Wheels of Terror by Sven Hassel (1959)

Wheels of Terror by Sven Hassel. Published by Souvenir Press, London, 1959. Hardcover, Used, Good condition, torn DJ, light foxing to end papers, previous owners name on inside front cover. 287 pp.

To read this horrifying book is to be cauterized of any romantic illusions about war.

Sven Hassel, who has been called the Remarque of Word War II, takes as his subjects the men of the 27th Panzer Regiment - a penal unit whose tanks trundled and blasted their way across the harsh landscape of the Eastern Front. There, in the previously unknown town of Cherkassy, remote in the Ukraine, a pitched battle bloodier than Stalingrad's was fought with tanks, guns, bayonets, hands and boots.

Stripped of all honour or conviction, living and fighting in filth, men counted their existence in hours, lusting and desecrating like half-crazed animals. With everything forgotten but the struggle for personal survival, and with nothing demanded but the next game of Skat and, when the opportunity occured, the slaking of desire for women - any women - theirs was a maniacal world in which the eruption of high explosives, the scream of bullets were the only realities.

Sven Hassel's writing is hard, staccato and ruthless. Some readers will be shocked because he scorns euphemisms and omits nothing that he believes should be told. His book is a terrible indictment of the brutality and animalism of war, and that is exactly the author's purpose. The son of an Austrian officer, he deserted from the German hussar regiment, was arrested by the Gestapo and, under a 15-year sentence, served in the 27th Panzar Regiment for convicts. His experiences turned his hatred of war to a white hot passion, as this searing documentary demonstrates with terrible impact.

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