Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier's Letters from the Eastern Front

by Konrad H. Jarausch, Richard H. Kohn (Foreword)

An ordinary German soldier’s letters home from Poland and Russia during World War II

Reluctant Accomplice is a volume of the wartime letters of Dr. Konrad Jarausch, a German high-school teacher of religion and history who served in a reserve battalion of Hitler's army in Poland and Russia, where he died of typhoid in 1942. He wrote most of these letters to his wife, Elisabeth. His son, acclaimed German historian Konrad H. Jarausch, brings them together here to tell the gripping story of a patriotic soldier of the Third Reich who, through witnessing its atrocities in the East, begins to doubt the war's moral legitimacy. These letters grow increasingly critical, and their vivid descriptions of the mass deaths of Russian POWs are chilling. They reveal the inner conflicts of ordinary Germans who became reluctant accomplices in Hitler's merciless war of annihilation, yet sometimes managed to discover a shared humanity with its suffering victims, a bond that could transcend race, nationalism, and the enmity of war.

Reluctant Accomplice is also the powerful story of the son, who for decades refused to come to grips with these letters because he abhorred his father's nationalist politics. Only now, late in his life, is he able to cope with their contents―and he is by no means alone. This book provides rare insight into the so-called children of the war, an entire generation of postwar Germans who grew up resenting their past, but who today must finally face the painful legacy of their parents' complicity in National Socialism.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction, Memoir

408 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2008

About the author

Konrad H. Jarausch is the Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

[Andrew Davis]

A first hand relation of war experiences compiled from the letters of staff sergeant Konrad Jarausch, sent mainly to his wife from September 1939 till January 1942. Jarausch, born in 1900, was a high school teacher and an editor of a religious magazine. He was called in September 1939 and spent first winter of war in Poland working in POW camps, looking for any ethnic Germans and having them released home. He is very humane in his contacts with Poles, takes interest in their language and history. However, what surprises most is that he never questions war and destruction that Germans inflicted on the defeated nations. He never questions policy about Jews, even while he sees their treatment in Lodz. Later he is moved close to German-Russian border. With invasion of Russia he works in camps set up to store Russian POWs. He is in charge of kitchen units feeding up to 30,000 prisoners at the time. He recognises that the prisoners are not fed sufficiently and tries to get as much supplies as possible. The starvation diets and terrible living conditions lead to high mortality rates among prisoners (0.8% per day) and even cases of cannibalism. Jarausch tries his best to divide the food and takes pity over his prisoners. He starts learning Russian and reads their literature and history. Quite suddenly in January 1942 he contracts typhoidal fever and dies within a couple of weeks.
One cannot feel but sympathy to this unfortunate human being who retained his humanity in those terrible times.

[Susan]

It's a deeply touching personal account (letters) of what life was like (for some, at least for one) as a soldier in WWII. So, there's no "analyzing" the content or form of this book. The reader is allowed a look into the intimate thoughts of this man as he relates his experiences away from home.

I read it for the NCMA book club and this time there was no piece of art selected for the readers to connect it to.

I'm still digesting what I read, but the letters were honest, matter-of-fact and open when it came to the conditions of war and his ability to surmount a lot of what he experienced. I'm looking forward to the discussion of this book just to hear the thoughts of the other readers.

It's not a book I would have thought about reading, but having done so, feel it was well-worth having done so. I highly recommend it.

[Jason]

A view of World War II from the perspective of a German Soldier who worked as a guard for Soviet POWs as told through his letters to friends and family. (non-fiction)