Recommended Reading
All members of the 9th SS Hohenstaufen Living History group are encouraged to read books relating to Germany during World War 2 or even World War 2 in general. Below we have listed some books that 9th SS members have read and would recommend.
Click the pictures to head to their respective Amazon page!
If you have a book that you would like to recommend, please feel free to e-mail us!
**All book summaries are provided by the book's back cover**
Spearhead: Hohenstaufen The 9th SS Panzer Division
The 'Spearhead' series is designed to look at the cutting edge of war, dealing with units capable of operating completely independently in the forefront of battle. Each volume in the series examines the chosen unit's origins and history, its organization and order of battle, its battle history theatre by theatre, its insignia and its markings. Also covered are biographies of the most important commanders of each unit. Each title ends with an assessment of unit effectiveness - as seen by the unit itself, by its opponents and the light of more recent historical research. The books also include a detailed reference section with a critical bibliography, a listing of relevant museums and websites, information about re-enactment groups and memorials.
Loyalty Is My Honor: Personal Accounts from the Waffen-SS
Loyalty Is My Honor is the story of the men who wore the SS runes - told in their own words. Writing honestly and candidly about their wartime service, former Waffen-SS soldiers of all ranks and nationalities talk about their training, indoctrination, combat on the Eastern Front, their commanders and political masters, the question of atrocities, and more. Were the men who wore the black uniform of the Schutz Staffel inhuman monsters, or skilled soldiers? Loyalty Is My Honor will provide the answer.
Voices of the Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS grew into a huge force of thirty-eight divisions comprising over 950,000 men. In the Nuremburg Trials, the Waffen-SS was condemed as part of a criminal organisation, and therefore Waffen-SS veterans were denied many of the rights afforded other German combat veterans. However, the Nuremburg Trials exempted conscripts from that condemnation. On several occasions, the Waffen-SS was criticised by Heer commanders for their reckless disregard for casualties while taking or holding objectives. However, the Waffen-SS divisions eventually proved themselves to a sceptical Heer as capable soldiers. The poor initial performance of the Waffen-SS units was mainly due to the emphasis on political indoctrination rather than proper military training before the war. This was largely due to the shortage of experienced NCO's who preferred to stay with the regular army. Despite this, the experience gained from the Polish, French and Balkan campaigns and the peculiarly egalitarian form of training soon turned Waffen-SS units into elite formations. These are the stories of the men that once were part of this elite force. Their Honor was their loyalty...
Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945
The SS Death's Head Division was one of the most powerful and destructive military forces in history. Drawing extensively upon a wide variety of SS manuscript sources and captured German Army materials, Charles Sydnor relates the politcal and military experience of the SS Totenkopfdivision ot the institutional development of the SS and the ideological objectives of Nazi Germany. The author describes in detail the organization and development of the pre-war German concentration camp system and it's SS guard units - the formations that supplied virtually all the important officers and unit commanders as well as the original infantry cadre for the Death's Head Division. He devotes particular attention to an analysis of the brutal ethos of the pre-war SS camp guards as it became the war-time creed of the unit. Here, too, is a careful assessment of the impact on the division of it's founder and first commander, Theodor Eicke, who was ruthless and fanatical in his commitment to the goals of National Socialism.
Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier on the Eastern Front
The dramatic memoirs of a machine gunner on the Eastern Front. Gives a brutal account of fighting in Stalingrad. Warts-and-all narrative of life within a unit under constant attack.
Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS
When a 20-year old Waffen-SS veteran of eighteen months of combat against the Soviets and Americans is confronted with the awful, undeniable truth of the Holocaust, he must reconcile it with his pride in his comrades' battlefield sacrifices. From revealing discussions at the family dinner table, to long-range patrols in the frozen taiga of northern Karelia, fierce fighting in the snow-decked Vosges Mountains, and capitulation in the mud of the war's last spring, accompany the author on his true journey through inextricably related conflicts in combat and conscience.
The Forgoten Soldier
Guy Sajer's perspective as a German foot soldier makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the major battles, from Kursk to Kharkov. His World War II memoir has been handsomely republished as a paperback featuring for the first time fifty rare German combat photos from Christopher Ailsby collection. These photos depict the hardships and destructiveness of war as troops battle through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities. Many of the photos were taken by German soldiers and have never been published before. Landed by critics as a statement not only on war but also on the human condition, The Forgotten Soldier will continue to capture the minds of readers for years to come.
Sniper on the Easter Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberger-Knights Cross
This book is a rare first-hand account by a ruthlessly efficient German sniper of life and death during the bitter conflict that followed the Nazi invasion of Russia. Josef 'Sepp' Allerberger was an Austrian conscript who qualified as a Wehrmacht machine-gunner and was drafted to the Southern sector of the Front in July 1942. After being wounded at Voroshilovsk, he experimented successfully with a captured Russian sniper rifle while convalescing and returned to his unit as his regiment's only sniper specialist. In the grueling months that followed, as the German Army was forced to withdraw under almost constant pressure from the Russians, Allerberger became the second most successful German sniper and one of the very few private soldiers to be awarded the Knights Cross. This harrowing and graphic memoir provides a vivid insight to the atrocious conditions and brutal cruelty of this campaign. There was, we learn, no place for chivalry and few prisoners survived long after capture. Allerberger relates the cunning, discipline and field craft that not only saw him survive during the near constant action but made him such a relentless assassin.