I've never read a novel like this before and, honestly, I'm not even sure where to start as far as reviewing it goes. Told mainly from the point of view of an old German man who fought for the Nazis in World War 2, the novel is essentially his letter to his British-born grandson, Callum, answering the younger man's questions which the grandfather hadn't felt able to answer in person or, indeed, during his lifetime, as the letter is delivered to Callum following the older man's death.

It touches on the wider war, specifically the campaign in the East against Russia as that's where the man fought, but in the main this is a tale of a couple of days towards the end of the war, when it's obvious to everyone that Germany is going to lose. Through his telling of the escapades he and four other men got into in those few days, the grandfather examines his own part in the war, his feelings of guilt, the morality of fighting for a cause you don't agree with, the relationship between the average German on the street and the atrocities carried out in their name and how "We Germans" deal with the aftermath of the war, even so many years later.

This is interspersed with brief commentary from Callum, whose point of view allows us to see the man his grandfather became and the life he lived after the war, humanising for the reader a man who has probably been lumped in with all the other German soldiers from World War 2 as 'just another Nazi' in the collective consciousness.

In some ways it's not easy reading - the descriptions of some of the atrocities witnessed by the grandfather are quite harrowing - but it is hugely compelling reading. The tale grasps hold of you and takes you along for the ride, keeping you riveted. If I have one criticism it's that I would have liked more detail on his life as a PoW immediately after the war but, even without that, this stands as a powerful, engrossing work which will stay with me for a long time.

I've not read a book written from this POV before, a German solider from WW2. It was written as a letter from grandfather to grandson answering some questions about his experience of the war.
We Germans was thought provoking but quite slow paced, I enjoyed it but I feel like it coujld be edited further to make it more gripping and captivating.

This is an interesting tale of WW2 from the point of view of an ordinary, conscripted German soldier. This is a young man who is not a Nazi but is forced to fight for his country. The book is different as it is set on the Eastern Front, not in France and western Europe. Whether or not the sort of atrocities described are based on fact, you can imagine that things just as horrific did happen when people were really desperate. Read this for a different view of the war; no heroics, just a struggle to survive.

A promising start and a good story, but I struggled with its pace. As good as the story is it plods along slowly.
The story of a grandson trying to understand his grandfathers involved in WWII leads the old man to write a letter. The letter turns into a memoir
The memoir of a reluctant German Soldier and his retreat back across Europe
It’s a moralistic story, justification of actions taken in the name of survival
Will the grandson understand.

Thought provoking ww2=A German soldier the guilt the aftermath of choices .A letter written to his grandson sharing his thoughts his remorse.An eye opening heart wrenching read. #netgalley#johnmurraypress.

Born as I was in 1945 six months before the end of WWII .my early years were coloured with a particularly English view of the war. The comic books we read as children mainly showed wild depictions of the war in western Europe or Nort Africa. The war on the eastern front did not exist for us then. Even today in my mid-seventies if I think of the war at all it is Dunkirk, Arnhem and D-Day that spring to mind.
This short novel written from the perspective of a German soldier fighting on the eastern front almost at the end of the war opens the eyes to the horrors that took place there. The book is based around a letter left to the British grandson of the soldier in which he tries to make sense of what happened in his young life The author is himself of British German ancestry but the book is a novel rather than fact but I am left wondering how musch may be true.

What was life like for German soldiers during the war? Can any of us ever think what they experienced and lived through and how they moved on post war. A young British man asks such a question of his German Grandfather and only after his death receives an answer after he dies in the form of a letter.
A gripping novel that’s gives a glimpse into lives that survived the war and have continued to cope knowing they were on the losing side and never allowed to forget what they are “all” blamed for. Very moving.

Wow. What a different take on WW2. At first I wasn't sure if this was fiction or non fiction but ultimately it didn't matter. It is an exploration of life as a general soldier within the German army, concentrating on one small piece of action seen by Callum's grandfather. It explores guilt, complicity, dual nationality and much more.
Told in the form of a long letter, interspersed with explanations or additions from Callum it puts the war into context within one family and by concentrating so closely on just a few days is entirely different from anything I've read before.

I found this book thought provoking and fascinating.

The subject matter is hard but so interesting and keeps you reading.

Read if you like books framed by WW2 and the continuing effects it has had.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I'm really glad that I've got the e-copy of this book and read it with a great interest. When I saw the description, I thought "well, this is another book about WWII" But when I began to read, I understood that this book is all about emotions, morals and attitudes. We have a lot of questions about the past and we blame each other for mistakes that were made in the past, but we never thought about the true reasons why all those things happened.

Although an avid reader of historical novels and especially those set in the World Wars, I cannot remember the last one I read that was set on the Eastern Front. 'We Germans' has made me realise my ignorance and sparked my enthusiasm for finding out more about this side of European history.
At first I found the dual dialogue technique employed affected the flow of this telling but, as the story developed, I not only found myself desperate to know what the Grandfather experienced in his soldiering days but I also yearned to understand from his grandson's accounts, more about the young man who had witnessed and also carried out such atrocities. After all, the grandfather seems to be such a nice man, doesn't he? Surely he could never have hurt others unless purely carrying out his orders, could he? This really made me question my own moral standing in the daily fatigue of a seemingly endless war. I'd like to think I would do anything possible to help those in danger and naturally I would never actively do anything to harm another - those were the underlying dilemmas I was forced to confront repeatedly.
Whilst often making very uncomfortable and appalling reading Starritt very successfully had me involved with this.

Thank you to John Murray Press (Hachette) and NetGalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Really thought provoking read. A young man asks his German Grandfather about his time during the war. This results in a long letter after his death describing his time at the Eastern front and the dawning realisation that Germany were going to lose the war and that they deserve to. It describes some of the horrors he saw and how he tried to come to terms with his involvement. A really interesting perspective.

3.5 stars

Callum is a British man who asks his German grandfather what it was like fighting on the wrong side of WW2. His grandfather is reluctant to answe. However, after is grandfathers death, Callum finds a letter addressed to him. The letter is the book. Callum's grandfather details his time on the eastern front.

I have read a number of fictional stories about WW2 but not from the perspective of a German solider which is why I was keen to read this book. I really enjoyed the letter parts of the book. I wasn't as keen on the bits of the story Callum added, I felt some of them didn't really add much to the story.

I think this is a thought provoking book and offers an unusal but different perspective to WW2.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As we are approaching the 75th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Europe, I was interested in reading about the war from the perspective of a German soldier. This book offered a good insight into how ordinary Germans weren't necessarily in agreement with their commanding officers. Not a long story but very thought provoking.

This is precisely what you'd expect from a perspective revolution- and it's great. Callum asks his grandfather what it was like to fight for the Germans in World War II. He gets no satisfactory answer until he reads a letter from his grandfather, depicting the scale of loss and confusion, fear and resignation that echoed through the German ranks in the fading days of the war. There's a lot to unpack here, as this man questions his role in evil, the parts he played, what he had to do to survive, and how the things he saw broke him into parts- unshockable, but constantly numb. This is a book that questions responsibility and underlines the notion that soldiers sent to battle are rarely reflective of the politics that sent them there.

It is interesting to see WW2 from the Eastern front, as the author states it was far more brutal there. Yet I found it a bit boring in places. I would have preferred to read more about the Grandad's life after the war as he seemed a nice chap! Also he had already been at the front for 4 years and we only got a taste of his life there, albeit the most traumatic part. I would have been interested to read about his life in captivity in Russia also, but I assume that the grandchild already knew about this. I think this would be great if you have an interest in WW2 from a soldier's perspective, but it just wasn't for me.

Know thyself

The Scottish grandson of a WW2 German soldier asks his grandfather what were his experiences in the war. The old man refuses to answer and sulks. Years later the grandson finds a letter left to him by his now deceased grandfather. In it is an account of his experiences on the Russian Front, focusing on a 24 hour period during the German retreat in the closing months of the war.

The novel is the old soldier’s letter, including footnotes and commentary by the grandson. The short period described in detail contains boredom, hunger, defeat, horror and death. Suffusing the events of a single incident are snapshots of the soldier’s protestant, middle class youth, his enthusiasm in the war’s early days, his increasing disillusion, his war weariness, his feeling of just reward when incarcerated in a Russian POW camp for years after the war, redemption and rebirth when he met the woman who was to be his wife, their final years together in a Germany which had chosen to forget its guilt, until the presumptuous request of a young grandson finally compels an old man to confront the past and at last to know himself.

We Germans  - Alexander Starritt

When a young British man asks his German grandfather what it was like to fight on the wrong side of the war, the question is initially met with irritation and silence. But after the old man's death, a long letter to his grandson is found among his things.
That letter is this book. In it, he relates the experiences of an unlikely few days on the Eastern Front - at a moment when he knows not only that Germany is going to lose the war, but that it deserves to. He writes about his everyday experience amid horror, confusion and great bravery, and he asks himself what responsibility he bears for the circumstances he found himself in. As he tries to find an answer he can live with, we hear from his grandson what kind of man he became in the seventy years after the war.
We Germans is a fundamentally human novel that grapples with the most profound of questions about guilt, shame and responsibility - questions that remain as live today as they have always been.

You know when you read a book and it makes you feel so much that you can't put it into words? That was this for me. Told as a long letter from a former German soldier who fought on the eastern front to his English grandson with occasional asides from Callum, the grandson. The narrative structure is one of the strongest things about this book and the exploration of whether being complicit makes you evil and even if you have a choice in the matter is so interesting. We Germans is a tough but engaging read, thanks to Netgalley for sending this my way, I hugely recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about the era. This comes out n May which is incidentally the month we're celebrating the 75th anniversary of VE Day... Coincidence?

A gréât memoir switching between the two points of view. Well written and interesting to read. I fully recommend

This is a book I haven't been able to stop talking about since I finished it a few weeks ago. I have never read a WW2 novel written from the perspective of a perpetrator before and found it unexpectedly compelling, to the point where I've felt guilty about empathising with the narrator. He isn't an especially sympathetic character; there's no play for forgiveness here, just a powerful and honest explanation of how shame works and a brutally truthful account of his role while fleeing across Poland at the tail end of the Wehrmacht's retreat from Russian and partisan forces.
The atrocities in this novel are painful to read about and the narrator pulls no punches - it's gutwrenching. The characters are vividly drawn and hard to look away from; the landscape hellish. At first I found the narrative perspective confusing - it's told partly in a letter and sometimes through the eyes of the grandson, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw that the distance of time was necessary to make sense of the story, which is really about the personal and cultural aftermath of being the guilty party. I'd just never thought about he war the way it's presented here: the idea of his envying those German soldiers 'lucky' enough to have fought the more 'conventional' Blitzkrieg campaign in the West, rather than the breathtakingly savage Eastern war; the idea (rejected by the grandfather) of a 'clean Wehrmacht'; the jawdropping lack of humanity throughout; the generation-spanning collective guilt which is so difficult to assuage- and, in fact, the terrifying notion that the guilt CAN be overcome by deniers and apologists in our current world.
I won't easily forget this novel; it was, for me, a stunning work.