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43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Human endurance amidst the horrors of war, November 4, 2004
This review is from: Siege: A Novel of the Eastern Front, 1942 (Hardcover)
Before he died in 2000 at the age of 43, Russ Schneider wrote four books set in the Russo-German front during World War II. In addition to "Siege" (released posthumously by the Military Book Club and finally available in paperback), he published two collections of short stories and the nonfiction "Gotterdammerung 1945: German's Last Stand in the East."
"Siege" is a bracing exception to the formulaic ardor that often plagues the genre of "military fiction": its captivating story erases the reader's knowledge of the historical outcome; the reluctant yet resolute soldiers are hardly superhuman; the writing manages to be both evocative and lyrical; and the author empathizes with the misery endured by the troops--without ever sympathizing with the German effort itself.
Even the prologue hints at the uniqueness of this work. Emaciated and wretched Russian prisoners are released from the Siberian Gulag, corralled into cattle cars, and shipped to the front, where they are chained to the inside walls of bunkers, handed guns, and forced to face the German onslaught. After this brief representation of the despair and terror of Stalin's human fodder, the perspective shifts to the German side for the remainder of the novel. Yet the vileness of the opening scene is so searing that most readers won't forget that, for the men forced to fight on the Eastern front, the brutality and senselessness of both sides are indistinguishable.
The majority of "Siege" is based on real events. In January 1942, Russian forces surrounded, trapped, and outnumbered troops under the command of Generalmajor Theodor Scherer--over 5,000 men--in the town of Cholm, where they held out for 105 days during one of the harshest winters on record. Six months later, Scherer found himself frustrated by another siege, in nearby Velikiye Luki, but this time he was on the outside, separated from the remainder of his forces.
While Schneider depicts Scherer as a benign if overburdened leader, the novel's nucleus comprises three fictional characters. The insolent Kordts and the garrulous teenager Freitag are the only men ensnared in both sieges. Freitag is the type of youngster who is liked, and protected, by everyone; the pair's odd friendship provides a shield for Kordts, whose coolness is viewed with suspicion by his superiors and fellow soldiers alike. During the second siege, the two men encounter Sergeant Schrader, who is drawn toward their magnetism, and Schrader's partiality for Freitag increases when his own companion is wounded and when Freitag himself is separated from Kordts. "Siege" is, above all, a tale about the resilience of friendship amidst great peril.
In the minds of all three men, both sieges take place, appropriately, in a geographical, political, and historical vacuum. For the most part, the troops in the trenches rarely knew what was happening in the world at large, and most German and Russian soldiers had little sense of the events that pushed them to slaughter each other. True--Hitler makes a cameo appearance, and the Holocaust is mentioned obliquely when Kordts encounters a group of SS officers sent to the front, but these token scenes seem obligatory rather than intrinsic to the story.
Because Schneider didn't live to see his work published, the prose occasionally has an unpolished taint--but it's never enough to overcome the brilliance of the work as a whole. Furthermore, a map and a short glossary would have been thoughtful additions, since the Russo-German front is alien territory even for those with a background in World War II history. Nevertheless, because the setting is so claustrophobic--taking place almost entirely within the confines of two small towns--readers who don't usually peruse military fiction should be able to follow the action without recourse to a reference shelf.
With historical accuracy, compassionate characterization, and (above all) a page-turning finale, "Siege" portrays the unthinkable limits of human endurance amidst the horrors of war.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hauntingly evocative book, June 1, 2006
Siege is an extremely powerful book that will continue to haunt you long after you read it. I'm not sure where I picked this up but I remember reading it on an airplane sometime last year. Despite that remove in time and space from this day, the images crafted by the author are still so vivid and stark they're seared in my brain like a retinal burn.
Siege relates the story of German soldiers trapped and surrounded in the Cholm pocket in 1943, the tipping point for the Nazi's in the war. Cut off from the rest of the German army for the winter, the story recounts the harrowing hardships the Germans face, and in some respects, the even more harrowing difficulties faced by the Russians besieging them. The sheer brutality of the fight, the pervasive cold, the lack of food, medicine or shelter, the incessant bombing.....all this is recounted in a numb and damaged voice of a soldier, so bone weary and exhausted there is not even energy left for self-pity or bitterness. A vioice and mind so drained by its environs that its greatest aspiration or thought is simply to continue existing by seeking warmth managing to live for another hour.
I thought as I read that the world known to these young men, which had before contained warm thoughts for parents, siblings, girlfriends, and had known cheer and health, this world had contracted from an infinite place to one the size of a pinhead in scope, confining only existence within it, with all else lost. The horrors of the siege had contracted their imaginations where those concepts so taken for granted by us had not only lost all power or comprehending, the soldiers didn't even have the strength to remember those things, let alone imagine or long for them. Seldom have I read any story of war more shockingly grim than this and yet still so memorable. The Russians and Germans contend with each other past all limits of my preconceived concepts of human endurance until they are both reduced to shambling corpses, ineffectually flailing at each other, with not enough sense to realize they are dead yet.
Then when the Germans are so far past hope of rescue, so far past even resignation to their fate that they are essentially going through the motions of defense simply through the power of rote training, they are relieved. In Hollywood, we would rejoice (except they are Nazi's) that the cavalry came to the rescue and with smug self-assurance pat ourselves on the back at how brave and strong and heroic our troops were to have held past all endurance and imagination of horror. Except this isn't Hollywood; it's the Eastern Front, one of the most grim and terrifying experiences ever created by man. So after a short leave the survivors are thrown back into the fray. The conclusion, when it comes, is as inevitable, foregone, and awesome as a monster redwood tree, cut at it's base, slowly, ever so slowly and by degrees, beginning to topple from the sky and then accelerating downward in an escalating kinetic rush of final power and destruction obliterating all in it's path. And so falls the mighty German army...slowly, slowly and then in an increasing rush, then a mighty implosion of arms, lives, blood, tears, and the death of dreams, hopes, and finally spirit.
There are moments of grace, silence, and beauty in this book, threaded through scenes of carnage and nihilism, enhanced by the simple direct prose, that simply have the power to haunt your mind for years. I highly recommend this book.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"A New German Paradise"..., November 5, 2006
"Siege" follows the experiences of three German infantrymen during the fighting in Cholm, Velizh and Velikiye Luki. It takes place from September 1941 to January 1943.
Schneider's knowledge of these campaigns is remarkable, as is his ability to fully develop and explore the inner workings of his main protagonists. Most war novels tend to be burdened by a predictable plot and cliched characters. Not so here. With the exception of Freitag, none of the Germans are easy to like and yet I couldn't help but to sympathise with them and to be greatly moved by their ordeal.
One thing I found particularly interesting was the ideology of the characters, or lack thereof. Other novels about the war such as "Kameraden", "Panzer Grenadiers" and "The Willing Flesh" tend to portray the Germans as being both broadly sympathetic to the ordinary Russians and passionately anti-Nazi. Not so with Schneider. Perhaps it takes a non-German to be able to look honestly at the nature and motivations of most of the Germans who fought in Russia. None of Schneider's characters are rabid Nazis, they definitely don't want to be there, but they feel little sympathy for their opponents.
There are some occasionally clumsy passages, but I found this to be a very trivial distraction from what is without a doubt the finest book I have ever read. I can't describe how I felt as I finished the final page.
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