To Die In Spring

A poignant if unsympathetic view of World War II's final days in the European theater told through the eyes of a cautious young German man and his less cautious friend, both exerted to join the Waffen-SS in its final, doomed efforts against Russian and American forces, their experiences therein impacting each of their respective fates. Rothmann's writing is by turns terse and impactful with Whiteside's translation establishing a taut narrative rhythm, the seemingly smallest details magnified to searing effect. Not all horror comes at the behest of human mortality as the author is equally interested in the terror of a bomb impacting but failing to kill, debauchery amidst military defeat, alongside the more mundane streams of individual life being diverted into the river rapids of history and the churning effect those events had on a citizenry who had [or had not] believed in vain that they were serving some grander purpose than folly. I found the ending of the novel, as told from the point of view of the main German soldier's son following his father's death in old age, to be particularly sharp, narratively mirroring one of his father's journeys but which becomes a historical knell resounding through generations hence.