num_pages: 448
description: On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded &amp; recently declassified. Netizel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington. These were discoveries that would provide a unique &amp; profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy &amp; the military in general--almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war. Collaborating with renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, Neitzel examines these conversations--&amp; the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them--from a historical &amp; psychological perspective. In reconstucting the frameworks &amp; situations behind these conversations, they've created a powerful narrative of wartime experience.
language: English
title: Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS
publisher: Alfred A. Knopf/Random House, Inc.