How It Was

At once a scandal and a critical success in its native Germany, this novel fully merited translation into English as a sturdy contribution to the small body of worth-while fiction that has been inspired by World War Two.

It is easy to understand why its objective picture of the Wehrmacht scandalized the traditionally-minded Germans, and even easier to understand the book’s wide popularity. It is alive with passions and exciting action, while the author himself is dispassionate. He writes of heroism without heroics, of human evil without bitterness. He tells a story that is far removed from the commonplace, day-by-day realism of many military chronicles; a story that may be fairly described as sensational, but is solidly grounded in knowledge of the subject in hand, painfully acquired from 1941 to 1945 on the Eastern front (where Heinrich was wounded five times and, in victory and defeat, marched over some 8,000 miles of Russian soil).

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About the Author

Ben Ray Redman

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At once a scandal and a critical success in its native Germany, this novel fully merited translation into English as a sturdy contribution to the small body of worth-while fiction that has been inspired by World War Two.

It is easy to understand why its objective picture of the Wehrmacht scandalized the traditionally-minded Germans, and even easier to understand the book’s wide popularity. It is alive with passions and exciting action, while the author himself is dispassionate. He writes of heroism without heroics, of human evil without bitterness. He tells a story that is far removed from the commonplace, day-by-day realism of many military chronicles; a story that may be fairly described as sensational, but is solidly grounded in knowledge of the subject in hand, painfully acquired from 1941 to 1945 on the Eastern front (where Heinrich was wounded five times and, in victory and defeat, marched over some 8,000 miles of Russian soil).