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Honor Denied: The Combat Memoirs of SS Radio Operator Karl Metzger | 
 enlarge | Authors: Karl Metzger, Paul K Harker
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $24.25
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 572429
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 1432703226
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9781432703226
ASIN: 1432703226
Publication Date: March 12, 2007
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Product Description
We did not aim and fire our rifles for Adolf Hitler or National Socialism. We did it for our fellow comrade soldiers.
At 17 years of age the German military seemed a wise choice to Karl von Metzger. Following enlistment he was sent to Radio School at Kiel to train as a wireless operator on a U-Boat. However, a shortage of radio operators changed his destiny by reassignment to the 2nd SS Das Reich Regiment. Karl participated in the invasion of the Low Countries and France in 1940 and believed in the cultural and historical significance of the war. A transfer to the 5th SS Wiking Regiment in 1941 took him to the Eastern Front where years of brutal combat and mindless suicidal orders forced him to question the political motives of Nazi Germany's war. While growing into manhood under barbaric hand-to-hand combat, merciless firefights and vicious artillery bombardments, Metzger clung to shreds of his boyhood innocence. He watched his comrade soldiers get pulverized by bombs and bullets until he abandoned his faith in the Third Reich with a resolve to survive the war. Metzger fought on the Eastern and Western Fronts through the harshest of conditions. Whereas the war began for him as a boy, it ended for him as a man. This is his story.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Clearly Fiction August 26, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
I purchased and read this book based solely on the product description.
Within a few pages, I was having doubts about its veracity. By a few chapters in, I was 100% sure it was fiction. I read the rest because it's like a train wreck - horrible, but I couldn't look away.
To cite the Low Countries campaign only: The teenage SS radio operator is assigned as Rommel's personal signalman. No other staff of Rommel (a division commander!) are ever mentioned, nor other radiomen. Rommel gives "Metzger" personal orders about where to go, what vehicle to ride in, how to behave, etc. Also, "Metzger" is the sole channel to higher command (including direct to Berlin!) that Rommel has. He is the one man division signal unit for Rommel's unit! Rommel also assigns him to select unit deployment positions and issue appropriate orders. He is also the artillery and Luftwaffe liason. He also calls up supply, medical and MP units when needed.
The German military in WWII was organized along modern lines with various staff functions to handle different areas. A division commander utilized all of these. I was in a US Army Infantry Battalion headquarters in the 1990's and even at that level (Battalions make up regiments or brigades, which make up divisions) there are staff officers and enlisted personnel to support the CO.
Oh and also, at various times between all this when Rommel doesn't need him, Metzger also participates in close assaults and house clearing and kills three French soldiers. He's wounded by shrapnel in three places, is operated on, and returns to action immediately.
I won't even get into all the equipment and weapon mistakes. Well - the one where the Belgians are using old guns from Napoleonic era (really, muzzle loading smoothbore cannons?!) is too good to pass up.
Did I mention he understands at least 4 languages, which were taught to him by a rail signalman that he befriended as a child, since the signalman needed to know these languages to communicate with "foreign trains"? Including English?
The rest of the book is full of stuff like this.
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS.
Pure Fiction June 24, 2008
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
Ill keep this short & to the point.
This book is fiction & nothing more.
Honor Denied June 8, 2008
18 out of 25 found this review helpful
A revisionist book, full of inaccuracies. He, the author states he is using a panzerfaust in 1940 during the invasion of France! Sorry, the Panzerfaust did not come into production until 1942, and really not even fielded until 1943. If he had been there, he would have known, without any doubts, that he could not even harm Soviet tanks in the 1941 scenarios he plays out using a panzerfaust. 37mm doorknockers is what he would have had available and many other improvised tank killers like tellar mines and hand grenade bundles. He acknowledges being an SS trooper (pre-1940) and denies any anti-semetic feelings or teachings. Rommel had a whole staff to take care of combined arms work, not just some young trooper. I have not finished the book, because he is like Sajer, full of inaccuracies, including where he was during Barbarossa. Wiking was in Army Group North, not south.
Complete Fiction, and Bad Fiction at That. Save Your Money. June 5, 2008
17 out of 24 found this review helpful
This so-called 'combat memoirs' would have made a better comic book than anything to be taken as history. The American author, Paul K. Harker and his publisher Outskirts Press obviously tried out several different 'story lines' on paper, then instead of editing the fiction to make the fakery seem more real, they just published the whole thing, stubs, flubs and all. Chummy supposed 'interactions'with Rommel by the low-ranking enlisted SS Man Metzer are stated mid-book as having ended forever, but then Rommel reappears at the end of the book like some ghost and tells Metzger to take care of himself. A Field Marshall hanging out with an enlisted man? Right......
Many, many impossible-to-believe details, and numerous contradictions throughout, such as Metzger declaring himself over and over in the book to be a working-class peasant, then signing the book von Metzger. WTF???
A complete waste of money.
 Honor Denied June 5, 2008
15 out of 25 found this review helpful
As far as German memoirs go, this is the best I've read. It shows you that SS soldiers were human beings with families, careers and feelings instead of the mindless killing-machines we've been led to believe.
This book contains things that only a real front line soldier could know and the way he expresses it with his words is incredible. There are passages that talk about National Socialism and its hold over Germany and Europe, and Metzger discusses it frankly. He doesn't pull any punches within his text. He tells his story in a way that makes you a fellow soldier in his unit. A very good book that deserves to be read by others.
It's shameful that some detractors from the Axis History Forum and Feldgrau are on a campaign to muddy and tarnish not only this book, but Directive 19 and the authors and compiler. Read the comments under their reviews. You will see for yourself that these detractors, especially Axis History Forum's Michael D. Miller, thinks nothing about using foul language, slurs against a respected Rabbi, slurs against women and jokes about the handicapped in order to try to convince you not to read this book.
Read this book. You deserve to.
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