Customer Reviews

A Thousand Shall Fall: The Electrifying Story of a Soldier and His Family Who Dared to Practice Their Faith in Hitler's Germany

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are a Christian you HAVE to read this book.

Okay, lets imagine you have problems. No, I mean REAL problems. You're Christian, good.. But let's say you're a Christian in Germany at the beginning of WWII. HITLER's Germany!. Not too bad?? Well, how about if you are one of the first to get drafted into HITLER'S ARMY?? Not bad enough?? How about if your request to be a conciencious objector is DENIED. Bad enough yet? How about facing persecution for your beliefs? Most of us in Modern America can't understand what that is. But Franz Hazel knew well. Forced to be a soldier in the front lines of Hitler's army, he vowed to stay true to his beliefs and his God. What would you do if Hitler told you that you had to fight for him and his ambitions that you believe are evil, but your God says "Thou shalt not kill" What WOULD you do? How much would you risk to avoid going against your concience? Would you risk yourlife? Franz Hazel did when he threw away his gun so he wouldn't be tempted to kill in the heat of battle. And again when he went ahead of the Gestapo, warning the Jews of what was comming. He risked everything to stay faithfull to his God. But the awesome thing?? The more faithfull he was to his God, the more faithfull God was to him, protecting him, unarmed in the front lines of battle, and his family back at home as they face starvation and social persecution. This book will uplift your spirits and give you a greater faith in God. A book that you won't be able to put down once you pick it up, it is as exciting as any action flick while being 100% true. After reading this book, you'll understand what it really means to be a Christian. To risk it all and trust completely in God. Not to be missed!!

If the worth of a book is in how it effects you then A Thousand Shall Fall gets five stars. I read it three years ago, and it continues to affect my life. My children now 11 and 14 have each read this book through four or five times, and consider it one of their utmost favorites. It's impact in strengthening their resolve to do what is right continues. My wife reads a couple hundred books a year, but rates this has one of her all-time favorites.
Based on the true story of a young German drafted into the Nazi army, an army and a nation that are in the wrong, he must follow God faithfully.
If Schindler is valued for saving his population of Jews, Hasel deserves much more for the Jews he saved.
You will be amazed at how God continues to work in miraculous and true ways even in the midst of World War II.

A gripping story that moves at a steady pace. It is well written and the narrative switches in a synchronised way back and forth, between the wife and young children living in blitzed Frankfurt, and the father who had been drafted into Hitler's army and sent to the front.

Being a 'child of the blitz,' and having been raised on a diet of WW2 stories, I found this one to be different, in that it was about a Christ-centered family who were in the midst of the terror and violence of the war, but who defied the Nazi authorities believing that God would protect them. I stand in admiration of their decision to be faithful to Christ despite the threats and possible consequences. They were faithful to God and He proved His faithfulness to them. The divine interventions in time of crisis, were awesome. Read this book and be inspired never to compromise your faith for fear of men.

I just read this whole book today. The book is fairly well-written and reads easily. The main theme I took away from the book is just how awesome God is in how He sovereignly arranges the affairs of our lives and leads us through very difficult times. It's apparent in this story how God, in His mercy and love, arranged the events of the lives this story recounts.

It was particularly refreshing to read a story about those suffering persecution for their faith in Nazi Germany who were not Jews, but Christians families struggling with the persistent peer-pressure of their friends and neighbors. Further, it was nice to see an honest account of American behavior towards the Germans that included the not so nice stuff that was done under the banner of he American flag. It's very easy to believe that Americans served only in a redemptive capacity during WWII and miss the fact that many atrocities were committed at the hands of American GIs too.

The story is about a seventh day adventist (SDA) family. It could just be me, but I detected a tone in the story, or an implied hint that God was faithful to the characters because of their dutiful keeping of the Sabbath rather than due to His loving nature and rich mercy. Now, before you flame me for my comments, let me just say that I do see in scripture how obedience to God in the face of difficulty pleases God (ie. Daniel,Joseph, etc.), however, this book seems relate the the law-keeping of the family involved to the miraculous way God intervened and less on God's compassion afforded to them due to being in Christ. Every miracle seemed to be credited to that right way of living. This seems to be in contrast to what the apostle Paul writes in Romans 4:4-5. There are a few instances where it seems that the writer indicates that the sabbath keepers were spared where everyone else was not as if God only spared the faithful. This is not unexpected given the traditional SDA view that only those whom follow SDA teaching are the "true church" and right with God. Again, I know many SDAs do not hold this view, however I do believe that Ellen White did hold this view and many today still do. Please don't read my comments to be anti-SDA. I believe that God loves them as much as anyone else! There's only one body of Christ and it has no denominational label or associated pet doctines. The basis of our salvation however is the sufficiency of Christ's death on our behalf, not our faithfulness to honor the 7th day sabbath.

That said, I would still buy the book again and still found it to be an encouraging, thrilling testimony to God's mighty hand! I wish there were more stories from this time in history of how God preserved other Christians.

At the beginning, the author states that she is taking some liberties with characters, etc., the usual things authors do in order to better tell the story. No issue there.

It can't be later than 1941 in the book when Moroccan forces invade and devastate a Black Forest village that the family has left just the day before. Now there were in fact Moroccan and Algerian forces attached to the French forces, but the invasion of Germany proper began end of 1944/beginning of 1945. It would have been that much later that Moroccans attacked anything in Germany. In WWII, the entire war changed in the meantime.

That does not take away anything from God's work and protection and the family's faith which is inspirational (albeit, sometimes more focused on the being an Adventist than a follower of Jesus Christ). However, taking liberties to the point that the personal story disconnects from history in general does more damage to the story than simplify anything.

I have not finished the book yet, and while the story itself has me curious about the rest, I wonder whether I would find more inaccuracies. I understand that such a story is hard to tell in all details, but when there are obvious things that are wrong, you are left wondering a bit.

I read this fast moving book in 3 days and can't say enough good things about it.

The story is about the adventures of a Christian man drafted into the German army in WW2, as well as the struggles of his wife and children to survive back home.

Page after page, they are confronted with obsticals and assaults upon their Seventh Day Adventist beliefs, where they must either stand up for their faith and trust God, or roll over and deny all or part of it. Each act of faith is, in turn, followed by a confirming act of God's provision and protection.

This would be a good book for teens, whether Christian, non-christian, Jewish - any teen, because it shows people standing up for what they believe is right, against what's popular and accepted by the masses, even though they must endure hardship and ridicule.

Susi Hasel Mundy writes of her own family experience during the terrible years of Hitter's reign in Germany. She tells in her book A Thousand Shall Fall of her father's reluctance to fight in Hitler's war for empire. As a Seventh-day Adventist her father Franz Hasel wanted nothing to do with Hitler's promises of a new Germany.

Franz Hasel's family life was suddenly turned upside down when he was drafted into Hitler's army. On the very day that Franz leaves in order to report for duty he bluntly informs his young son Kurt that Hitler was an evil man. "Hitler is an evil man," Franz tells him, "Never trust what he says. You must stay true to God and God only!"

Franz then gathers his children and his wife Helene in the family living room and reads Psalm 91 to them: "Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night; nor of the arrow that flieth by day; ...a thousand may fall at thy side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but is shall not come nigh thee." The family then sings the hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." These few short moments sets the stage for the theme of the entire book. Indeed a God acted as a "Mighty Fortress" to the Hasel family. And indeed thousands died around them as Hitler's war wore on. Yet at the end God brought the Hasel family back together again.

Hasel relates the story of her own birth during the war. She tells how hours after her birth an air raid forced her mother and three siblings to flee from their house to a bomb shelter. Her mother--having just given birth to child--was forced out of the home on a dark night. The family was forced to flee to a nearby air-raid shelter where they spent the rest of the night.

Franz Hasel was often the brunt of jokes in the Nazi engineer regiment that he was in. They often mocked him for his Christian beliefs and absolute refusal to break his Sabbath. Being a Seventh-day Adventist Franz acknowledge the Lord's Day on Saturday--the same day as the Jewish day of rest. This of course created another problem in Hitler's Germany where any suspicion of being a Jew resulted in distrust and often worse. Franz was belittled by the mean Lieutenant Peter Gutschalk who tried many tactics to humiliate Franz.

This book is ranked in my mind next to Corri Ten Boom's The Hiding Place in its distinctly Christian message. It is also interesting to read a real-life story about a family living in this tumultuous time in Germany. Our society often looks on the German army as the "bad guys",or at least Hollywood does. A Thousand Shall Fall gives its readers a glimpse at Hitler's Germany that is not often seen. It is the story of a fine Christen family and how God preserved them through the struggle of World War II. This book was indeed an adventure story well worth reading!

"A Thousand Shall Fall" is indeed an inspirational story of a WWII German soldier, Franz Hasel, and his family who maintain their faith and morality as best they can in the most difficult of times. I found the tale, written by Hasel's youngest daughter who was born during the war, to be thoroughly enjoyable, uplifting, heartbreaking and an extremely easy read. The obstacles that Franz had to deal with while serving in Russia and that his wife, Helene, and their children regularly confronted in Germany are dramatic and suspenseful, and their commitment to their beliefs through it all is a powerful testimony to what is good and admirable in humanity.

Their story is written in a direct and even simple manner, but also from a rather sentimental and I'd say romanticized point of view. The instances of the family's certain failings (they are human, after all) and stumbles with their faith, and their reactions to the events surrounding them are very rare and relatively trivial in degree. The book seems to combine the basic truth of their journey with a bit of myth and perhaps even fantasy. For example (and hopefully without giving too much away), while I have no doubt that there were instances where American soldiers committed unsavory acts during the war, I found the chapter where US soldiers place the village women and children in peril of their lives to be improbable at best, and the soldiers' reaction to the resolution of the situation to be too sentimental to be accurate.

As to the Hasel family's faith and their view of their relationship with God, I found them to be very human in their "willingness" to box God into the kind of God that was most relevant to their circumstances and their own views. Their zealous adherence to Sabbath keeping and the avoidance of pork is both admirable and yet questionably dogmatic (as it relates to scripture and the teaching of Christ). It is also revealing of the egocentric point of view we all struggle with that when Helene and the children are on the only train car that is saved from destruction (from Allied bombers) while traveling out of the city she praises God for protecting her and her children. Surely their were people in the other train cars who were also praying for God's protection and yet died in the attack, as well as non-believers and even "bad" people who were saved in the train car along with the Hasel family. This is not to say that the Hasel's were foolhardy or wrong in their beliefs, only that their view of God seemed somewhat limited in scope at times, which is of course a very normal limitation we all share.

This book might make for a fine small group study and topic of discussion.

This book is a very easy read. I had a hard time putting it down. The story was very inspirational and gave me hope in this crazy world. It was absolutely amazing what this family went through, how they survived and depended on God for EVERYTHING!
I would highly recommend this book.

The story of this family is what brings me inspiration when I am down. There are so many books concerning the Bible and what it says. So many "self help" and self serving books regarding the "christian lifestyle" that it becomes mind boggling at all the nonsense being written. Books of this literary style are what re-enforce my faith in the Lord and God. This is real world living in a pool of chaotic hell. They stood up to the Nazi party. They ran and hid and stood face to face with evil that is humanity. If God were to write a new book for the Bible I think that these people or their lives would appear in the pages and words. Herr Hasel read through the Bible 89 times during the course of his life. They took the word of God at it's most literal meaning. You will see times of doubt and unfathomable pain and fear. God protected them through it all. You want to read about WWII and the suffering of people? Read this book. Experience the war crimes committed by both sides of this war and the innocence caught in the struggle for domination. In our day and time America lives a lifestyle of "feel good, then do it" mentality. Unfaithfulness abounds in every corner of our collective household. Frau Helene and Herr Franz stayed faithful to their vows of love one another and become one flesh. They were separated for so long. I hope one day in heaven I can meet this family and say thank you.