Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir eBook Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media
Download As PDF : Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir eBook Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media 
Wolfgang Faust was the driver of a Tiger I tank with the Wehrmacht Heavy Panzer Battalions, seeing extensive combat on the Eastern Front in 1943-45. This memoir was his brutal and deeply personal account of the Russian Front's appalling carnage.
Telling the story of a vicious three-day tank battle, Faust describes how his Tiger unit fought on the steppes of Russia against the full might of the Red Army the T34 tanks, the Sturmovik bombers, suicidal Russian infantry and the feared Katyusha rocket brigades. He reveals the merciless decisions that panzer crews made in action, the devastating power of their weaponry, and the many ways that men met their deaths in the snow and ice of the Ostfront.
Originally published as ‘Panzerdammerung’ (‘Panzer Twilight’) in the late 1940s, this memoir's savage realism shocked the post-war German public. Some readers were outraged at the book's final scenes, while others wrote that, ‘Now, at last, I know what our men did in the East.’
Today, 'Tiger Tracks' stands as one of the great semi-autobiographical accounts of World War Two a crescendo of horror, grim survival and a fatalistic acceptance of the panzer man’s destiny.
The only other surviving memoir by this author is 'The Last Panther' - an astonishing account of panzer warfare in the final hours of the Third Reich - also available on and in paperback.
Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir eBook Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media
Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir eBook: Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media: Kindle Store,ebook,Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media,Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir,Bayern Classic Publications,Biography & Autobiography Military,History Europe Baltic States
Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir eBook Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media Reviews
Like others have stated, it is a compilation of anecdotes that the author probably heard over the course of several years of fighting. He elected to throw an entire kitchen sink's worth of these anecdotes into his story and then season it with a large dose of embellishment and impossible observations. I wish Mr. Faust would have kept to the story he had actually experienced. THAT would have been a worthy read.
I liked the author's other book, The Last Panther, which I think is true and I reviewed it accordingly. As I read this one, I thought that I was also non-fiction, and then I began to recognize that it was not. I think that the author put together a number of possible actions that occurred (or dreamed them up - nightmare). I found the book to be very graphic, almost unnecessarily so, but I think that the author wanted to share the brutality and horror of war. That is important and the reason I gave this book a decent review. Any book that describes the violence of war at this level is necessary to assure that political leaders think twice before starting another war.
Although I'm unsure of the veracity of the claim that TIGER TRACKS is an actual memoir written after the war by a Panzer crewman, that is immaterial to the fact that this book is a great war story. Although relatively short, the story is almost non-stop tense, nail-biting action as Faust and the rest of the Panzer company go on a mission that sees their nigh-invincible Tiger tanks destroyed one by one as they go up against the Red Army. They face T-34s, IS-2 tanks, flamethrowers, fanatical anti-tank teams, attack planes, and many other lethal hazards. Despite the Tiger being considered an almost indestructible heavy panzer, they were mechanically unreliable, drank fuel at an alarming rate, had trouble negotiating soft ground, and as a result, were frequently abandoned and destroyed by their crews. This story does a great job of showing the horrors of war on the "Ostfront", while being well-written and engaging. Truth or fiction, this is a great read for WW2 action enthusiasts.
This book is a disappointing "memoir". I won't list all the inaccuracies or unbelievable "observations" as you can find those in other reviews. Suffice to say, I've read many WWII memoirs and this one ranks at the bottom, it's clearly fiction, not a coherent memoir.
Written in the immediate aftermath of WWII, it bares the facts of the diabolic decisions made under armaggedon type situations, no holds barred.
To me, it is the second world war's "All Quiet on the Western Front" as an anti war tome. This is because amidst all the blood, fury, gore and egoistic
superiors, the author and his Russian prisoner are questioning the point of it all. As an empathetic human, I had to put the book down and walk away to do something else to let the tension inside me calm down. When the author is confronted with an horrific moral dilemma in the final section,
I pondered for days after, the emotional trauma this man must have faced during the rest of his life on his embattled return to his destroyed homeland. I am glad he wrote this book when he did and am amazed that people criticised him for doing so. Hopefully, for him personally, it released some of his internal revulsion and horror; for we readers today, it is a clear insight into what ordinary soldiers endured physically, morally and mentally without the embellishment of
Hollywood drama and the blurring of such events that time tends to cause.
I started reading this book with high hopes. Tiger Tracks purports to be a memoir written by a veteran of the Panzer force, but it became quickly apparent that it's really a very gory and lurid piece of fiction being fobbed off as fact on those who don't know any better."Wolfgang Faust" is conveniently a pseudonym, so the true author's military service records could never be checked. He is the lone survivor of the Kampfgruppe he starts the book with, so the veracity (or it's lack) cannot be cross-checked. The author has a basic understanding of tanks and their mechanics, but an understanding that could have been gleaned from such sources as the Panzerfibel without requiring any hands-on experience.
There is a great deal of writhing in flames in this book. Everyone hit in the head is decapitated, hollow-point bullets literally blow men apart (they don't). All the violence is very Hollywood, and over-the-top. There are a number of historically inaccuracies or outright impossibilities. There are an even greater number of decisions and actions undertaken by persons depicted in the book, which from a military point of view are ludicrous and suicidal (I should mention here for the sake of credibility, that I am a former member of a mechanized infantry unit). Examples
- an experienced Tiger tank commander takes custody of a female Soviet prisoner and chains her up inside the tank. NO. There's absolutely no room inside an armored fighting vehicle for extra personnel. Even those who belong there are cramped and crowded. The danger this prisoner would interfere during a battle makes this action tactically absurd.
- Panzergrenadiers remain inside their halftracks during a stationary defensive battle while under assault by aircraft and enemy armor. Thus they contribute nothing to the fight, but contribute lurid depictions of slaughter to the story. No way they'd do this, the halftracks were death traps.
- Moving through a forest, Tigers lead the group, despite the presence of Panzergrenadiers who could scout ahead and clear the way. Again, tactically absurd, the experienced commander the author describes "Helmann" as would never have done this.
- A single Tiger tank takes off on it's own, at night, to track down a Soviet rocket launcher and crew. They manage to sneak the steel beast up on the enemy, unheard, and observes the enemy first. At night. Again, despite the presence of ample German infantry in the area, the Tiger does this without any dismounts...NO
- After destroying the Russian position, the commander orders one of his tank crew to dismount and scout around. By himself. In an unsecured area. At night. No battle buddy. Naturally, this man gets his head blown off...THAT, at least, is believable.
- Our valiant Kampfgruppe happen to stumble upon two German nurses wandering the steppe who somehow got left behind by their field hospital. These ladies join the panzer unit and are of course delighted to dispense a little sexual relief to the soldiers, in exchange for food, coffee, sugar, etc. Yeah, sure...
- The sheer amount of detail described by the author is simply not credible for a man whose view of the battle was limited to the vision slit of a Tiger driver. These were (and remain) notoriously limited in field of view. In reality, he'd have been able to see straight ahead and a few degrees to either side.
- The author claims to see a shell caroming around inside a Soviet tank turret, THROUGH THE VISION SLIT OF THE OTHER TANK'S DRIVER! No. Just No.
- Describes fighting Soviet tanks which, by his detailed descriptions of their hull and turrets, were JS-3's. These tanks didn't see action until the very last month of the war, yet our increasingly-implausible story purports to take place in October, 1943.
- He states at one point his family was killed in an RAF bombing of Munich in 1942. He later claims to have killed a British prisoner in Sicily the same month that his family died. Problem is, the Allies didn't invade Sicily until July of 1943...
As war-porn, the book is fine. As a memoir, it's complete crap. If anyone believes this author to truly be a veteran of the Eastern Front, and believes that his descriptions of the battles are accurate, then you must logically also believe that the German army was composed of tactically inept soldiers led by callous and incompetent officers, because that would be the conclusion of any military professional reading the actions taken by the protagonist and his unit.
0 Response to "[QNM]∎ Read Gratis Tiger Tracks - The Classic Panzer Memoir eBook Wolfgang Faust, Sprech Media"
Post a Comment