{"title":"Klaus Willmann","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"death-march-into-russia-book-klaus-willmann-9781784385033","title":"Death March into Russia","description":"In this rare World War II memoir, Lothar Herrmann, a soldier from the Wehrmacht, details his unimaginable experience as a German Prisoner-of-War in the Soviet Union.  Hermann grew up in Bavaria, going through the RAD (Nazi Labour Service) before being conscripted into a Wehrmacht Mountain Division (the Gebirgsdivision) in 1940. He participated in Germany's advance through southern Ukraine in 1941 and, in 1944, was arrested in Romania while retreating to Germany. The Romanians passed him onto the Soviets, who placed him in a forced labour camp, where he watched two-thirds of prisoners around him die. In 1949, Herrmann was finally released to Germany and returned to Bavaria.  Three million German troops were taken prisoner by the Red Army and around two-thirds of them survived to return to Germany in 1949, but their stories are little known. Klaus Willmann draws on interviews he conducted with Herrmann, to recount these astonishing recollections in the first-person. Depicting the challenges of growing up in Nazi Bavaria to becoming a Soviet prisoner-of-war, this is a gripping and enlightening account from a necessary but rarely explored perspective.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49528592204049,"sku":"GOR010534219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735016939793,"sku":"NGR9781784385033","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50169725550865,"sku":"CIN1784385034G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53566079172881,"sku":"GOR010251302","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1784385034.jpg?v=1751443229"},{"product_id":"screams-of-the-drowning-book-klaus-willmann-9781784385989","title":"Screams of the Drowning","description":"This is the true story of how one soldier experienced the horrors and bloodshed of World War II - and lived to tell the tale.  Hans Fackler, like many boys his age, was conscripted into the Wehrmacht at the age of seventeen and sent to the Eastern Front. A pioneer in the infantry, he barely survived the carnage of the front lines and lost comrades to the Russian forces.  Eventually, Hans suffered a grievous injury from a grenade explosion. No longer able to fight, he found himself drugged on morphine and on board the controversial Wilhelm Gustloff, an armed military transport ship for SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht personnel, which operated under the guise of transporting civilians.   The Gustloff was attacked and sunk by Russian torpedoes, drowning more than 9,000 passengers. Rescued by a German freighter, Hans recuperated in a military hospital near Erfurt in the Harz, which subsequently fell into the Russian zone. He escaped and undertook the arduous task of walking almost 200 miles back home to Bavaria.  The extraordinary first-person account of one of the few soldier-survivors of the sinking of the Gustloff, it also includes Hans' experiences of taking part in the Kiev and the Vercors mountains massacres in 1941 and 1944 respectively.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49739236475153,"sku":"NGR9781784385989","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51453014835473,"sku":"CIN1784385980G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51692648366353,"sku":"CIN1784385980VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52316628091153,"sku":"GOR012284902","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1784385980.jpg?v=1750723601"},{"product_id":"u-188-a-german-submariner-s-account-of-the-war-at-sea-book-klaus-willmann-9781848327603","title":"U-188: A German Submariner's Account of the War at Sea","description":"Anton Staller was a U-boat lookout, rising no higher than Leading Seaman and his account of the war from the lower ranks is unique. He served on the Type IXc\/40 boat, U-188 under Kapitanleutnant Ludden on three patrols witnessing the stark reality of convoy warfare from his lookout position on the conning tower of his submarine. His U-boat sank the British destroyer HMS Beverley and eight merchant ships exceeding 100,000 gross tons but the submarine also spent many hours submerged under depth-charge attacks. More so than many of his contemporaries, Staller was prepared to reveal his thoughts and feelings of his experiences of the war at sea, and of his time on the conning tower, at the hydrophons, and cleaning weapons as a messboy.  His journal demonstrates how political thinking rarely entered the minds of the  U-boat men, even though many of them, such as Ludden, did not choose to serve in submarines. Staller was not a Nazi and came from a Socialist Party background, yet he never questioned the cause he was fighting for. To Staller it was simply 'Us or Them to the death'.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50150549684497,"sku":"GOR011434011","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50152482439441,"sku":"GOR007189966","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50401217839377,"sku":"CIN1848327609G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52094586487057,"sku":"CIN1848327609VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1848327609.jpg?v=1751217608"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-klaus-willmann.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}