John Gess

A Simple Soldier: a Story of One Ordinary Young Man in Hitler's Germany John Gess

This is the story of Sepp Scheibenzuber, a simple man. For most of his early life, Sepp didn't make choices. Choices were made for him. At 13, he wanted to continue his schooling, but his parents had other ideas and soon he was toiling on the farms of Bavaria. Thereafter, he knew nothing else and so continued working on the land until he was drafted into the German Army. There was no question that he would go. He had never heard of anyone even contemplating avoiding the draft. And so within months he was fighting a war against Frenchman, a people whom he knew little about other than the Nazi's said they were evil. And in the following years, he fought the Russians and suffered almost unendurable depravation. But somehow Sepp endured. He obeyed. He did what he was told along with millions of other Germans. It never even entered his mind that he had an alternative. All the choices were made for him, except one. He wanted to survive.