Kirst, Hans Hellmut 08/15

One-volume complete edition of the trilogy. Vol. 1: In the Barracks; Vol. 2: In the War; Vol. 3: To the Bitter End. Hans Hellmut Kirst, a professional soldier since 1933 and an officer during the Second World War, coined the term "08/15", which originally referred to a variant of the machine gun and figuratively stood for something "ordinary, nothing special", a synonym for the life and suffering of Wehrmacht soldiers, with his trilogy of novels.

Like no other before or after him, Kirst succeeded in portraying the everyday life of German soldiers before and during the war. Comradeship, a willingness to submit, service for the fatherland and the spirit of Prussian duty are described just as impressively as the inhumanities of a degenerate militarism. From the perspective of the ordinary soldier, the reader experiences the brutal barracks yard grind, the cowardice of the shirkers in the stage, the unconscionability of the war profiteers. But Kirst also succeeds, with his extremely exciting narrative technique and in a way that is at the same time empathetic, in making clear the psychological ambivalences of his protagonists between bravery in battle and the will to survive, between courage in the face of the enemy and in the face of irresponsible superiors, between the soldierly virtues that are valid beyond time and the presumptions of unscrupulous ideologies.