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Panzer Soldier

di Barry Sadler

Serie: Casca (4)

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1144237,579 (3.69)3
A Panzer soldier for the brutal Third Reich, Casca becomes entrenched in Hitler's Nazi war machine and is forced to pit his credit as a soldier against his moral judgment of humanity. Sporting the honorable Knight's Cross and a silver tanker's badge, Casca leads the 1st SS Panzer Regiment against the hammering forces of Ivan, the throttlehold of Russias military. Comradery, survival instinct, and highly developed German tanks keep Casca and his crew forging ahead, but when the reality of Hitlers sinister manifesto is revealed to them, they begin to question their role in the destruction of humankind. Amidst a bleak landscape of battle, Cascas chance encounter with a war-torn Jewish woman puts his sense of decency to the test and takes him to the one remaining bunker in Berlin Hitler's lair where he confronts the living madman. In the clandestine chamber of Adolf Hitler, secrets are revealed and destiny shows its hand.… (altro)
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CASCA rolls through the horrors of WWII in the fourth installment of the series. This book is pretty much non stop combat and does not contain as much personal reflection as the first three. However in the end when Hitler makes an appearance and the Brotherhood of the Lamb show up things get a little more introspective. Sadler goes into graphic detail of the fall of Berlin and manages to paint a very vivid picture of the German children who were somehow sucked into the NAZI war machine. ( )
  JHemlock | Jun 26, 2023 |
If you're not familiar with the series, it follows Casca, the legionnaire who killed Christ as he was dying on the cross. Christ cursed Casca to be as he was until they met again. Sadler wrote a couple of dozen books with Casca fighting as a soldier, usually some sort of grunt, in different time periods. He gets killed occasionally, but always comes back to fight another day, so provides a lot of adventure.

I've read all the Casca books written by Sadler when they first came out in published order
(Listed here: https://www.goodreads.com/series/51203-casca)
& have re-read some over the years, although it's been a long time. While this was the 4th published, it is the 16th chronologically according to this list:
http://www.amazon.com/Barry-Sadler-Casca-Complete-Chronological/lm/RXA6K50WC6MNX

Since Sadler died, another dozen have been published. I read one & decided it wasn't for me, but 3 different authors have tried their hand at them, so one of the others might be better. I didn't care too much for many of the later ones that Sadler did, though. I prefer it when the book concentrates more on the history than on how tough/cool Casca is. Sadler did that best with the first & the 20th century ones from WWI up through Vietnam, as I recall. This is possibly the best, IMO.

The vast majority of what I know about the German conflict in WWII is from the Allies' side, in Europe, or north Africa. This book has Casca as a Panzer tank commander at the Russian front which made for a very interesting perspective. The sheer amount of material & men involved was staggering, the hardships the men of both sides endured was awful. The view of the common German soldier & people as opposed to the SS fanatics was also interesting. Sadler manages to pack a lot of facts & attitudes in, but keeps the writing lean & quick.

Sadler did a good job describing a lot of the horrors of the war, but the editing could have been better. The writing was uneven at times. Sadler's characters are memorable, but sometimes he takes them a bit too far off the reservation & his terse phrases could make timing confusing. For instance, Casca stops for a rest break at noon, there is a descriptive sentence & then it is getting dark at 5pm, all in one paragraph. Generally though, I appreciated his quick style of writing.

Pet Peeve Alert: Sadler uses 'decimate' to mean 'halved' at one point. I know the popular definition has changed, but that's no excuse. I HATE it when it is used to mean wipe out, crush, demolish, eradicate, exterminate, extinguish, liquidate, obliterate, abolish, erase, expunge, extirpate, massacre, ruin, &/or slaughter. The root 'deci' means '1/10th of'. English is rich enough in words that there is no need to mangle a perfectly good one that actually defines itself.

Overall, I liked it a lot. It's a quick read, fun, & just what I needed since my mind is burned from too many details at work. I think I'll read another. ( )
  jimmaclachlan | Aug 18, 2014 |
This is the fourth in the Casca series, though it's only the second Casca book I have read. Beyond a very loose narrative frame at the beginning and the end of the book, it is not closely connected with its immediate predecessor in the series.

Casca is the Roman centurion who stabbed Jesus as He was being crucified and was therefore cursed to live forever, or at least until the Second Coming. As a soldier by training and inclination, Casca then spends the next couple thousand years traveling around and participating in variety of battles throughout history. Not a bad premise.

Casca finds himself as a sergeant in the Wehrmacht commanding a panzer on the Eastern Front. He's not a Nazi, he just likes battle and fears the long-term Russian threat, so Casca's not a bad guy, right? He participates various battles in the Kursk campaign; the tank combat sequences are not bad but not highly detailed, so readers looking for lots of "tank porn" may be disappointed. Casca and his crew end up fighting as infantrymen as often as they do in a tank. When the Eastern Front collapses, Casca meets a Jewish woman who is a prisoner of the SS. She alerts Casca to the Holocaust, he rescues her, and spends the last six months of so of the war assassinating SS men and rescuing Jewish prisoners. He is eventually captured and taken to Himmler, who is one of the leaders of the Christian cult/sect hunting Casca throughout history. As it turns out, they hate Jews as well and set up WWII for the purpose of eliminating as many Jews as possible. Casca ends up being taken to HItler's bunker and participating in the fall of Berlin.

Some decent characterization of the various villains and the wriing was noticably better than the third book in the series. If you like straight-up military history fiction with a few strange elements thrown in, this is a pretty good book.

Review copyright 2008 J. Andrew Byers ( )
  bibliorex | Jun 14, 2008 |
One of the series of books I read when in my late teens / early twenties was the Sven Hassell set written from the perspective of a German penal regiment on the Eastern Front. Although I no longer possess these, memories of those novels were brought back when I read through this story. It also reminded me, very closely, of the Sam Peckinpah film "Cross of Iron" starring Maximilian Schell, James Mason and James Coburn. In fact, so closely did this mirror that film that I'm tempted to suggest a little plagarism by Sadler, but even so, it made a good book.

The story picks up in 1943 on the eve of the fateful battle of Kursk when Casca returns to the front after a period of leave. The battle of course ends in defeat and a fair amount of the first 2/3rds of the book deals with the retreat and the struggle Casca's little band of men have in surviving and making it back to their own lines. Its very well written and compelling reading.

What catches the reader though is the sudden sea change in the last third. Suddenly we're out of the fighting and propelled into Germany where Casca turns on the SS and hard-core Nazis when he finally recognises the horrors that are being forced on the Jews and other groups of non-Aryans. Its as though Sadler, having put Casca on what may be regarded as the morally 'wrong' side, purges the guilt by having him turn on the Nazis.

Of course, its all a big conspiracy by the Brotherhood of the Lamb and the last part of the story, set in Berlin as the Russians close in, is a harrowing sequences of Hitler losing his grip on reality and Casca's existence amongst the rubble of the German capital. Excellent scene setting and the final pages unforgettable. One of the best Sadler written Cascas but because of the plagarism I'm docking it one star in my review. ( )
  Cascawebsite | Mar 4, 2008 |
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A Panzer soldier for the brutal Third Reich, Casca becomes entrenched in Hitler's Nazi war machine and is forced to pit his credit as a soldier against his moral judgment of humanity. Sporting the honorable Knight's Cross and a silver tanker's badge, Casca leads the 1st SS Panzer Regiment against the hammering forces of Ivan, the throttlehold of Russias military. Comradery, survival instinct, and highly developed German tanks keep Casca and his crew forging ahead, but when the reality of Hitlers sinister manifesto is revealed to them, they begin to question their role in the destruction of humankind. Amidst a bleak landscape of battle, Cascas chance encounter with a war-torn Jewish woman puts his sense of decency to the test and takes him to the one remaining bunker in Berlin Hitler's lair where he confronts the living madman. In the clandestine chamber of Adolf Hitler, secrets are revealed and destiny shows its hand.

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