Customer Reviews

The Lieutenant Must Be Mad

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A less well-known novel than Night of the Generals (made into a box office hit in the sixties), but even more brilliantly written. A moving, psychologically believable account of a young, idealistic German officer who struggles to live up to the high standards his Nazi officers set for him - while simultaneously beginning to question some of the horror going on around him. I think it's important to understand what was life was like for true believers in Hitler's Third Reich. Perhaps it's even more important to understand how ordinary flesh and blood people get caught up in a system the rest of the world condemns as an utter abomination. Although many of us have a good grasp of the factual details (the leaders, battles, defeats, casualities, weaponery used) of the German army under Hitler, there are really no psychological or sociological studies of the soldiers who served under his Nazi generals. Fortunately this extremely well crafted work of fiction fills that gap.