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Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS. By Johann Voss. Bedford, Pa.: Aberjona Press, 2002. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Pp. xvi, 206. $19.95.
At a moment in history when the nexus between extremist ideology, individual fanaticism, and highly motivated military elites once again dominates the security and military planning of the world's democracies, the author provides a thoughtful, insightful, and highly readable account of how a seemingly ordinary, well-educated young man can be manipulated by the values of an absolutist, all-embracing belief system, allied with longstanding familial values, into willingly going out to do righteous battle against a particular concept of "barbarism." In the 1940s, the young man in question ended up in the Waffen-SS fighting "Bolshevism." In today's world, he might be a member of al qaeda flying planes into buildings.
Written immediately after the war's end when he was a POW in American captivity, the author presents a complex narrative, one that captures the intense pride and sense of self-fulfillment he experienced as a combat soldier of the Waffen-SS, counterpointed by his growing realization that men who wore the same uniform as himself were intimately involved in the worst genocidal crimes of Hitler's Germany. Because it was written so soon after the events it covers, the author perfectly captures the sights and sounds of his extensive combat experience, actions that cover both his regiment's part...