freezes the mud, and everything else (including the oil in their tanks!). The Soviet counterattack is ferocious.
The harrowing Soviet campaign goes on for several chapters, as the soldiers fight in one horrific battle after the next. About two years after the innitial invasion, the paratrooper's division is recalled to Italy, to help in the defense against the American invasion!
When the Americans and British land in Italy, the now amazingly compitent soldier Georg begins to lead a squad of men in the defense of Italy. They lay mines, set boobytraps, and of course, shoot several enemy soldiers in a tactical retreat up the Italian mountains.
From here, they are moved into the army which attacks the Americans in the Ardennes, in what the Germans refer to as "Whact am Rhine," or the "Battle of the Bulge." Though the innitial attack fails, the paratroopers fight on the western front for several months.
Finally, Jeorg and his remaining friends (many were killed throughout the many battles in which they fought) are sent to the final defense of Berlin. In this battle, about 75,000 German soldiers, police and Hitler Youth attempt to hold off a Soviet army of some 1-million men! This very climactic final battle will not disappoint you, as it is as thrilling and suspensfull as anything ever written.
Check out Grandfather's Tale. I guarantee you'll love it.

Think of a John Wayne war movie. This is about as far away from Grandfather's Tale as you could possibly get. This book is all about the dirty little tricks of warfare. It's about snipers, and every dirty trick that they used in World War Two.
In one battle, Georg and his fellow snipers are shooting enemy heavy machinegun operators. In the next, they're killing the infantry protecting enemy tanks (enabling their fellow soldiers to overwhelm the armored vehicles with ease).

In brutal battle after battle, the realizm and intensity surprised me. I literally could not put the thing down until I had read every page. There's really nothing quite like it.

I play online WW2 games, including Call of Duty. Let me tell you, the tricks used in this book actually work. Things like the use of cover, keeping your sigts trained upon heavy weapons (waiting for the next poor sucker to try to use the MG) really work with great effectiveness. I'm not sure if the author played paintball or what he did, but he definitely did his homework when it comes to the finer details of small armed-combat.

The main character, Georg, starts out as a civillian baker, who is conscripted into the Wehrmacht just before the invasion of Poland. Gradually, in battle after battle, Georg learns more and more tricks of his trade. By the end of the book, he's a super-soldier who makes Chuck Norris and Rambo look like a couple of Boy Scouts.

These skills are put to the ultimate test when he is placed in the Battle of Berlin. I think something like 75,000 Germans were defending Berlin from about 1-million Russian soldiers. They managed to kill about 250,000 of them in a final, desperate stand of epic proportions. I had wondered for years exactly how they pulled this off but in Grandfather's Tale the battle and the many tactics used by both sides are highly detailed as the battle is played out between the two armies.

I also have to say that I kind of felt sorry for this man as I read this book. He was just working away in his mother's bakery one day, minding his own business. The next thing he knows he's being conscripted into the German Army, invading other countries and fighting to survive. His only thoughts are of home as he dodges bullets, mortars, artillery, grenades, mines and deadly hot and cold weather time and time again. It's a miriacle that any of the Germans who fought all six years survived, but surely many of them did.

The German's attempt to capture Moscow is yet another huge part of the book. I used to think it was the cold that stopped them, but actually it seems that the rain-soaked mud roads were a huge factor as well. The muddy conditions stopped Georg and his fellow German soldiers for two months as they sat poised to take Moscow. It's a good thing it rained so much or we'd probably all be speaking German right now.

When the Winter did hit, it froze the mud like concrete. German tanks were frozen in what had been mud the night before. What made matters worse, the Germans had no winter clothing! Despite this, they still manage to hold off the Russian counterattacks throughout the first Winter.

Anyway, it's a good book. I loved it.

I must admit, I'm not one who normally finishes books. I start them, become bored, and never finish them. I finished this one in one weekend. I was riveted.
Before I read this book, I never knew how hard the Polish Army fought against the Germans. I never knew that they had modern technology, such as tanks and planes. Every history book I had looked at only mentioned the Polish cavalry being slaughtered by German machineguns. This creates a completely wrong picture of how the Polish Army functioned. Their cavalry were elite soldiers, who merely travelled upon horseback and dismounted to fight. All of this is detailed in Chapter 5. This is but one aspect of Grandfather's Tale. There are simular in-depth details about the British, Russian and American armies as the main character describes fighting them in bullet-by-bullet detailed accounts of battle after battle.
It is a story both entertaining and educational, and one of my favorites.

I have to admit that I have a very short attention span when it comes to books in general. Erenberger's writing is fast paced and easy to digest. In fact, it's very hard to stop reading the book. My wife kept hollering for me to "put the book down" after I read it for three or four hours nonstop.
The descriptions of the many battles are so vivid and well done that they make you think of the many sounds, smells, and dangers which surrounded the soldiers as they fought. The closest thing It's like a mixture of Saving Private Ryan and War of the Rats. (Although where I found War of the Rats rather boring and lacking action in compairison to GT) It also covers a lot of battles which seem to have been "forgotten" in our history books, because they did not involve American soldiers.

If you want to see what the war was like for a front line soldier on the German side, read this book. It begins in the near future, when the main character is an old man. He hasn't ever told anyone what happened to him during the war. When his grandson finds a box of German medals in an old cigar box up in the attic, he decides to tell him the story.
From here, the book goes to 1937. Jeorg, the main character is conscripted into the German army. Details of training, swearing allegience to Hitler, the equipment he is issued, etc. are given in great detail.
After that the story goes to the invasions of Poland, Western Europe, Crete, and the Soviet Union. When Germany goes on the defensive, the main character fights in Italy, France, and finally (a very climactic) the battle of Berlin.

This is one of those books that hooks you after the first chapter and you can't put it down. This story had a very personal touch to it. To have lived thru the whole war and to have escaped from Berlin at the very end makes for some very interesting reading. I have been a WW2 history buff since I was a kid....This book is good, buy it and enjoy it!

There is no book that has better or more realistic gunfights in it, period. The book is kind of slow until about chapter five (the Invasion of Poland) and then WHOA! Hang onto your helmets WW2 fans, because it's non-stop action from there on. I can't even count the number of gunfights. There must be a hundred of them, and each one seems to be totally different. It makes you feel as if you are experiencing every artillery shell and machine-gun burst as Jeorg crawls through ruins and foxholes all over Europe. The Battle of Berlin is awesome!

I have read several novels about the second world war, including War of the Rats, Flags of our Fathers, and Enemy at the Gates. I found Grandfather's Tale to be many times more entertaining than all of these books. There are a lot of details about the war that I had never learned of from any other source. These include details about the assault upon Eben Emael (a fortress in the mountains of Belgium, which was taken by German paratroopers), how the invasion of Crete was a trap set by the British, and how it was the mud, as well as the ice and snow which slowed the advance on the Russian front. There are also a lot of details about the defense of Italy and the Battle of Berlin. I had never studied these before, and found them to be quite fascinating. The worst thing I can say about it is that you cannot put the book down.