We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, that the earth can be used for something other than burying the dead.

This devastating first-hand story of a young German soldier trapped in the lethal machinery of total war on the Eastern Front in World War II captures the real experience of modern war in all its shattering terror.

When Guy Sajer joins the German army in the summer of 1942 it is enjoying unparalleled success in Russia. However, he quickly finds that the glory hides a harsher reality. Posted to the crack Grosse Deutchland division, with its sadistic instructors who shoot down those who fail to make the grade, he enters a remorseless world where all hope is ground down and all that matters is the brute will to survive. As the biting cold of the Russian winter sets in, and the tide begins to turn against the Germans, life becomes endless vicious combat against a relentless and merciless Red Army.