Customer Reviews

Legion of the Damned (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

LEGION OF THE DAMNED, the first, most famous and ostensibly most autobiographical of Sven Hassel's fourteen World War II novels, doesn't really qualify as the start of a series. While Hassel himself serves as the narrator of all of his works, and many characters introduced here do indeed reappear in most or all of his subsequent books, the relationship between LEGION and the (more genuine) series of stories which followed it is only tangential.
For one thing, most of the aforementioned characters have died in battle by the time LEGION reaches its harrowing - and, in my own opinion, beautifully written - final pages, in effect rising from the grave to take up their roles in Hassel's later books. The tone of LEGION is likewise more somber, more sorrowful and far more intensely bitter than that of any of its "sequels," dark as they frequently are.
The lingering question of just who Sven Hassel is/was, and what if anything he did as a Danish Wehrmacht soldier during the Second World War, constitutes an intriguing mystery in its own right; but for the moment I'll take the man at blurb-value and assume that his alleged experiences in a penal battalion (to which he was sent after deserting the regular German army in 1939) are more or less genuine. He certainly crafts a hell of a story, regardless: LEGION and all of his subsequent books offer up an admixture of nauseous violence, slapstick humor, disillusioned nihilism and earnest longing which makes the Hollywood concept of "The Good War" look as silly, simple and manipulative as it really is. LEGION probably accomplishes this best, as the later books do tend to give their primary group of characters a sort of bulletproof, swashbuckling veneer which frequently undermines the quality of the stories themselves.
All of Hassel's books follow a set structural pattern: brief snippets of real-life wartime horror, running from a few lines to several pages, precede each chapter and are often (though not always) expanded and/or commented upon in fictional form therein. The characters - Hassel himself, the Old Man (Hassel's sergeant) and Porta (the rogue soldier), plus later additions like Tiny (the simpleminded giant), Heide (the Nazi) and the Legionnaire (no explanation necessary), kill vast numbers of people, steal and consume huge quantities of goods and ruminate over their luckless lot and the disgraceful politics which have brought them to it. It sounds formulaic, and indeed can get repetitive after a while; but there's no denying the profound power of the cumulative effect.
What is perhaps most refreshing and impressive about Hassel's books is the fact that he utilizes a group of Wehrmacht soldiers not as the fulcrum for yet another tired exposition of the evils of Nazism, but for an anlysis of the far greater and vaster evil of war itself - all war, at all times, in all places. To be sure, these men aren't heroes, nor even antiheroes in the sense we've come to recognize. They kill, spare and joke with equal ease, make life hellish even for one another and are always on the lookout for the least bit of gain. Much of their behavior, of course, is excusable in its context, but not all of it. As a result, we are left to contemplate the full complexity of war, and by extension the full complexity of man, as our ostensible protagonists alternately touch, amuse and repel us. This is a powerful experience, and if it doesn't always make for great literature it certainly never sinks to the level of potboilers.
LEGION OF THE DAMNED is ultimately about more than its author's identity or past, and should be read for what it has to offer as a book independent of war-buff minutiae. Those who appreciate its admittedly rough-edged message are advised to seek out other Sven Hassel novels for what is, I can assure you, one hell of a ride through the battlefield. Sehr gut!

The first half of this novel reads almost like a work of satire,
ridicule mixed with the horror of being incarcerated in a prison camp mixed with the humor of those who dared to defy the
regime with their own individualism. In the end, the Reich needed every man they could get regardless of their personal or political proclivities and the ensuing experiences form the second half of the book which is pure horror.

As a teenager I read virtually all Sven Hassel's novels and enjoyed them as good old war stories. But over the years my perception of things, as many of us find, changed and I recently wanted to re-read those books, so bought Legion of the Damned and went through the story once more, but with an extra 30 years of life behind me.

My recall of the sadness of it all was not misplaced. This story ultimately is a tragedy; not merely of the loss of many of the close friends and comrades of Sven as he struggles to retain some humanity throughout the madness of what he experienced, but also of the futility and waste of societies, human life and animals.

In many ways Legion is a two-parter. The first part concerns the processing through heartless camps designed to slaughter opponents of the fascist system, or even those unfortunate to evoke the wrath, envy or other slight, imagined or real, of those running the fascist apparatus. Hassel is a deserter who is caught and ends up in an 'extermination camp',to quote the commandant. He survives only to be put into a penal regiment, a force made up of criminals and outcasts, expendable individuals not wanted in the Nazi society.

Its almost impossible to comprehend the brutality displayed within these pages, almost a fictional scene its that alien to our ways and morals. But it happened. And as a social history it should never be forgotten lest it occurs again. Hassel's description of the treatment he and others received is not gratuitous or indifferent of prose - he witnessed and experienced it and this comes through the pages. It can only have come from the pen of someone who did.

Then the story switches to life in the penal regiment. Sven finds the comradeship of all those rejects of society warm, genuine and a saviour to his soul. Even though these men fought in the wehrmacht, I find I'm rooting for them to survive. Hated by their own political system and faced with death from an implacable enemy, Hassel and his friends battle to survive the slaughter of the Eastern Front. Their exploits are hilarious at times, frightening on other occasions. Of course, they begin to die one by one, and even when allowed home on leave, tragedy is never far away and two women he loves die - one by Nazi thugs, the other by allied air raid - and his circle of friends shrinks.

The book would appear to cover the years 1940 to 1944, and ends rather in the air. It doesn't end with the war's end, and with Hassel's own capture by the Soviets in Berlin in 1945 which happened for real. No, it ends on a train with Hassel and his commander shaking hands after a harrowing incident in 1944. I would have preferred Hassel to complete his story which would have closed the chapter on it all, yet somehow I feel slightly cheated by the ending. And in addition, the last couple of chapters appear rushed and compressed in comparison with what came before. I do know that Hassel was switched from Russian to American, British and Danish prisons in the 1950s when he wrote this story, so maybe this affected him.

Overall, a 4-star rating for a book that stands out in the series he wrote as being the most authentic and realistic. The rest would seem to be more of fictional novel type of stories and not as real as this one, which is why this stands out as the best in my opinion of the entire set Hassel wrote.

Hassel would have you believe that his books are based at least loosely on his own experiences on the eastern front, Erik Haaest suggests that this is far from the truth and that Hassel was a Nazi collaborator who never ventured outside Denmark. Who's correct I can't say, but some of the things that crop up in the text of various of the books cast doubt on the authors stance. For example he and the others are persistently dodging fire from or picking up Kalashnikovs, this would appear unlikely as the Russian army didn't equip with any Kalashnikov designed side-arms until 1947, making this rather difficult. He's also been known to "Load magnetic mines into a panzerfaust" The panzerfausts claim to fame was being the first disposable anti tank weapon, so this would appear to be an impossibility. These would appear to be the sort of mistakes unlikely from a serving soldier.
Taken as fiction it's an OK but brutal read as are all his books, just don't take them as factual.

If you want to know what hell on earth in Germany during the WW2 and the life of the Penal Batallion, read this book. This author was in most large German campaigns during the war and survived. I have found that this author's books, especially this one is an exciting beginnning to end in one read as you cannot put the book down because it is action all the way.

All of his paperbacks have been reprinted many times and it is about time they began to reprint them again so that we don't forget what war is all about- kill or be killed! There is nothing good about war and warriors!

"Born in 1917 in Fredensborg, Denmark, Sven Hassel joined the merchant navy at the age of 14. He did his compulsory year's military service in the Danish forces in 1936 and then, facing unemployment, joined the German army. He served throughout World War II on all fronts except North Africa. Wounded eight times, he ended the war in a Russian prison camp. He wrote LEGION OF THE DAMNED while being transferred between American, British and Danish prisons before making a new life for himself in Spain."

Is this true? How much time will people keep believing this? Anyway, it almost does not matter, because Hassel's books are sheer entertainment, if you can get by the gory situations, the almost complete lack of chronologyand lead characters as despicable as the "villains". But that's the "magic" of it: everybody in Sven's books are villains, be them Allied personnel, civilians, German. Not one single decision is made out of personal interest or the need to survive. Even so, once you are hooked by his books, you can't stop following Porta, Tiny, Old Man, Barcelona, The Legionnaire, Heide, Sven, Gregor Martin and the myriad other characters (many of them simply vanishing or appearing from book to book.

So, affter 14 books ("The Commisary" being the last and the worst!), he suddenly stopped writing. The royalties must be enough for him to earn a good living.

If any proof was still needed that his past a verteran soldier who fought in all the fronts is a hoax, llok no further thatn "Legion of the Damned". It's a blatant (I mean, really blatant) rip-off of the first world war classic by Erich Maria Remarque, "ALL QUIET ON WESTERN FRONT". Everything is designed to be the same, the pace, the dying of one by one of Sven's friend. Also, it's a history clearly with beginning and an ending. There was no serie sin sight.

But, success probably was great, and, all of a sudden, his pals come back to life in the next books! So, in addition to Old Man, Porta, Steiger, there comes Heide, Tiny, Barcelona. Things change so much in the next books (in writing style as well as stories) that they even seem to be written by different people. In a general manner, I think that the more recent books were worst than the first ones (my favorite is "Comrades of War", the third one).

So, enjoy "Legion of the Damned" by what it is: a World War Two novel, marketed as a World War II biography...

I have little to add to the excellent review by Richard Luhrs, other than to emphasize that this is a great anti-war war story. Legion of the Damned is the best of the series, and also the darkest (if that's possible). The book will haunt you for years. I read a borrowed copy 20 years ago or so, but I felt compelled to buy a new copy and read it again.

Hassel's Legion of the Damned was a disappointing read. It was more or less a justification for Hassel having been on the wrong side of history. He seems to be saying that the penal battalions were just victims of the brutal Nazi regime which may be true but the characters are so unsympathetic and end up being just as brutal as the Nazi and in the end the only difference between the penal battalions and Nazi battalions is that the penal battalions couldn't were the German eagle crest on their uniform.

Yes war is brutal and savage but give the reader someone to root for I couln't find anyone to care about in the entire novel.

The book is a riveting account from the inside of the Nazi war machine. It starts with the author's hellish life in a concentration camp and moves on to life in a penal unit. The two are not easy to read, but they do grab the reader's attention.

The Germans (or at least the ones in this book) are not the standard psychopath/murderer SS men we see in movies. They are human beings caught between a rock and a hard place. Many of them hate Hitler, his regime and his ideology. And yet, most choose to fight in his armies nevertheless. Whether that makes them more despicable than the SS men who truly did believe in what they were doing, I leave the reader to decide. Whatever one thinks about their moral choices, one has to admit that their situation was tragic.

The only thing I can reproach the author is the lack of information about certain characters and events. Human life, unlike fiction, does not follow a neat thread where there is a clear beginning, middle and end and all the questions are answered by the last chapter. The story does lack coherency, but this is not really a story per se but a recollection of experiences in a penal unit, so I don't mind. However, more information could be given about some people and events.

For example, the author talks about his relationship with Ursula, who was a great love of his life. He introduces her suddenly and without warning. By the time we meet her, the two are already lovers.

How did a private from a penal unit meet this women and how did their relationship came to be?

Then he talks about his captivity in Soviet Union and in a throwaway line mentions that he met a woman there who almost made him forget about Ursuala. Nothing is said about that relationship.

When Porta, a character second in importance to the author, dies, we are told nothing about circumstances surrounding his demise. But when Big Un dies, we get a long description.

Also, the story starts and ends suddenly, as if someone cut part of the film at the beginning and at the end. How did the author get join the army and why. How did the war end for him?

Was it really that difficult to provide this information, even if sparingly?

Despite those lacks, the story is powerful and fascinating. I recommend this book.

"Legion of the damned" is undouubtably the best book i have ever read.The style that Sven Hassel wrote this book is unique and graphic.
The story focuses on a doomed platoon of German soldiers on the western front in 1944, with Sven Hassel as one of them.
The story is about death, destruction and struggle.
"Legion of the damned" is a very easy book to pick up and read and very hard to put back down! I definetly recomend this book to anybody except the squemish as throughout the book there is a lot of fighting and killing.
The only negative point about "Legion of the damned" is that it is quite a depressing book (some parts nearly made me cry!)
DEFINETLY BUY THIS BOOK!!!