War Diary 1941-45: A Report

Dirty, drudgery, disease, and death... the lot of the infantryman. Though fifty years have passed, anyone who served during World War II will bear his memories to the grave. Ernst Kern is on such man, and in his War Diary 1941-45: A Report, he offers the insights of a boy who grew to manhood in such an environment; but it is a side of the story not often heard - that of a German soldier.

Amid some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, the Ukraine, Caucasus, and Carpathians, a young Kern received his indoctrination into man's inhumanity to man. Waste, destruction, suffering, loyalty to one's comrades, and the often dim hope to survive this terrible war, these were the watchwords for Kern and his comrades, not glorious Wagnerian tales of the Fatherland. These are his words as Kern wrote them, translated here by William H. Kern and Ursula Hoede, a poignant testimony to the nadir of civilization as we know it.