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Devil's Guard  By  cover art

Devil's Guard

By: George R. Elford
Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
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Publisher's summary

The personal account of a guerrilla fighter in the French Foreign Legion reveals the Nazi Battalion's inhumanities to Indochinese villagers.

©1971 George Robert Elford (P)2017 Tantor

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    5 out of 5 stars

If it is only half true...

I have spent my entire life reading military sagas. Hundreds of memoirs from all of the standard american theatres, Nazi Germany, the Soviets... This is not one of those memoirs. Trust me.

Being written from the perspective of a German SS officer that escaped the Soviet and US stranglehold and found his way in the French Foreign Legion where he became a leader in their brigades of former Nazi solders who are sent to fight to their death in Indochina a decade before the heat of America's involvement in Vietnam...Man was it a refreshing listen.

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14 people found this helpful

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A must read for every leg, airborne, ranger or SOF member!

I read this on deployment and though my Deutsch has faded into oblivion, I managed to
Work though the pronunciation of the names and most of the words. I listened to the audio book years later and it still reverberates the sentiments I had while fighting terrorism for the US. I passed the book around and everyone who read it has the same thought ,”If we fought like this, the war would be over and I’d be sitting at home with my family right now”. Same fight, different enemy. If you changed the names and places, you could imagine this being written by a rogue special operations unit fighting ISIS or the Taliban.

The story moves quickly, covering a lot of ground but offers just enough detail to imagine yourself in the same position. Yes, there is a fair amount of Nazi/SS sympathizing and from a front line troop looking in on the unforgivable atrocities committed by death camp staff, you can vaguely see their point. If you can understand their Nazi mentality and not let that be the driving force behind the book but see the effectiveness of the guerrilla tactics, the method of bullet for bullet, bomb for bomb, murder for murder, and how an enemy force that doesn’t abide by modern rules of war(Geneva Convention), you will see that their methods were effective and the only way to fight against an enemy like this.

This book is truly a great read for anyone who has served in a combat position. To think that this book was published in 1971, and probably written years before, it’s crazy, even if you think it is a work of fiction.

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7 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars

Nazi Fanfiction

Whomever the author interviewed for this story (if that even happened) was clearly a pathological liar. Every part of the story is nonsense. From the complete ignorance of military practice, to the absurd tactics that sound really good if you've never actually had training, to the cheesy dialogue the protagonist has that sounds like a shower argument you would have with yourself. This is fiction, produced by a Nazi sympathizer with an overactive imagination. Two stars because Nigel Patterson does an excellent job voicing the story, which is the only redeeming quality.

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6 people found this helpful

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Devilish understanding “Why Vietnam was a bust for USA

Great Vietnam history. Why we walked in to a hornets nest. I really enjoyed a look into the Indochina war in North Vietnam- why didn’t we study and use history’s past lesson

Recommended reading for Vietnamese war history. Well written.

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5 people found this helpful

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One of the best stories of war ive ever listened

One of the best stories of war ive ever listened to. Phenomenal forgotten piece of history. Monsters are sometimes needed to destroy monsters.

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3 people found this helpful

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Awesome read!!!

This book gave me great insight on what it was like to fight a war against an unconventional enemy in a seemingly endless jungle. Although their tactics were brutal and some might say barbaric; matching your enemy tooth for a tooth, eye for an eye, and murder for murder was extremely effective. An enemy that fights you unconventionally must be fought unconventionally.

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3 people found this helpful

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A must read

One of the greatest account of tactics preformed by any army. If you are a student of history or WWII this story fills the gap between WWII and the Cold War. The daring of these men, the tactics, the assurance of victory combine to excite the reader of what can be accomplished when professional soldiers with intellect and courage are allowed to win. Great book. I think I’ll read other books by the author.

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2 people found this helpful

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Absolutely Excellent

This is a great inside look at what became of some of the German soldiers after Germany's defeat during World War II, and how they used their mastery of warfare to stay employed as soldiers, albeit with their former enemy as members of the French Foreign Legion. Their expertise in tactics and planning made their battalion one of the deadliest the Legion sent into French Indochina. The Devil's Guard also shows a lot of ingenuity in fieldcraft and guerrilla warfare. The former Nazis employed some of the guerrilla's tactics against the very guerrillas that gave them the ideas. Some people might say that they were cruel, barbaric, or dishonorable for some of the tactics used by the German legionnaires, but that savageness is just what it took to win. They had the stomach and drive to win, whereas the French government (foreshadowing the Americans) did not.

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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I'm literally laughing at how fake this is

I legitimately can't believe anyone would take this book seriously. Another reviewer called it NAZI fan fiction, and they're 100% correct. You have to be really low on the IQ scale to think this is real.

First off you got the ridiculous dialogue that sounds like it came from a really bad writer who does a movie of the week for a 3rd rate cable TV channel. It's cheesy, absurd, just flat out dumb.

Second, these NAZIs secretly have a heart of gold! They're not bad guys in the least. Now, I say that in jest, I've read plenty of books from German soldiers perspectives and some of them are literally not bad guys, they're just guys who were doing their job. In this case, however, it's comical how over the top it is.

Third, it's clearly just made up. Again, you have to really be a dullard to think this is real.

With all that said, it's entertaining in a bad b-movie kind of way, where it's so cheesy and bad that it becomes good. While I wouldn't say this ever gets to the good part, I do find myself often laughing at how terrible and predictable some of the dialog gets.

In closing, if you watched Hogans Heroes and think it's a documentary, then you'll be amazed at all the real life adventures in this book. However, if you watched Hogans Heroes and just thought it was a dumb comedy you could laugh at, well, that's this book, just not nearly as well written as Hogans Heroes, and where all the inmates are SS members.

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1 person found this helpful

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Great Book!

A unique perspective on WWII, the French Vietnam War, and Communism as a whole from a Nazi Waffen SS officer who served on the German Eastern Front.

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