Liquidate Paris

Description

LIQUIDATE PARIS shows the eruption of the Second World War in its most brutal and cruel phase, as allied troops advance upon Paris and the penal regiment retreat. I had a grenade in my hand. So, no doubt, did the English private. I tore out the pin with my teeth. Lay there and counted. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four... It is Hitler's last chance to save the Third Reich... Millions of Allied troops have landed in Normandy. The orders are clear: Sven and his comrades, hardened by a savage war that has led them from the bloody steppes of the Russian Front, to the slopes of Monte Cassino, are ordered to withdraw to Strasbourg and destroy Paris on the way...

Born in 1917 in Fredensborg, Denmark, Sven Hassel joined the merchant navy at the age of 14. He did his compulsory year's military service in the Danish forces in 1936 and then, facing unemployment, joined the German army. He served throughout the Second World War on all fronts except North Africa. When the war ended in 1945 he was transferred between Russian, American and French prison camps, and upon returning to Denmark, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for treason. He began writing LEGION OF THE DAMNED during his time as a prisoner of war. His 14 Second World War books, which draw on his own encounters and experiences as a soldier, have sold over 53 million copies worldwide and have been published in more than 50 countries. He peacefully passed away in Barcelona in 2012, where he had resided since 1964.

In essence this is an expose of the absurdity of war, and a moving plea for peace. As such, it takes its rank with far milder books, such as ALL QUIET ON THE WESTER FRONT - NEWSDAY Hassel's books of war are the most powerful I have ever read He is graphic, at times brilliantly so, but never brutal or bitter. He is, too, a first-rate storyteller - WASHINGTON POST