Radzyński Rocznik Humanistyczny (May 2018)
Życie codzienne żołnierzy niemieckich na froncie wschodnim w czasie II wojny światowej
Abstract
In this essay I shall examine daily life of German soldiers on the eastern front of World War II. In order to analyze this issue, we will trace selected memoirs of Wehrmacht soldiers in view of our main research problem. The first part of the article is an approximation of the description of everyday life on the basis of Hans Roth’s diary. The second and the third is an attempt to approximate Günter Koschorreck’s and Josef Alleberger’s point of view. The next part of this work is the answer to the question of what a picture of everyday life emerges from Czesław Knopp’s memories. The last one is Gerd Helmut Komassa’s characterization of war existence. The aim of my study was to reach the following conclusions. First of all, I wanted to deal with the war of the Third Reich against the Soviet Union from the point of view of the losing side, because I think it deserves the attention, and it is in today’s polish literature insufficiently emphasized and presented mainly from the perspective of the winning side of the conflict. In the meantime, however, I wanted to show the everyday life of German soldiers on the Eastern Front of World War II, because I considered that this topic was insignificant or not emphasized at all in today’s World War II literature, mainly set about the course of warfare. It seems to me that the intended objective of this article was achieved. Yet, the issue remains open, especially because of the richness of the source material left by the participants of the struggle taking place on the eastern front. Therefore, for the Readers this article can be a kind of substitute and an incentive for further exploration of this extremely captivating and re-examined topic.
