A Stranger to Myself (Hardcover)

Thus begins Willy Peter Reese's "A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944. Winston Churchill may have said that history is written by the victors, but the recent discovery and publication of these memoirs provides some evidence that history's `losers' sometimes also have a chance to contribute. A Stranger to Myself is a valuable addition to our collective memory.

Willy Peter Reese was a recent high school graduate and a trainee bank clerk when he was drafted into the German army in the spring of 1941. The German invasion of the USSR, Operation Barbarossa, began during Reese's basic training. Like many of his fellow soldiers, Reese thought he would be home by Christmas. Reese was quickly disabused of this notion once he found himself in the middle of what may be the most brutal fighting in the history of humanity (or inhumanity). Not only was the war on the eastern front fought between armies but it was a war in which brutality was inflicted on the civilian population on an unprecedented scale. In addition to the Holocaust inflicted on the Jews of Poland, the Ukraine, and Belarus, millions of other Poles, Ukrainians, and Russian civilians lost their lives through hunger or murder, along with millions of Red Army and German prisoners. As noted so aptly in the Preface, Reese found himself in the "greatest abattoir in human history".

This memoir emerged in 2002 and represents the reflection of Reese on life in the abattoir. Reese kept a diary during his time as a soldier. He'd set out his thoughts on every scrap of paper he could find. He would write during lulls in the horror or sitting in an army field hospital after being wounded. He wrote long letters home to his mother and father. Sent home in late 1943 after being wounded, Reese took his diary and those letters home and turned it into a manuscript. He left his manuscript with his mother and returned to the front. He was killed in 1944. His mother kept all his documents as a shrine to her dead son. A Stranger to Myself was published in Germany in 2002 and has now been translated (very capably by Michael Hoffman) into English.

Reese was well-read and considered himself a poet. As such these memoirs are unusual for its florid prose. The writing is not terse but extravagant in its description of Reese' desperate mood swings during his time on the front. However, the ornate prose, which would seem utterly pretentious in a piece of fiction, serves as a stark and compelling contradiction to the horrors that Reese writes about. Reese does not spare himself. He is brutally honest about the loss of his soul, his absorption with the efficiency of killing and his own mistreatment of the civilian population. It may be asserted that Reese did not mention the Holocaust or go into any great detail about the atrocities he saw committed and perhaps committed himself during his time on the front. That is a fair enough comment to be sure. However, after reading this book it is clear to me that Reese's focus was not war on the grand scale but on the war and its effect on him. These are internal, not external reflections. He, like virtually ever other soldier, was concerned first and foremost with his own or her own survival. The big picture is for other people to draw. Looking at it through that lens, Reese's memoirs are frank and brutally honest. He does not praise the war and in fact finds it irrational and unforgivable that his country waged it. Yet at the same time he has no aversion to participating in the fighting and the drinking and the looting that takes place. He displays a certain arrogance towards the people whose land he helps occupy. He wrestles with his demons and lays it out for the reader. Anyone who has seen this horror cannot believe in God he writes, yet he cannot help but think that the sins he and his comrades commit are unforgivable. We see him sink to a depth where it seems there is no turning back, where he stands up from his slit trench in order to be shot by Soviet snipers, only to see his spirits revive a bit when he gets a days rest or finds a bit of food to eat.

Reese's story is an important one for many reasons. It makes for compelling reading and it will have an impact on the reader that will linger after the book is read and put back on the shelf.