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Well this is really something. It really is. This book is so powerful. It's not an easy read, but it's really, really good.
At times it is incredibly graphic and it is a lot to grapple with - but then there is a lot to think about about what happened to the men who fought in for the Nazis once the conflict was over - and how to reconcile their actions during the war with after. A complete page turner that gives you a lot to think about.

We all know what WWII was like from the British view point, but have you ever wondered what it was like to be on the losing side? I have many many times. My mother & father have told me many things about what it was like for them and their families during the war.
When did the German soldiers realise that they were going to loose this war? How did it make them feel? Well this book gives us an insight in to one German soldiers experience.
4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

An ARC /netgalley (published UK May)
In this novel a British grandson annotates the moving letter of explanation by his German grandfather, describing a key incident from his participation in the retreat from the East in WW2. The chaos and dehumanization of a terrible campaign are movingly told.
Less effective (at least for me) was the philosophical debates on the nature of German guilt vs shame.

There was one –‘For all this we thank the Führer‘– that had been plastered across pictures of new autobahns and factories in the Thirties. Now, whenever you saw the crashed fuselage of one of our planes, or a field so thickly strewn with our dead it was like a whole herd had been struck by lightning, someone would say, ‘For all this . . .‘

... I understood what we were doing to these Soviet women and their children when we took their food. I think about those women sometimes. I go downstairs to the Greek‘s, where the portions are too big for me, and half the souvlaki with the gravy-soaked pommes gets thrown away, and I think of them.
It sometimes feels as if they‘re standing there in some shadow of the restaurant, still watching me from the sidelines.