Comments on: "Are we the baddies?"

"Are we the baddies?"

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:51:07 -0800

Danish author Sven Hassel (Wikipedia, official site) has passed away at the age of 95. (Danish - Translation) Hassel fought for the Germans during WWII and became famous after publishing Legion of the Damned, a semi-autobiographical account of the war. He went on to write thirteen more books following the adventures of his convict battalion, incuding Wheels of Terror which in 1987 was made into the movie The Misfit Brigade staring Bruce Davison and David Patrick Kelly (clip). He will be remembered fondly by all who browsed the bookshelves of charity shops as young men.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:54:58 -0800

Also the probable author of "SS Death Camp Criminal Battalion go to Monte Casino for the Massacre", Vyvian's reading material in the Young Ones episode "Flood".

By: GallonOfAlan

GallonOfAlan — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:02:04 -0800

Read a load of these as a kid...good old yarns. Nearly as violent as the Action Man novels but with more prostitute fucking.

By: kariebookish

kariebookish — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:03:37 -0800

I had no idea he was Danish! I thought he was a post-war German author. For many years his were the only books found in my uncles' cottage. Always very didgy typography. I remember being aware of that even as a kiddo. How did I not know he was Danish? Danes love to big up their vaguely well-known cultural figures and you'd think an author that was translated into several markets would have warranted some media attention. Huh.

By: ennui.bz

ennui.bz — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:03:39 -0800

Don't forget his children's classic: Peter Rabbit - Tank Killer

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:04:20 -0800

Between them and The Pan Books of Horror it was quite an education I got from the local Oxfam as a kid.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:05:15 -0800

Danes love to big up their vaguely well-known cultural figures and you'd think an author that was translated into several markets would have warranted some media attention. Well, the whole "fought for the nazis" thing may have been a sticking point...

By: sgt.serenity

sgt.serenity — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:05:41 -0800

The Jack Chick of war writing - I shall miss his lurid covers and slightly more wordy than commando book nonsense, or maybe I won't. What kind of idiot donates nazi pish to a charity shop anyway ? There's surely not a great synergy between charitable people and the type that like the trains to run on time.

By: philip-random

philip-random — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:05:55 -0800

METAFILTER: Nearly as violent as the Action Man novels but with more prostitute fucking.

By: GallonOfAlan

GallonOfAlan — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:06:29 -0800

Ah, Pan Horror... and a load of ultraviolent early 2000AD.

By: kariebookish

kariebookish — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:06:44 -0800

How did I not know he was Danish? Danes love to big up their vaguely well-known cultural figures and you'd think an author that was translated into several markets would have warranted some media attention. Clicking on his Wikipedia site, I can see why my fellow Danes might've ignored his 'literary achievements..' "Hassel served with the 2nd Panzer Division stationed at Eisenach and in 1939 was a tank driver during the invasion of Poland." On preview: tak, Artw. What you said.

By: sgt.serenity

sgt.serenity — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:08:48 -0800

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:09:39 -0800

A mermaid with a panzerfaust.

By: sgt.serenity

sgt.serenity — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:09:40 -0800

On preview: tak, Artw. What you said. oops -

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:13:36 -0800

To be fair, anyone in his books who is particularly keen on being a nazi usually meets a particularly gruesome death and then the other characters all shrug and look around for anything to rip off, eat or shag before being forced into battle again. War is hell!

By: GallonOfAlan

GallonOfAlan — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:16:22 -0800

Aaaaand Godwin in 3, 2....

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:17:31 -0800

Just glancing at the covers puts that secondhand bookshop musty smell in my nostrils, so ubiquitous were they in the shops I would haunt as a youth. Never actually finished one... they were a little full on for me, but the impression that I got from reading that I did manage that they were pretty much of the war-is-hell and the Nazis were idiots/bastards. There's a scene were a gung-ho bright-eyed loyal Nazi recruit dies from just falling from a truck and being crushed everybody is jsut 'what an idiot'. Though idea if that was the overall theme of his work. Showing anything from the German's side in the least bit sympathetic way was very rare back then so they were kind of subversive. Anyway, nice dog.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:24:47 -0800

There was Hellman of Hammer Force and later Fiends of the Eastern Front, but yeah, at the time it was pretty rare to see that. I suspect Warhammer 40K's whole fighting-grimly-on-the-side-of-space-fascism thing of influenced strongly by Hassel, especially when it comes to the Imperial Guard.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:32:42 -0800

Filmwise there was the Desert Fox... but I think Cross of Iron was the breakthrough when you started having more revisionist cinema in the 70s

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:36:05 -0800

The Keep of course. My examples all seem to have vampires or space monsters or satan vampire space monster or whatever in them, or the Sovs... I guess because if you are goingto have reluctant Nazi heroes you need something just slightly worse than Nazi's for them to be reluctantly fighting against.

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:48:07 -0800

Whether he was an actual Nazi or not, 'The Bloody Road to Death' is one hell of a title.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:59:50 -0800

"the funniest of all Sven's novels"

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:10:52 -0800

My slightly older brothers picked up a bunch of these on a trip to England, I think, in 1973 or thereabouts. I read them when I was maybe 10, and maybe again a few years later. I recall them being really odd in tone -- exulting in the carnage and chaos of war while being rather bitterly critical of forces that drove working men to the slaughter. And prostitutes. Lots of prostitutes. But, overall, I remember being more puzzled than titillated. There are another thing from my childhood I have no interest in revisiting. They would either be better or worse than I remember, and I would probably have to fight down the urge to punch my younger self or something. Maybe they'll erect a little bronze panzer statue or something. Please, lets not use the word "erect" in a Hassel FPP, OK? Nothing good will come of it....

By: howfar

howfar — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:12:41 -0800

Aaaaand Godwin in 3, 2.... I'm not sure it's a Godwin to compare someone to a Nazi on the basis that they, y'know, fought for the Nazi's.

By: howfar

howfar — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:14:29 -0800

The Nazi's what is a story for another day.

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:28:01 -0800

Looking back on my comment, it's kind of a grammatical mess. I would like to blame it on a bad experience I had during the War, but that would be a lie.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:57:12 -0800

What Hassel did during the war is highly debated, which is why the Danish Wikipedia page about him has two biographies, his own account and the one put forth by journalist Erik Haaest. However, as detailed in the English Wikipedia page linked in the post, Haaest is a bit of a shady character. Either way, one of the things "everybody knows" in the Nordic countries about Sven Hassel is that he made up his war career and was in Denmark the whole time. I'm no Hasselogist, so I'm not really qualified to say one way or the other. However, I find it interesting that an author who claims to write semi-biographical novels should have such a disputed biography.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 17:06:57 -0800

Yeah, Sven Hassels account of his life may or may not be to a greater or lesser extent bullshit. Which would make him a bit of an opportunistic shitbag, though whether that would make him more of an opportunistic shitbag than assuming he was completly truthful is hard to determine. On the other hand I'm 100% sure that Erik Haaest's account of the life of Sven Hassel is total bullshit. Dude is a holocaust denier, FFS.

By: Decani

Decani — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:55:59 -0800

My God... his books were massive at my school, back in the early seventies. They were - along with the Pan Horror collections - where we went for our teenage gore and nastiness fix. I had no idea he was even still alive.

By: Myeral

Myeral — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 03:22:08 -0800

I loved them because they were unusual in telling the story from the POV of ordinary German soldiers, which contrasted with most of the war stuff around when I was 11 or 12. At that age, I suppose I was less aware of the moral aspect, and more fascinated by guns and tanks and prostitutes. There were also some great characters - ruffians and gangsters from St Pauli out on the steppes. I'm going to dig some of these out again.

By: vickyverky

vickyverky — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 08:40:11 -0800

My dad had a bunch of these on his bookshelves, so I dipped into a few after I'd worked my way through his Ian Fleming and Richmal Crompton books. Delightful amounts of gore and war for this bloodthirsty teen!

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:00:58 -0800

Belated obit in the Guardain