LIMITED TIME OFFER
$2 / Month
Subscribe now for only $3.99 $2 a month!
Unlimited Website Access, Thousands of Searchable Articles, Warfare Newsletter, and more.
From the Luftwaffe: Joachim Benz on the Eastern Front
During World War II, Joachim Benz served on the Eastern Front in a Luftwaffe ground unit known as a field division.
by Joachim Benz, as told to Peter D. Fyfe and Ward Carr
Following service as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery during the early 1970s, Ward Carr decided to remain in Germany, residing in Frankfurt. He has worked as a language trainer, freelance journalist, and translator. In 2001, Carr and a German colleague began writing a book featuring the crew of the famous battleship Bismarck. While searching for survivors and family members of Bismarck sailors, Carr often encountered vet
Join The Conversation
Comments
6 thoughts on “From the Luftwaffe: Joachim Benz on the Eastern Front”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
View All Comments
6 thoughts on “From the Luftwaffe: Joachim Benz on the Eastern Front”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I read this biographical sketch with great interest, because it resembles the 1,000+ oral histories of veterans (mostly WW-II) I have conducted and transcribed (including a German immigrant to the U.S. who spent five years as a POW in Russia), or had transcribed by a small army of paid student (paid in scholarship money by the State of Utah) employees, or who got university credit for their work. I’m in the process of depositing these transcriptions into appropriate archives.
How refreshing to learn that somebody else (and probably many other oral historians) are documenting veterans’ histories. My main intended readers are the veterans’ families, though I also do the archiving.
Nearly every veteran who saw combat becomes very emotional when he describes the “hell” of combat, and the loss of “buddies.”
Don Norton
GREAT BIT OF HISTORY, I LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT WWII ALL THE TIME!
What a great story. I have read many personal accounts over the years, and this one has to be ranked as one of the best. Benz is an excellent storyteller and it is very well transcribed, as I know German and it can be difficult to translate at times.
Excellent.
Excellent read.
I enjoyed reading this very much and look forward to reading more from all sides of the war.