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The Good Soldier: From Austrian Social Democracy to Communist Captivity with a Soldier of Panzer-Grenadier Division "Grossdeutschland" Paperback – October 8, 2002


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The Good Soldier: From Austrian Social Democracy to Communist Captivity with a Soldier of Panzer-Grenadier Division "Grossdeutschland" + Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS + Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: The Aberjona Press (October 8, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0966638999
  • ISBN-13: 978-0966638998
  • Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 4.8 x 7.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #319,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Highly recommended...complements Black Edelweiss and Into the Mountains Dark." -- Armchair General Magazine, September 2005

"[Novotny's] wartime experiences…come vividly to life…{His] sharply etched memories…are compelling in their detail." -- The Peoria Journal-Star (27 October 2002)

About the Author

In the mid-1950s, Fred and his wife emigrated from Austria to the United States. Starting on the wait staff of a hotel in Springfield, Illinois, he eventually rose to partnership in a series of luxury hotels in Illinois and Iowa, and was elected President of the Illinois Hotel Association in 1973. He and his wife, Lisl, have a daughter and two grandchildren, who reside in Toronto.

Customer Reviews

I just finished listening to the audio version of this book.
Anne E. Logan
His story is a quick read packed full of interesting tidbits that made it hard for me to put down.
Karl Hartman
In `The Good Soldier', Alfred Novotny reminisces about his life.
The Terr

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 87 people found the following review helpful By James C. White on November 11, 2002
Format: Paperback
The stark realities of World War II need no embellishment, but do require explanation to be more than numbing accounts of dramatic events in an increasingly remote and unfamiliar era. In "The Good Soldier," Alfred Novotny focuses on the sometimes brutal, often sad, but always revealing events of his wartime experiences, wrapped meaningfully and engrossingly within the context of the rest of his life.
Growing up in a working class Austrian Socialist family during the depression era, at 14, Novotny learned something of the brighter side of life in his work as an apprentice server in an exclusive Vienna restaurant. Before long, Novotny found himself drafted into the German Labor Service and ultimately, the German Army's most elite division.
Novotny's images of military life and war are at once haunting and full of vitality. He describes the fiercely demanding training he received in the recruit depot of the "Grossdeutschland" Panzer-Grenadier Division during which two of his fellow trainees committed suicide. In his foxhole at the front, he is joined by a brand-new replacement who has barely uttered his name in greeting before he is immediately blown to pieces by a Soviet artillery shell. Sent home on leave after being wounded, the author is reunited with some old friends from the restaurant, one of whom has lost a hand in combat, another an arm, and another both legs. Novotny tastefully and humorously recounts the intense drive of the life force in fleeting moments of lovemaking that occur amidst the desperation and deprivation of war.
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful By "charic" on September 15, 2003
Format: Paperback
I am fortunate to know Fred...or so I thought. His soft Austrian accent adds so much to his saga. His ever present awkward gait that has been with him like so many memories I now understand. Always sincere, pensive and with an instrospective intensity he writes as he speaks.
It's not history retold from the 'other side's' perspective that redefines ones attitude. It's that one is reading what amounts to the diary of an Austrian German boy soldier in Hitler's army whose purpose was the exact opposite of every Allied soldier who told their story. Thousands of 'good soldiers' spent horrible periods of time in battle, in hospitals, as prisoners in war camps, or sadly prisoners of their own minds and memories. Novotny's only bitterness is aimed not at his military foes and blended with purposeful stealth into the late stage of his book.
The unabashed honesty of Fred's story is compelling and civilian as well as military. As a young waiter before being drafted he describes how he and several coworkers essentially steal some famous salami. They get found out, each slapped in the face and Novotny gets three weeks in the potato cellar. Like the rest of his story there is no faux remorse. He relates the salami saga because it says something about him; what that means he leaves to the reader.
In a 'dacha' in Russia they find an American Gramophone and one 78rpm record. Schockingly it happens to be one of his favorites, "Stormy Weather". This eventual American Austrian loved Harry James and Louis Armstrong.
Describing how that left leg was wounded he mentions that there were 8 other bullets hitting his equipment including his helmet he didn't get far enough into the hole he was digging. Many a 'hero'have conjured up details of great bravery.
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40 of 42 people found the following review helpful By Townsend on January 15, 2003
Format: Paperback
"The Good Soldier" is the memoirs of Austrian WWII soldier Fred Novotny. The book's introduction starts off with the proverbial Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times!" Novotny certainly had his share of "interesting times" and it is a tribute to his resilience and fundamental goodness of character that he manages to come out all right in the end with his dignity, humanity and sense of humor intact. This is a story of overcoming great adversary with a happy ending.
Unlike most WWII memoirs, which begin suddenly in 1939 and end abruptly in 1945, "The Good Soldier" spans practically Novotny's entire lifetime. It begins with his childhood in Socialist Vienna, and continues without respite through the Anschluss, his service in the German Labor Service (RAD) and as a machine gunner with the elite
"GrossDeutschland" armored infantry division, his postwar years in a Soviet prison camp, his return to freedom and eventual emigration to the USA, where he ultimately finds peace and personal success.
The book isn't full of "combat erotica" but there are enough anecdotes to get a good sense of what life in the Third Reich was like and how terrible war and the postwar peace could be. The RAD experiences in particular are very interesting, since there is little information published in English about this German paramilitary organization.
Novotny's descriptions of life as a "GrossDeutschland" soldier and the Soviet penal system are fascinating as well. The reader will doubtless be amazed at Novotny's good fortune through some pretty grim situations - as he was himself!
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