Až do hořkého konce - Cesta trestního praporu 999 – John-Ferrer F. (2021)

Criminals are destined only to die, as the main character of this story, former law student Helmut Kalmeder, rightly suspects. Due to his enthusiasm for communist ideas and his stubborn nature, he spent several years in the Dachau concentration camp. In reality, he was unfit for front-line service, and thus did not have the honor of fighting for the Führer. An order from October 1942 changes the fate not only for him but also for others like him. Men physically fit for combat are transferred from prisons and concentration camps to the Heuberg training center, where they undergo training and are prepared to fulfill their duties as proper German soldiers. Not only thieves, murderers, or embezzlers, but also political and religious dissidents find their fate as members of the penal battalion 999, not only in the Balkans but later on the Eastern Front, where they die for a homeland in whose ideals hardly any of them believed, and for a leader whom almost no one recognized anymore. The book, based on the author's personal experiences as an ordinary soldier who participated in the battles of World War II, provides a very personal and convincing picture of the lives of convicts in the Third Reich, who, deemed unfit for military service, ended up in the 'hell' of training...