Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-Ss Paperback – January 1, 2002

Black Edelweiss is a rare example of a personal WWII memoir written soon after the events (most of the draft was written while the author was a POW during 1945-46) with the emotional and historical breadth of a book written from a much greater distance of time and utilizing a variety of non-personal references. Johann Voss (a pseudonym) has put his life in the SS-Mountain Infantry Regiment 11 (given the name �Reinhard Heydrich� in 1942) to paper in a way that the reader can truly assess the actions of a single soldier, his immediate platoon members and larger Regimental force rationally without the baggage of bias. This is not to say that the author has created a typical post-war apologetic piece that draws empathy/sympathy from the reader. Rather, Voss draws the reader along in an honest forthright story of his experiences as a loyal soldier within a larger group of comrades who, although fighting for the Hitler regime, did so with heart and passion for comrades, unit and country, but with clear chivalry (or at least as much as can fairly be expected in war) and battle fairness. It is the very nature of when this book was drafted (and little changed by the author later although published 60 odd years after being drafted) � while the author was still feeling connection to and pride of unit � that makes this NOT a typical Nazi apologia book. The book was however written at a time when the author was learning (second hand) about the atrocities of the Nazi regime and the SS structure more particularly, and as such the author is able to place his military experiences in perspective of the regime he served. This creates both an honest look at combat and the emotions invoked upon finding for what and whom he and friends served and died for. Emotion is raw and real in this book.Voss starts and ends the book in third person from the POW pen, but in between weaves an engrossing story of how a young impressionable German is compelled to join an elite SS-Mountain Regiment; how this decision positively affects his life; how he survives the cold and combat of service above the Artic circle, in the Vosges Mountains, and the last days of the western Reich frontier; and how his earlier decision to join this elite group of men affected his life upon realization that his combat unit has been wholesale lumped with the SS of the Endlösung. The stories of regiment combat are visceral in content and quite rewarding. One can feel the cold, stress, fear and adrenalin of the situations.I highly recommend this book if you want a clear and apparently unembellished, time-unbiased picture of a German combat unit in action. If you want to double your pleasure read Black Edelweiss back-to-back with another Aberjona Press production, Seven Days in January by Wolf Zoepf. This latter book deals exclusively with the SS Nord Division and it�s combat both above the Artic Circle and the Lower Vosges and is pitched more from the pure combat history perspective.

You will certainly come away with a different perspective on the hated SS troops of Nazi Germany after reading this book. The author claims profound disappointment and shock at the criminalization of the entire SS organization at the Nuremberg trials, and the stigma attached to any German soldier who served under the SS banner. The author spent most of the war far removed from Germany itself, thus professing no knowledge of the atrocities committed by homeland SS units. If he is to be believed, he was as shocked and angered as the Allies were when he discovered what had been done by perverse SS troops, forever destroying the reputation of what were originally intended to be units of elite and skilled soldiers.It is interesting, too, that the author shares a common feeling held by many other German officers toward the end of the war: a sincere belief--in retrospect, an extremely naive belief--that the conquering Allies would actually join with the Wehrmacht in continuing the fight against Bolshevism and the threat to all of Europe posed by Russia. Given the rise of the Cold War and the events that took place in the decades following WWII, perhaps they had a point.Black Edelweiss is well written and extremely readable. It gives a detailed and interesting account of daily life--from boredom to terror--in an SS regiment fighting Russians, Finns, and the environment on the fringes of the Arctic Circle. It is especially interesting to read of the opinion the German soldiers had of the Americans, after the author had been transferred to the Western Front for the last-ditch, bloody, futile efforts to keep the Allies from invading Der Fatherland.One of the better WWII memoirs that has been published, and I have read several. It confirms the sad fact that the common foot soldier has always shared the same miseries, tragedies, losses and fear as his opponent on the other side of the front line; essentially, being cannon fodder for the arrogance, idiocy and fanaticism of politicians and "leaders" who see war as inevitable and human lives as expendable.One cannot, in my opinion, truly understand the dynamics of war without studying the opinions and motivations of combatants on all sides, not just those of the "good guys." In that regard, Black Edelweiss is an invaluable addition to a WWII library.