We Will Not Go to Tuapse: From the Donets to the Oder with the Legion Wallonie and 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade 'Wallonien' 1942–45

Fernand Kaisergruber

Mar 2016 · Helion and Company

About this ebook

A soldier with the German Army’s Wallonian Legion chronicles his experience as a foreign volunteer for the Nazi war machine during WWII.
 
A french-speaking Belgian, Fernand Kaisergruber volunteered to fight with the military force that occupied his country. His detailed chronicle of that time reads like a travelogue of the Eastern Front campaign. Until recently, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals who fought with the Germans. Kaisergruber’s book sheds light on issues of collaboration, the experiences and motives of volunteers, and the reactions they encountered in occupied countries.
 
Kaisergruber draws upon his wartime diaries, those of his comrades, and his later work with them while secretary of their postwar veteran's league. Although unapologetic for his service, Khemakes no special claims for the German cause. He writes instead from his firsthand experience as a young man entering war for the first time. His narrative is full of observations of fellow soldiers, commanders, Russian civilians, and battlefields.

Ratings and reviews

I rare glimpse into a rarely travelled area of the Second World War.

Excellent account of hunger and fear on the eastern front

About the author

After the war Fernand Kaisergruber raised a family and worked as a sales representative and insurance inspector. He became secretary and archivist of the Walloon volunteers veteran's league. He has participated and given interviews in documentaries on film and television, and assisted researchers and scholars for several decades in their work. Numerous scholars have read and endorsed the French edition of his war experiences as authentic and revealing with unique insights into the campaigning and military experiences of foreign volunteers in the German forces during the Second World War.Paul Woodson has lived in the US and England, received a BFA in acting at Boston University, and has been acting and singing since the age of thirteen. He has recorded over one hundred audiobooks, many in the historical romance and Highlander genres, as well as fantasy novels, thrillers, classics, and young adult titles.