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Siege: A Novel of the Eastern Front, 1942

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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.

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.

"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.

This is an unexpectedly fine book. Though closely based on history, it's far from the usual rehash. At first Schneider's style seems clumsy, wordy, repetitious, but as it grows on us we discover that it's ideally suited to explore the strange psychological, even spiritual, states experienced by his characters -- starving, freezing, exhausted soldiers dragooned into serving mad dictators and plunged into hellish battles. If you read "Siege," you'll feel haunted by it long afterward.

This is a novel about German soldiers trapped in the Cholm pocket and (subsequently) at Velikiye Luki in the Soviet Union during 1942. If there is a better example of historical fiction about the Eastern front written in English, I don't know what it is. This novel is outstanding. The story focuses on two soldiers of the German Army (Heer, not SS) who are initially trapped in Cholm, escape when the city is relieved, only to be trapped again in the even more brutal Velikiye Luki. Several thousand German troops were trapped in Cholm and resupplied by air until the siege was lifted. It was the success of this resupply effort that led, in part, to the disastrous attempt to resupply the besieged troops at Stalingrad (much more numerous and distant) by air. A reinforced regiment was surrounded at Velikiye Luki some months later. If you want to know how it ends, read the book. Mr. Schneider has written several other works of fiction about the Eastern Front (many of which are now difficult, if not impossible to obtain), and it is clear that he knows his subject matter.

The strongest part of this novel is that it describes what it really meant to be on the front line in the East for those of us who are now several generations removed from the events. One gets that thought that with a slight change of narration, this could be changed from fiction to autobiography. Much of the novel is introspective, as we follow the growing fatigue, disillusionment, and desperation of the soldiers, although there is no shortage of desperate fighting as well. Finally, I found the ending to be particularly well crafted.

As purely historical fiction, literary considerations aside, this novel is top notch. You will learn a great deal about the tactical and operational aspects of both of the battles/sieges described in the book. Reading this book immediately inspired me to purchase `Deadlock Before Moscow' by Franz Kurowski. There is also a level of realism, detail, and historical accuracy in this work that is lacking in virtually the rest of the genre (e.g. Sven Hassel).

In short, if you have any interest at all in the events of the War in the East (either casual or serious), don't hesitate to buy this book.

An amazing book! A great book. Siege is not simply a war story. Schneider is a philosopher. He writes on the grand scale of history, suffering, courage, and the struggle between man and God. Siege ranks with All Quiet on the Western Front and with Cross of Iron by Willi Heinrich. This book should satisfy both war enthusiasts and anyone who appreciates great literature. It is a story of a handful of soldiers caught in a power struggle between thoughtless, inhumane regimes and struggling to stay alive and sane in a vast, wartorn landscape. Russ Schneider's descriptions of the endless Russian landscape compare with Cormack McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I've never read better descriptions of landscape and its effects on the psyche. Chapter IV begins "The small sun bulged like an aneurysm in the thin line of red stretched across the horizon.....The earth-the stomped ruins of Cholm and all the rest of the earth-was nudged tight against the vacuum of space, the normal gradations of the atmosphere sucked away, gone." The sardonicism of the character Kordts matches the bleakness of the landscape. You will care about these characters and hate to finish this book. It's not to be read just once. Out of the material of war, how many writers can elevate the spirit, rend the heart, and create something beautiful.

"That war should be so terrible..." is an apt a description as one reader left above, as any in the description of "Siege: A Novel of the Eastern Front, 1942". Russ Schneider has created a masterpiece that will continue to haunt the reader well after the book is finally put down. As only a reader I can only say that I am unsure about whether I could ever endure another reading of it, such is the subtle terrible power contained in its narrative. This book evokes palpable feelings of dread, misery, frustration, biting cold, and its slow unending grind towards the ultimate destruction that was the total war on the much forgotten Ostfront. There is little or no let up, and the end is inevitable even during the brief passages concerning the soldiers on their furlough back from their first ordeal at Cholm.

Schneider has created such a story that is as involved and captivating as any bestseller. That this book was written almost without fanfare altogether, and sits absent from most East Front collections, or even any anti-war collections, is a travesty. This book deserves a place besides Heinrich's "Cross of Iron", Sajer's "The Forgotten Soldier", and Muller's "Juggernaut" (another forgotten, yet superb novel -just ignore the laughable 70's USA "anti-commie" pulp themed paperback cover). Schneider's ability to weave his story has almost a dreamlike quality to it as he carries, drags, or even scrapes his characters bodily over the unrelenting carnage and wholesale slaughter. Furthermore, Schneider's knowledge of the German situation on the Eastern Front is impressive to say the least, and the details and historical background to the conflict contained are meticulous.

Finishing this book is akin to being dragged headfirst through a charnel house. It's powerful, shocking, cruel, and miserable, leaving its fatalistic story burned white hot into the reader's mind. A discovered masterpiece, just brace yourself before undertaking it's uncompromising and demanding journey into the forgotten ice and death of the Eastern Front.

This amazing novel is much more than just a battlefield novel. From the opening scenes, it reveals the horror and brutality of war in general and the Eastern front in particular. Schneider manages to get inside the heads and hearts of these German soldiers, and the result is a powerful and at times painful narrative that is worth every effort. I highly recommend this novel of men under unimaginable circumstances and stress.

I think the thing that most affected me about this novel was the way in which the book places you, the reader, in the moment.

Some reviewers have commented on the occasionally clumsy prose in the book, but to my mind it adds to the authenticity and was purposely intended as such. Not knowing anything about Russ Schneider, I do believe he intended to write the book with such language, intending the prose to echo the thoughts and thought patterns and emotions of the men being described, the language reflecting the way those men would have written it at the time the events were occurring (or perhaps just shortly after).

To illustrate my point - read passages that take place during the events at either Cholm or Velikiye Luki, describing the thoughts and actions and condition of the enlisted men who form the backbone of the story, and you'll see repetition, and a grunting, blunt, almost exhausted prose, just like the men themselves would've felt. Now, read the epilogue, which describes a visit between the commanding General Scherer to an author writing about the events of Cholm many years after the fact, and you see smooth, flowing, but still haunted language - much calmer, but still affected by the events of so many years ago. Again, just like the character whose thoughts and actions are being described at the time and setting in which they are occurring.

To my mind, that's the real genius of the book. It puts you in the actual event(s) by shaping its own language such that, by reading the prose itself, as well as the quoted words and thoughts of each character, you are thinking, and feeling, like those who actually experienced it. That alone is worth the read. Combine that with the research and historical knowledge of events that Schneider obviously had, and this book is one of the best books, on any war, I've read.

However, don't expect this book to beat you over the head with a message, and there is no `Hollywood ending'. I left this book feeling empty in large part, and wondering about the pointlessness of the events contained within - which, again, I truly believe is the point Schneider was trying to make. The people in this book - Germans, Russians, soldiers, civilians, officers, enlisted - are none of them able to control their surroundings or the events that occur in the book, and all of them end up simply dealing with, or succumbing to, those events. All of the individuals in the book, character or not, are victims, every one of them, and the book brings home that futility better than almost any book I've read except for perhaps All Quiet on the Western Front.

The late Russ Schneider's scholarship and passion for this forgotten theater of WWII permeate his masterpiece. Through his all-seeing lens, we are drawn reluctantly into the blood-soaked maul of the Eastern Front.

The major events are historically accurate, and it matters little that Schneider's characters - officers and foot soldiers, Germans and Russians alike - are fictionalized. As they ready themselves for battle and almost certain death, they draw the breath of life. We experience their inconsolable fears, their unimaginable hardships amid the shelled landscape and existentialist horror of burned, eviscerated comrades.

It would be premature, a disservice to Russ Schneider's legacy, to compare his tale with the established literary canon of wartime courage and futility. Surely, with the passage of years, as more and more readers discover this fine book for themselves, "Seige" will be identified as an incomparable classic.