books:

	Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS Johann Voss The Aberjona Press, 2002 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 58 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Even more than the strictly military narrative, however, the author has crafted a searingly candid view into his own mind and soul. As such, Black Edelweiss is much more than a "ripping yarn" or a low-level military history. Black Edelweiss joins not only the growing body of German military memoirs, but the more select, more narrowly-focused group of personal memoirs by other Waffen-SS enlisted men. Beyond the microcosmic view of combat these books relate?to the extent that they are honest and candid?such books are important for what they can reveal about their authors? motivations and reflections on those impulses and their consequences. To date, these works differ significantly.

As it joins the ranks of the books in this genre, Black Edelweiss makes a unique and very important contribution. It is a true, personal account of the author?s war years, first at school and then with the Waffen-SS, which he joined early in 1943 at the age of seventeen. For a year and a half, the author fought as a machine gunner in SS-Mountain Infantry Regiment 11 "Reinhard Heydrich," mainly in the arctic and sub-arctic reaches of Soviet Karelia and Finland, and later at the Western frontier of the Third Reich. The characters in the story are real, and the conversations and actions are recounted to the best of his ability from the short distance at which he wrote the manuscript in 1945?46.

Apart from the piercing insights into the question of why the German soldier fought as he did, what makes this book truly unique is the author?s anguished, yet resolute examination of the dialectic between the honorable and valorous comportment of his comrades and the fundamentally reprehensible conduct of about 35,000 men behind the front lines who nevertheless wore the same uniform.

During his captivity, the author was assigned for a time as a clerk to a US Army Judge Advocate General?s Corps officer, and in the performance of his administrative duties, the author had access to the mounting reams of documentation of the Holocaust. His growing recognition of the involvement of Waffen-SS personnel in the monstrous crimes of that process caused him to dig deeply into his soul, to examine his most intimate and private motivations and thoughts, and to reevaluate the most basic assumptions of his life to that point. The author captured this process and the result in the notes which became this book.

Honestly, forthrightly, and courageously told, Black Edelweiss is a precious gift to historians and other students of World War II. It not only provides a glimpse into the attributes that made the German armed forces a formidable and tenacious foe, but squarely confronts the most painful issue facing German World War II veterans in general, and Waffen-SS veterans in particular.

Supported by 22 photos, 8 maps, and notes.

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I know how it was

This book is the memoir of a young German who in 1943 at the age of seventeen volunteered for the "Waffen-SS" (the military SS which was distinct from the political SS that ran the concentration camps) and subsequently served in the SS Mountain Infantry Regiment 11. He saw combat first at the Karelian front in Northern Finland against Soviet Russia and later at the Western front against the Americans and their allies. The memoir is the honest and accurate account of a brave soldier who sincerely albeit erroneously believed that he was fighting for a just and noble cause. It deals as much with the struggle between opposing armies which took place on the battle field as with the struggle between supposed duty and nagging doubt which took place in the author's mind.

I can attest to the honesty and accuracy of the author's account because I too was a German soldier and had similar experiences which I reported in my book "A Mind in Prison" (Potomac Books, Washington D.C., 2000). I also fought in Finland though not in Karelia but north of it directly at the Arctic Ocean. Having been equally inexperienced and idealistic as the author of "Black Edelweiss," I volunteered for military service in 1939 at the age of eighteen and went through the same struggle of the mind between supposed duty and doubt.

While reading "Black Edelweiss" I sometimes had the feeling that the author described my own experience. It was the same enemy, the same fight, the same landscape, the same cold, the same makeshift bunkers, the same insufficient rations, the same exhaustion, the same endless winter-night, and the same northern lights. Maybe the author experienced even harder fighting than I did, because the Waffen-SS was an elite corps which was always deployed where the fighting was the hardest. Nevertheless, I know how it was, and I have no doubt that the author is telling the truth.

When Finland surrendered in September 1944, the German troops in Finland began a long retreat to Norway, avoiding neutral Sweden. The author's SS-unit marched from the area East of Rovaniemy (the capital of Lapland) to the area of Tromsoe in Northern Norway and from there to a sea-port where they could embark on a troop transporter to Germany where they were urgently needed. My military unit took the northernmost route from Kirkenes to Hammerfest where we embarked on a troop transporter which took us to Narvik. Both operations
were exceedingly exhausting marches through the Artic night.

Whereas my unit remained in Narvik till the end of the war, the author's unit was moved to the Western front which in early 1945 was already within Germany's borders. There they offered the last resistance to an enemy which was far superior in terms of numbers and material. They fought as bravely as usual but after heavy losses finally surrendered, landing the author in an American prisoner of war camp.

The book is well written and documented with rare photos from the war in the Arctic. Since the author wrote his book immediately after the war while still being a prisoner of war, while I wrote my book more than fifty years later, the author does not completely come to terms with his fight for a criminal regime and with the hardships of a prisoner of war stemming from the collective accusations against the SS as a whole, whereas I had the advantage of having gained a soothing distance from the tragedy of WWII. But this difference diminishes neither his book nor mine. Each in its own way is a testimony before the court of history about brave young men who thought that they were doing their patriotic duty while in reality they were serving evil. The reader be the judge.

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Better Than The Forgotten Soldier

This book is excellent and far better than The Forgotten Soldier. The account is believable and in great detail, written sooner by the author than most memoirs are.


Boy soldier and SS innocence

The withdrawal of German SS troops from Finland to Denmark, when the Finns ended their resistance to Soviet pressure, is fairly well known. The impossibly short timetable the Germans were given to withdraw, Finnish attacks on withdrawing German forces, and the long retreat to northern Norway are not so well known. The author describes "his" campaign from the viewpoint of a well-trained, highly-motivated, teenage soldier who walked and fought all the way as a member of an SS mountain division. Later, as a prisoner of war, he was never identified as a member of, and so escaped the harsh treatment reserved for, the Waffen SS. Surprisingly, he became a clerk for an American war crimes tribunal member at Nuremberg. The author examines in this book the question of Waffen-SS war-crimes guilt, and so, justifiably from his position of relative innocence, joins an emerging genre that seems to attempt to rehabilitate the Waffen SS. Interestingly, he pursued a career at law, post war. This book suggests a separate legal and moral niche for the Waffen SS who were indeed "just soldiers, too", which, at Nuremberg, was judged not to be the case.

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A Gripping Tale of Obscure Battles

Most of us of a "certain age" have read at least a few major histories of World War II or about the Third Reich that would more properly be considered overviews. I have certainly read my share and more. Black Edelweiss is a more personal tale which takes the reader into the author's Waffen-SS unit and is written in such a way that one can imagine himself part of the scene.
Black Edelweiss is a gripping tale of obscure battles fought both in the remote backwaters of Finland and Karelia but also on the Western Front as Allied forces overwhelmed Germany. It is a tale of courage, idealism, loyalty, betrayal, and often super-human endurance. It is also the tale of one man's journey from being an idealistic recruit in the elite forces of his homeland to POW status where he is confronted with the reality of the enormity of his country's crimes.
Author Johann Voss intersperses stories of his service and his subsequent captivity with more personal stories of his family and his social milieu in such a way so that anyone who has ever served his country can identify with him on a basic human level. As for his membership in the SS, most fair-minded people understand that most members of that organization joined for the prestige of serving their country in an elite unit, not to commit war crimes.
Those hungry for the gritty details of history will be most satisfied after reading Black Edelweiss. It is an important addition to the edifice of our knowledge about World War II.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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recommendations

The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 & the Continuation War
My official Third Reich list
Books about German Soldiers
Essential WWII Memoirs
National Socialism