Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112137 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
When a 20-year old Waffen-SS veteran of two years' 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. The author served in SS Mountain Infantry Regiment 11 "Reinhard Heydrich", part of 6th SS Mountain Division "Nord". The book is mostly an account of his extensive combat service against the Soviets in northern Karelia and Finland, with a shorter section describing combat against the Americans in the Vosges and in the Saar-Moselle triangle. Voss reflects on the totality of his wartime experiences, from the origins of his reasons for enlisting in the Waffen-SS to his experiences in US captivity. The result is a compelling and honest account.

Customer Reviews

One of the best individual accounts
"Black Edelweiss" is one of the best memoirs to come out of WWII that this reviewer (a professional author and film researcher) has read and can be compared with "Saat in den Sturm" by Herbert Brunnegger (another "ordinary" Waffen-SS veteran's candid memoir, only available in German at the time of writing).
"Johann Voss" (pseudonym) decided to write a personal journal about his experiences of the pre-war years and the WWII Arctic and Western fronts while he was still a prisoner of war. He started writing in March 1945 and was basically finished in December 1946. This shows. The book is rich with fine details, strong images and emotions that can't be found in books written later, at least books that ring so true as "Black Edelweiss" does.
The author truly manages to communicate how he probes his own mind on the subjects of national socialism and the war, including the Holocaust. He does not realize the full extent of many things and sometimes speculates naively but "Johann Voss" is to be commended for having resisted the advice to rewrite his notes from today's perspective. His words from 1945-46 deserve to be read just as they were written. However, there are some chapters that lack a contemporary note or two - to avoid misunderstandings. The epilogue, written in today's world, could also have been a bit longer, describing e.g. the author's recent years and his current perspective on society in the Third Reich.
The Editor's introduction to the book provides a good review of previously published books from and about the "lower level" of the German armed forces (esp. from the ranks of the Waffen-SS).
"Black Edelweiss" is a superb individual-level companion to the best overview of the Waffen-SS (in particular SSTK) that I know: "Soldiers of Destruction" by Charles W. Sydnor.

Outstanding
This is the kind of book I had always hoped to find - an intelligent and well-written first-hand narrative and reflection of someone who has been a volunteer of the Waffen-SS. I'm glad that with this book I did. I don't think there are many other books that even fall in the same category, let alone that would compare to it.

The book might be disappointing to those who are interested merely in battle field action, but for the same reason it can be all the more fascinating and rewarding to those who are also, or perhaps even mainly, interested in the private thoughts and motivations of people who volunteered in those days and went on to do the fighting (and sometimes even, as in this case, lived to tell the tale).

It's a very personal account - "A memoir of combat AND conscience". So nobody should be surprised if it isn't anything else, that is, more or less than that.

Interesting
Not to be bought if you are after details of battle as the author does not go through them in too much details, or in the amount of details some would expect. However a very interesting book for those like me who wondered how a kid ended up in teh Waffen SS, and his thoughts during the war.