It's maybe the best German memoir out there, for this reason and because the author is a simple "grunt. He briefly saw combat in Stalingrad, and was involved in the desperate attempts to avoid being trapped after the Soviet's broke the German lines west of the city. As the Tsarist White Army makes advances against the Bolshevik Red Army, he becomes worried for Evgenia's safety. For one, the author seems less dreamy and sentimental than Sajer did, and goes more into detail about the actual fighting not just the results of said fighting.

One was a heavy machine gunner for the German Wehrmacht and the second was a mortar gunner for the US Marine Corp. According to these historians there is no indication that such massacres - as Koschorrek claims - were falsely blamed on the Germen troops. Blood Red, Snow White was favourably reviewed by the major British newspapers [3] and was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Children's Book Award. On the other hand he is appalled by the brutality of some revolutionaries and considers helping his friend Robert Lockhart of the British Embassy.

After the war, Koschorrek’s diary went missing and it was not until some forty years later when he was reunited in America with his daughter from his first marriage that it came to light and became Blood Red Snow.

Later, the horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit and their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. It is a very different view on war and all its horror, with down to earth front-line explanations, only slightly tempered from the vulgar. Wow, what a brutal war, fighting on that Eastern front in sub zero temperatures must have been horrific for any man, must read for any History/WW2/ War reading enthusiasts. While the Soviets were not innocent in the war and had plenty of their own war crimes, killing Russian villagers simply for living in German occupied areas seems very unlikely. It includes an account of Ransome's possible spying activities and reprints some Secret Service documents released by the National Archives in 2005.This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, some six decades later, the fulfilment of a responsibility the author feels to honor the memory of those who perished.