Sepp Allerberger's Memoirs of Sniping on the Eastern Front During World War II

Vivian: Very well written. War through the eyes of every side reveals everyone is simply a human being no matter what side your on, what country your from. It’s important to humanize every soldier to more clearly understand how horrible war against one another is.

United States on Oct 26, 2023

Amos Annon: In depth and insightful look into the eastern front from the German perspective.
Highly disturbing at times.

United States on Oct 25, 2023

Bored Reader: Obviously a professional edit without trace of WW2 language or translation issues. Perhaps an entirely made-up account. Lots of pictures and related military award docs that might bear closer scrutiny than I cared to provide via cell phone screen. Interesting tactical concepts to suit offensive as well as defensive use of marksman in war.

United States on Sep 14, 2023

Biswa M: I have read a lot of books on the Eastern Front in WW2, but this one is probably the goriest, most violent and stomach-turning of the lot. The sheer savagery and barbaric intensity of the fighting between the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht/SS boggles the mind.

The memoirs of Sepp Allerberger, a young Austrian who was drafted into the army at 18, and became an ace sniper on the Eastern Front, makes for compelling reading. However, quite how much of it came from the man himself, and how much of it from the mind of the editor and the translator, is hard to say. I guess it's true for most of the books written about WW2.

On a side note, the paperback version I received was only 143 pages long. If we add the introduction, contents and blank pages it comes to about 150. In Amazon it says the book has 192 pages. Don't know why the mismatch!

India on Oct 28, 2022

MARIA ZAKKAMARIA ZAKKA: Honestly this has been one of the greatest and at the same time most disturbing books I have ever read. The depths of the depravity encountered during the war, especially coming from the russian side is literally imperceivable if not utterly inconceivable. The frightful and helpless experiences described from the german side paint an equally unimaginable picture filled with abysmal sadness and agony for soldiers and civilians alike. The heroic fight and acts of bravery and comradeship against the inevitable defeat, does little to calm the soul from the feeling of rage and disgust at the above, and serves as a mere silver lining, indicating the honour and duty-bound service with which in vain the Landsers tried to conduct themselves. Even as a person with immense interest and fascination in the second world war, such a testament can only ground me and serve as an absolute, horrid, bitter reminder as to what a cataclysmic and calamitous event it really was. The thought of all the immensely unfortunate souls caught up in these events having been able to find some form of peace in an afterlife is a wishful one, but truly necessary in being able to accept the accounts described in this...

United Kingdom on Oct 21, 2019

JPB: A great insight into the German army's last days on the Eastern front. Written by a biographer after having long conversations with Allerberger, an assumed named. He recounts his time as a machine gunner in the Wehrmacht and now he became a sniper after getting his hands on a Russian rifle. How he did his sniper training several months after already becaming a successful sniper on the front lines. He gives first and second hand accounts of atrocities committed by the advancing Russian forces. And there are enough gory details if you're into that sort of thing. How he once shot an unarmed soldier because he thought the Russians where taking the mick by sunbathing within sight of the German lines. Various engagements with enemy snipers are also recounted. He gives good descriptions the field craft and tactics used to hold off the Russians while his regiment, the Gebrigsjager 144, retreated. Also having the ability to see things through his telescopic sigths and not being able to intervene in some horrific events. The book also contains a few photographs, one of Allerberger and a couple of his officers. So far I would say this is the best book I have read on this subject.

United Kingdom on Apr 20, 2018

Tony Brook: An excellent autobiographical account of life for a German soldier on the Eastern Front in WWII.

As the saying goes "history is written by the victors", and most histories of WWII are written from the allies' perspective. If you wish to develop a balanced view, you need to read many of the relatively few accounts written by German soldiers, the vast majority of whom served their country as honourably as war permits, answering their country's call to fight the tide of bolshevism / communism sweeping west from Russia.

Albrecht Wacker's experiences, between his conscription in Austria to his safe return after the war, are quite amazing and very informative. The book is well written and, consequently, an easy read. From a military perspective, Albrecht Wacker 's service and evident skill as a sniper gave him a relatively unique role, that almost certainly helped him survive the war, when vast numbers of his comrades were killed in action. He relates his on-going personal conflict with the morality of sniping, and the horrific treatment of other snipers captured by the Russians, which is understandable but unjustified: the Russians used far more snipers than the Germans,...

United Kingdom on Jun 05, 2017

Chris_Carlisle: An easy and short book to get into and read - providing your stomach can handle it. Most pages are filled with horrors which made me feel squeamish - from tanks crushing the wounded to a sniper being torturted with a saw to a poor woman being repeatedly raped then killed in a grotesque fashion.

The book does a good job of making you feel 'there' (of course a book can only do so much to actually put you in such a terrible place as the eastern front, 1943-45, but this book gives you the idea).
The focus of the book is quite narrow, as you might expect from a sniper's memoir, but there's some good narrative of the camaraderie and the hatred, as well as the sheer madness.

My main criticism of the book is that completely vilifies the Russians but hardly ever the Germans. It seems like the Germans only ever did bad things in retaliation or out of sheer necessity, whereas the Russians were just savages. Maybe Allerberger's regiment was fairly innocent, but an afterword might have mentioned the brutality perpetrated by the Germans during Barbarossa, which might have gone some way to explaining why the Russians were so brutal as well.

Anyway, it's worth a read, but...

United Kingdom on Mar 30, 2016

R. Isaac: I have of recent times taken to reading memoirs or stories of snipers and their roles within the battlefield strategy. It is facinating how a well placed individual (or team),with the appropriate skills, can influence an engagement, a battle or political will with, primarily, a single shot weapon.Also of recent times I have taken a much more active interest in the history surrounding the Russian or Eastern Front of WWII having been brought up on a diet of the 'sexy' Western Front. D Day, Dieppe, El Alamein, Cassino, 'Market Garden', Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine. But having read Beevors "Stalingrad' and 'Berlin' along with Max Hastings 'Armageddon' is was truly eye opening to see the vast expanse of battle, the inhumanity and the utter human waste and devestation wrought on both German and Russian alike. So it was on to this book, a book promising to not only cover both of these topics but also grant a rare insight to the ways and whys of a sniper in a theatre that epitomized 'total war'.
So how did I find it? Certainly readable although the author Wacker isn't my sort of writer. I found his constant references to how tired the soldiers were and the constant...

United States on Mar 23, 2009

M. G Watson: I admit that I had relatively low expectations for Albrecht Wacker's SNIPER ON THE EASTERN FRONT. The rather lame title led me to believe that this was a modern-day "Landser-hilfe", that is to say, a badly written, clichéd, guts-without-glory war tale of the type that proliferated on post-WWII German bookshelves. Nothing could be further from the truth. SNIPER is probably the most engrossing book I've ever read about life and death on the Eastern Front, and one of the harshest looks at war ever printed.

SNIPER is the story of "Sepp Allenberger", who served three years as a German Army sniper in Russia. The name is a nom de plume, since if Allenberger's identity were commonly known in Germany he would, given the antimilitaristic spirit of the modern-day Germans, suffer according social ostracism. (The unofficial compact w/WWII vets is, "You don't talk about your heroics, and we won't pillory you for fighting in Hitler's army.") Allenberger's military career began in wholly ordinary fashion; he was a drafted soldier from a small town who served in the infantry during the invasion of Russia. Not too long after he arrived there, however, Allenberger got his hands on a sniper...

United States on May 06, 2008