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Stationed on the Russian Front and now equipped with armoured vehicles, Sven Hassel and his comrades from the 27th Penal Regiment fight on remorselessly... All of them should be dead: Life expectancy on the Russian Front is measured in weeks. But Sven, Porta, Tiny and The Legionnaire fight to the end, not for Germany, not for Hitler, but for survival. Wheels of Terror is a sobering depiction of war's brutalities, and the violence and inhumanity that the history books leave out.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the continent of Africa was a hotbed of international trade, colonialism, and political gamesmanship. So when World War I broke out, the European powers were forced to contend with each other not just in the bloody trenches - but in the treacherous jungle. And it was in that unforgiving land that General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck would make history.
More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.
By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.
In the 20th century Earth sent probes, transmissions, and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed. The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn't the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighboring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers....
Space travel just isn't what it used to be. With the invention of Quantum Teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!
Stationed on the Russian Front and now equipped with armoured vehicles, Sven Hassel and his comrades from the 27th Penal Regiment fight on remorselessly... All of them should be dead: Life expectancy on the Russian Front is measured in weeks. But Sven, Porta, Tiny and The Legionnaire fight to the end, not for Germany, not for Hitler, but for survival. Wheels of Terror is a sobering depiction of war's brutalities, and the violence and inhumanity that the history books leave out.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the continent of Africa was a hotbed of international trade, colonialism, and political gamesmanship. So when World War I broke out, the European powers were forced to contend with each other not just in the bloody trenches - but in the treacherous jungle. And it was in that unforgiving land that General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck would make history.
More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.
By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.
In the 20th century Earth sent probes, transmissions, and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed. The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn't the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighboring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers....
Space travel just isn't what it used to be. With the invention of Quantum Teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!
The Phage War had been a devastating conflict for the Terran Confederacy. Even with the destruction of their terrifying, implacable foe, humanity is still reeling. Political alliances are crumbling, and their mighty fleet is in tatters. There is nothing to celebrate, even after such a complete victory. They soon learn that there are other stellar neighbors - and they've been watching the conflict with great interest. One species comes with an offer of friendship and alliance, but humanity is weary and distrustful.
Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Gottlob Herbert Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket. In his memoir, he shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape.
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
This historical romance, perhaps the greatest cloak-and-sword story ever, relates the adventures of four fictional swashbuckling heroes who served the French kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. When the dashing young D'Artagnon arrives in Paris from Gascony, he becomes embroiled in three duels with the Three Musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But when he proves himself by fighting not against, but with, the Three Musketeers, they form a quick and lasting friendship.
Aran awakens in chains with no memory. He's conscripted into the Confederate Marines as a Tech Mage, given a spellrifle, then hurled into the war with the draconic Krox and their Void Wyrm masters. Desperate to escape, Aran struggles to master his abilities, while surviving the Krox onslaught. Fighting alongside him are a Major who will do anything to win, a Captain who will stop at nothing to see him dead, and a woman whose past is as blank as his own.
Wolfgang Faust was the driver of a Tiger I tank with the Wehrmacht Heavy Panzer Battalions, seeing extensive combat action on the Eastern Front in 1943-45. This memoir is his brutal and deeply personal account of the Russian Front's appalling carnage. Depicting a running tank engagement lasting 72 hours, Faust describes how his Tiger unit fought pitched battles in the snows of Western Russia against the full might of the Red Army.
Convicted of deserting the German army, Sven Hassel is sent to a penal regiment on the Russian Front. He and his comrades are regarded as expendable, cannon fodder in the battle against the implacable Red Army. Outnumbered and outgunned, they fight their way across the frozen steppe....
This iconic anti-war novel is a testament to the atrocities suffered by the lone soldier in the fight for survival. Sven Hassel's unflinching narrative is based on his own experiences in the German Army. He began writing his first novel, Legion of the Damned, in a prisoner of war camp at the end of the Second World War. Read by Rupert Degas.
There is a certain type of universal, everyman war novel that transcends nationality. While "All Quiet on the Western Front," is considered a literary war classic, I was surprised to find that I liked this book better. For anyone who has read Johnny Got His Gun, The Things they Carried, The Painted Bird or Farewell to Arms, you will find yourself stepping into similar themes. Exhaustion. Torture. Horrors of war. Comedy. Rare, odd bits of humanity. I did not expect this book to be anything better than a general war story, but its actually very well-written and much more literary than I'd expected. The author spices the story with his insights and grudges against war more overtly than in books like Farewell to Arms. After having read so many war books, I don't have high expectations towards encountering new ones. This one really took me by surprise and I loved every minute of it. On top of that, the narrator is superb. Couldn't have found someone more perfect. I will definitely read more books by this author as they come available on audible.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
not bad, I grew up reading Sven Hassell, all of them. this story strays from the novel considerably. a bit too much filler and not enough action for me.
This is a powerful account of the madness and dehumanisation of war. It is quite old fashioned, written in a very telling and sometimes passive style, but it is very moving, especially when the protagonist returns to the front after hospital. I don't care how much of it is true, the anti-war message is strong and it is not the boys own adventure I thought it would be for all those years.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
What about Rupert Degas’s performance did you like?
Everything. It was a brilliant performance. Unfortunately this is the second bad book I have chosen purely for the narrator. I wish they picked him for some better books.
Any additional comments?
We have all heard that the WWII Russian front was one of the nearest things there has ever been to hell on earth and reading an autobiographical account of it promised to be both enlightening and fascinating. At first it was. The hero seemed to give an honest account, full of humble reflections, of the extraordinary suffering and extraordinary heroics in which he had become embroiled. Unfortunately it was too extraordinary. The further I read, the more incredible became the exploits of bullet-dodging Sven, his friends and their uniform-wearing, vodka-drinking cat who was happy to live in a greatcoat pocket in a tank in the middle of roaring artillery.
A bit of research shows that it was certainly not an autobiographical account. It is possible that the author fought in the war and wrote a fictional account in which some (probably a minority) of the events were real. But there is evidence that he neither fought in the war nor even wrote the book himself, but paid someone else to write it based on second hand stories he had picked up.
So shouldn't we just read it as a novel and enjoy it, like All quiet on the Western front? That seems to be a popular view since this Danish book has enjoyed its greatest success among English readers. I would guess that the English enjoy reading about a Danish German soldier who not only loathes the Nazis but constantly slates nearly everything about the German military while killing an astronomical number of Russians.
That won't do. The book is not presented as fiction. It contains many comments about his thoughts as a writer looking back on real events which strongly suggest it is autobiographical. Many reviewers seem to have been taken in by this, as I was. Once you take away the autobiographical side of it, there isn't much left. To be one of about three survivors from a 6,000 regiment is impressive in real life. In fiction it is cheap. All Quiet on the Western Front is fiction but it is not exaggerated. We learn a great deal about the war from reading it. Legion of the Damned is so exaggerated we cannot extract any truth from it. It is simply a fantasy.
I give it two stars instead of one because the anti-war message was thought-provoking, though rather simplistic. He says all generals and their political associates are corrupt, soldiers in all armies should rebel and military spending should be switched to cars and houses. Of course he was talking about the Nazis 70 years ago who have nothing in common with today's generals and leaders. However, he makes one point we should not be smug about, that many powerful men benefit from the fighting in numerous ways and at times fall prey to destructive self interest. Anyone who believes the British are immune to this should read the introduction to Pakenham's history of the Boer war, titled "Milner's War". I get the same feeling sometimes when I listen to senior military on the Today Programme insisting that the £60 billion Britain paid for the Afghanistan war was money well spent.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
Another excellent listen from Sven Hassel ....
Simply brilliant stuff for sure .....
Real life factual stories from a German perspective.
Well done .
The narrator was not easy to understand sometimes and the volume spikes were a nuisance too.
I never would have thought that I would be interested in reading the story of a soldier from other side. It was very gripping and absorbing. The description of that period from German perspective was enlightening. The brutality of war is described in such detail that a reader can almost smell it.
If you could sum up Legion of the Damned in three words, what would they be?
Brutal Honest Shocking
What was one of the most memorable moments of Legion of the Damned?
Close quarter bayonet fighting with the Russians.
Which scene did you most enjoy?
I Particularly enjoyed the minefield sabotage scene.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Yes the 1st chapter to the last.
Any additional comments?
Brilliant book for an honest insight into the German army some parts do feel slightly far fetched but war is war I suppose. It also has to be said that Rupert Degas is fantastic in his narration of this book.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
When you start to like the characters, you know that you are enjoying a book! Not normally
my kind of listen, but enjoyed nonetheless.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful