Grenadiers: The Story of Waffen SS General Kurt 'Panzer' Meyer Book

In this memoir, Kurt Meyer details his personal experience of the Second World War as he fights in Poland, the Balkans, on the Eastern Front, and then finally in the west. The account ends with his capture, and subsequent trail as a war criminal. Meyer praises his men and their actions, provides a graphic account of what he states took place, and can give the reader an impression of what his war must have felt like.

However, the account is seriously flawed by Meyer's bias. He states that his men never committed war crimes nor witnessed them. This is despite his division (on the Eastern Front, the 1st SS LAH) having committed numerous atrocities, and modern research highlighting Meyer's role in giving the orders for the murder of civilians within the Soviet Union. Likewise, while detailing his experience within France, he attempts to justify the murder of French civilians - who were unconnected to a partisan attack on a 12th SS convoy - and shows no remorse for what they did. In a similar fashion, he defends the murder of Canadian prisoners. Ironically, he lambasts the bombing of Caen (which has been debated by historians over its usefulness) as a war crime yet fails to mention that legitimate German targets were attacked and destroyed and their supply line destroyed (in the context of the Second World War, in which area bombing was undertaken by both sides, a justified action).

What starts out as a interesting almost exciting adventure through the war, rapidly turns into a unapologetic Nazi propaganda piece.