What do You think about SS General (2007)?
I came across name Sven Hassel, while reading some review on Leo Kessler´s book and grabbed SS General. The book is written in crispy language with all gruesome of hunger, war, winter and Stalingrad. Group of soldier from penal regiment was stuck in the horrid eastern front and like a miracle they found the way out. General SS who saw no point in fanatical and useless deaths in Stalingrad pulled group of survivors and lead them across the steppe to the safety. The story is very strong and surprising at some points.
—Matimate
I had limped along with my well-thumbed copy of 'Comrades Of War' for years before one day, in a used book store in Burbank, I encountered this and several other Sven Hassel novels in the dusty, cluttered shelves. Until the internet Hassel's books were a lucky find. This was a lucky find. It places the gang, Sven, Tiny, the Legionaire, Porta, the Old Man and the rest in Stalingrad. They're surrounded. They're starving. They've been ordered not to retreat. Bad scene. They are rescued by an SS General (hence the title) who leads a column of ragged soldiers across the frozen steppes, through the Russian Army to finally reunite with the Wehrmacht which has retreated far to the west. In all these books, Hassel makes you feel like you are marching along with the gang to their inevitable deaths, which never seem to happen to the main characters, although the incidental ones get blow to bits or executed by the military police, who are a constant enemy presence in these books. Exciting, page turning, brutal, violent. Great.
—Phil
