Assignment Gestapo

by Sven Hassel Book 5 in the Legion of the Damned series.

First published 1963

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After another operation on the Eastern Front, the 27th Penal Regiment is ordered behind Soviet lines to retaliate for the destruction of a German garrison. The mission places Sven, Porta, Tiny and their comrades inside a cycle of reprisal in which civilians and prisoners are treated as instruments of military policy. Their orders then change abruptly, transferring them to Hamburg for guard duty connected with the Gestapo.

The movement from battlefield violence to political terror links the Wehrmacht’s war with the coercive institutions of Nazi Germany. Under Adolf Hitler and the police empire associated with Heinrich Himmler, arrest, interrogation and execution operate without meaningful legal restraint. The penal soldiers are both agents and potential victims of that system, and their proximity to the Gestapo reveals how quickly military discipline can become organised persecution.