Customer Reviews

Loyalty Is My Honor

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As A son from a former radioman in a Panthertank from the 5th Wiking Panzerdivison Waffen-SS I was informed by my father about the discrepancies in the stories about WW2 and more specific about the Waffen SS. He served in Russia from 1941 until his surrender to the Americans in Austria and his biography that he left me tells the same story as all the other soldiers in this book. One of them, Jan Munk, beeing a friend of my father untill my father died in 2003.
For me it was enlightning to read these stories and place them in the same context as the story of my father. I grew up, torn apart between the history lessons on school and the stories of my dad. Everything looked so black and white in the opinion of most people and if you look deeper you will see that the world is not black and white but mostly gray. Black and white are on the far ends of a large field of gray. More and more people discover the truth about the Waffen SS, for instance the website www.waffen-ss.nl where you can find facts and figures of this legendary army part and where I found the title of this book under the subject Bad Tölz.

This book is one of the best books I have ever read on the Waffen-SS. The personal accounts give you a feel for what it was like to be a German soldier in WWII. It gives them a chance to express their experiences in their words and to tell their side of the story. It has that personal touch that so many historical books out there lack. I find the stories to be entertaining and provocative. Written in a chronological format with background information and personal photographs. If this is your area of interest then I would highly recommend you to read this book.

Finally in this country, one can read an un-biased book which presents the reality of the Waffen SS without having to read the words "evil" and "infamous" in every other sentence. Myths and facts are distorted by clueless writers and historians of the winning side. Mixing the holocaust and the german soldiers in the front has been the greatest after war propaganda campaign. I recommend this book to anyone that wants to know how Waffen SS fought in the front, how they interacted with prisioners of war,how they felt about each other, ..etc. Want to live in absolute brainwashed ignorance? Keep watching the History channel and their biased WII programs...

Short and brief: Great to see some new photos that have popped up from non-archive sources. Also very cool to read former ss soldiers' points of view. The author seemed to retain an objective stance, neither glorifying nor condemning these soldiers.

First of all, I would like to repudiate a claim made by two seperate reviewers. In one review, the delivery of a child to a Russian woman by a doctor attached to an SS unit was read as an attempt to generate sympathy. The reviewer failed to mention that the next morning this doctor was found with his throat slit as his group was ambushed by partisans.

Another reviewer states that the brevity of this book allows you to read it in an hour or two. That's nonsense. At 181 pages, there is no way one can read this book in a few hours. What makes this book unique from others on this subject is it is almost exclusively in the words of the SS veterans themselves. There is not a single page in this book that does not contain at least one picture, and while this does make for quick reading, it also gives you a more intimate look at this fighting organization.

The men who are interviewed and quoted on these pages may very well be suffering from selective memory. This is not a book for historical accuracy and analysis. Atrocities are rarely even mentioned, and the scope and detail of individual and unit actions on both fronts is vague. Yet this book provided me with a better understanding of the training and mindset of the average SS soldier, and the pictures accompanying every story is the reason for the 4th star of this review, as the belabored writing style did little to capture my attention. But I did gain a much more personal understanding of the individuals who made up these vaunted units, and the stories combined with the pictures make this book worth the price.

Though somewhat choppy in places, this book provides an interesting glimpse into the very controversal Waffen-SS. Through the recollections of Waffen-SS vets, the author paints a broad, but somewhat shallow, of life in this organization. Further, and perhaps most interesting, is the inclusion of a section on the war crimes committed by some Waffen-SS groups. It's interesting to hear what the men who served in this organization think of such atrocities. Somewhat expensive, but an excellent and informative book.

I enjoyed this book. It gave some good first hand acounts of the soldiers of the Waffen SS. These are views from frontline soldiers who experienced the fighting in Europe and the hell of the Russian front. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Gordon Williamson went quite "against the grain" with his work, 'Loyalty Is My Honor'. Instead of the cliche' generalizations and finger-pointing most associated with post-war books on the SS, Williamson decided to let the actual German SS men who fought, and died, tell their own side of the story, in their own words. Quite revolutionary! After finishing this book I was struck by the absolute determination, will and sense of brotherhood enjoyed within the ranks of Hitler's SS. Surely the world has never known a more disciplined fighting force. For WWII buffs, this book offers a very real, very uncensored glimpse into a section of history most people would rather forget.

IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED IN LEARNING HOW THE FIGHTING MEN OF THE WAFFEN-SS FELT ABOUT EACH OTHER, THEIR CAUSE, COUNTRY, THEN THIS IS THE BOOK YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. GREAT PICTURES AND COMBAT TALES! THESE FRONT LINE SOLDIERS TELL US ABOUT THEIR YEARS LONG SUFFERING ABOUT BEING FORGOTTEN BY THEIR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN AND MOST OF ALL, ABOUT BEING THOUGHT OF OR CONFUSED WITH THE CRIMINAL ALLGEMAINE SS (CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARDS AND GENERAL SS).A MUST.

Fascinating book. Read it cover to cover quickly. Liked seeing the photograph of the soldier on the same page as the quote from him telling of his Waffen SS experiences. Covered everything well. Never knew before about the atrocities the BRITISH and AMERICANS did in murdering prisoners of war after they surrendered or even after the war ended. Knew the Russians were barbarians in their after the war murder of prisoners, but this book lets us know that so were the other Allied troops.