The Good Soldier [Paperback]

Growing up in a working class Austrian Socialist family during the depression era, at 14, Novotny learned something of the brighter side of life in his work as an apprentice server in an exclusive Vienna restaurant. Before long, Novotny found himself drafted into the German Labor Service and ultimately, the German Army's most elite division.

Novotny's images of military life and war are at once haunting and full of vitality. He describes the fiercely demanding training he received in the recruit depot of the "Grossdeutschland" Panzer-Grenadier Division during which two of his fellow trainees committed suicide. In his foxhole at the front, he is joined by a brand-new replacement who has barely uttered his name in greeting before he is immediately blown to pieces by a Soviet artillery shell. Sent home on leave after being wounded, the author is reunited with some old friends from the restaurant, one of whom has lost a hand in combat, another an arm, and another both legs. Novotny tastefully and humorously recounts the intense drive of the life force in fleeting moments of lovemaking that occur amidst the desperation and deprivation of war. That same will to survive despite bloodthirsty lice and other parasites (including the tapeworm he unknowingly hosted through two years of combat) carried him through years of hard labor amid the squalor, disease, and lethal environment of a Soviet prison camp after the war.

Those seeking a professionally rendered treatise on tactics or strategy will not find it here, although in my opinion, the Aberjona Press has recently produced some of the finest of that genre that are currently in print. However, what makes "The Good Soldier" unusually valuable is not only its depth of life-perspective and unusual personal detail, but its exceptional and perhaps unintentional portrayal of how an especially elite formation was forged and sustained from average draftees. This is not another story about daring airborne volunteers, or highly-motivated rangers, or carefully selected commandos. Neither is it the story of an average unit with typical experiences. All of those are interesting and useful, but none are as fascinating as this story about a young Viennese waiter becoming a good soldier in an exceptional and world-renowned military unit. This unique outcome was the result of a process that is little understood and often ignored. Yet is was exactly this process, and not the extremist politics or lunatic racism of the Third Reich, that made the Wehrmacht so formidable. As only a product of that process can, Fred Novotny honestly, forthrightly, and authentically provides an unsurpassed glimpse into that transformation that produced so many "good soldiers."

Unlike most WWII memoirs, which begin suddenly in 1939 and end abruptly in 1945, "The Good Soldier" spans practically Novotny's entire lifetime. It begins with his childhood in Socialist Vienna, and continues without respite through the Anschluss, his service in the German Labor Service (RAD) and as a machine gunner with the elite
"GrossDeutschland" armored infantry division, his postwar years in a Soviet prison camp, his return to freedom and eventual emigration to the USA, where he ultimately finds peace and personal success.

The book isn't full of "combat erotica" but there are enough anecdotes to get a good sense of what life in the Third Reich was like and how terrible war and the postwar peace could be. The RAD experiences in particular are very interesting, since there is little information published in English about this German paramilitary organization.
Novotny's descriptions of life as a "GrossDeutschland" soldier and the Soviet penal system are fascinating as well. The reader will doubtless be amazed at Novotny's good fortune through some pretty grim situations - as he was himself!

Although only 150-odd pages, "The Good Soldier" is packed with photos, drawings and editor's notes that help the reader get a real sense of Novotny's experiences in the context of the general sweep of WWII history.

It's a fast but satisfying read. I quite enjoyed "The Good Soldier" and would recommend it to anyone interested in personal accounts of the Second World War.

What Fred says is crystal clear and what he means is craftily expressed. It would be difficult for any reader to close this book with the same mindset with which it was opened.