The Commissar

By: Sven Hassel

Narrated by: Samy Andersen

Heide wails, jumps up and lands on the other side of the trench, where he slides through the mud like a bulldozer. Our tank starts backing up in full speed. Porta has clearly also spotted the madness lying ahead in wait of spreading death and mutilation. Nothing travels as fast as the rumor that the front troops have hit the dreaded mines. Suddenly everything goes quiet. Even the heavy Maxim gun stops. Everyone holds their breath and waits for the mine to go off.

Sven Hassel was sent to a penal battalion as a private in the German forces. Intensely and with brutal realism, he portrays the cruelty of the war, the Nazi crimes and the crude and cynical humor of the soldiers. With more than 50 million sold copies, this is one of the world's best selling war novels.

©2018 SAGA Egmont (P)2018 SAGA Egmont

Critic reviews

THE CERTAIN SENSE OF DRAMATIC ANTI-THESIS HAS TURNED SVEN HASSEL INTO A NEW HEMINGWAY
--RAMAR-GAN, ISRAEL

Use it as an Indication of Conditions

Given the reports of activities of Sven Hassel post war, you have to take this as complete fiction. It is an indication of what the conditions were like on the Russian front. Legion of the Damned was a fairly good book about an aspect of the German army - the punishment battalions. This seems to have strayed from that topic, even though there is some overlap of characters. He keeps adding outrageous characters. The story is stale. The narrator is horrible. He rarely changes inflection, so you can't tell which character is speaking.