Your Loyal and Loving Son: The Letters of Tank Gunner Karl Fuchs, 1937-41 (review)

The letters in Your Loyal and Loving Son provide some highly valuable insights into the mind of a young German at the apex of the Third Reich's power. Although some of the correspondence is directly related to the author's military experiences, the reader must grind through the inevitable personal soap operas concomitant to any life. Fortunately, the outstanding commentary by Professor Dennis Showalter brings special historical meaning to many of the details and nuances of the author's private and premilitary existence, as well as his military experiences.

These are the letters of an enthusiastic young member of the Nazi Party whose paramilitary and military service were completely ordinary, and, as such, fairly typical. The letters span the period from the author's duty with the German Labor Service in 1937 through the end of his military service in November 1941, when his career—and life—were terminated by a Russian gunner near Moscow. Along the way, the author also studied for his teaching certificate, became engaged, married, and fathered a son whom he ultimately never met. That son, Horst Fuchs Richardson, edited and translated his father's correspondence, and should be commended for candidly sharing such intimate information with the public.

The letters are mainly remarkable for their repeated regurgitation of Nazi Party slogans, political attitudes, and racial judgments. All the usual stuff is here: the plight of the Sudetenlanders; French degeneracy; the beloved Führer's salvation of Europe and more are reiterated, often tediously. Intermixed with not infrequent personal braggadocio and expressions of mundane personal issues are seemingly endless excursions into the superiority of the German race; the inferiority of the Russian "subhumans" and "pigs," and, of course, the ultimate culpability of the Jews. Goebbels and Streicher would have been proud, but the point is that there were fanatics in other places besides the SS. In fact, while Fuchs's attitudes closely resemble those expressed by SS-Leibstandarte veteran Hans Schmidt in SS-Panzergrenadier: The True Story of World War II (2001), they contrast markedly with those displayed by SS-Nord veteran Johann Voss in Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS (2002). Fuchs's letters serve as a reminder that we should always be wary of stereotypes.

Among the other useful points discernible in the letters is the author's pride in the Luftwaffe and its support of ground operations in the Soviet Union. While many German veterans and their fans find Allied air superiority later in the war akin to cheating ("we only lost because of the verdammte Jabos"), Fuchs expresses not a trace of shame or embarrassment at the efficacy of Stukas against the hapless Russian foe. Similarly, he evinces only satisfaction in the superiority of German tactics and equipment.

Unlike the memoirs of many survivors of the war's full course, there is no disillusionment expressed here. The author did not live to see his 7th Panzer Division turned back before Moscow, decimated at Rzhev, or slowly ground into gory junk in the Ukraine, the Baltic states, and East Prussia later in the war. Fuchs was suddenly and unexpectedly killed, so there are no apologies, no regrets, and no recantations of his stridently Nazi views and bombastic overconfidence.

There is also precious little "action." Since the author did not see combat until Operation Barbarossa, only about 41 of the book's 170 pages consist of letters from the period of the author's combat service. Even then, there are not many combat anecdotes; this book is definitely not for the action junkie or even researchers looking for important insights into battle at the foxhole—or, in this case, tank turret—level. However...