Overview

We did not aim and fire our rifles for Adolf Hitler or National Socialism. We did it for our fellow comrade soldiers. At 17 years of age the German military seemed a wise choice to Karl von Metzger. Following enlistment he was sent to Radio School at Kiel to train as a wireless operator on a U-Boat. However, a shortage of radio operators changed his destiny by reassignment to the 2nd SS Das Reich Regiment. Karl participated in the invasion of the Low Countries and France in 1940 and believed in the cultural and historical significance of the war. A transfer to the 5th SS Wiking Regiment in 1941 took him to the Eastern Front where years of brutal combat and mindless suicidal orders forced him to question the political motives of Nazi Germany's war. While growing into manhood under barbaric hand-to-hand combat, merciless firefights and vicious artillery bombardments, Metzger clung to shreds of his boyhood innocence. He watched his comrade soldiers get pulverized by bombs and bullets until he abandoned his faith in the Third Reich with a resolve to survive the war. Metzger fought on the Eastern and Western Fronts through the harshest of conditions. Whereas the war began for him as a boy, it ended for him as a man. This is his story.

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9781432703226

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