When the dropout schoolboy Michael Brunner volunteered for the Wehrmacht, he believed that only victorious fanfare awaited him ahead, but he found himself in the pitch hell of the Eastern Front. The Germans call people like him Schlaumeier (literally: “cunning one”), and the Russians would say “cunning ass” - cynical, on his own, and not at all inclined to self-sacrifice. Brunner did not disdain anything to save his own skin, but he did not avoid participation in the bloodiest battles of the second half of the war, nor serious injuries. As a radio operator of the PzKpfw IV tank, together with the elite 24th Tank Division, he went through the fiercest battles on the Nikopol bridgehead, near Iasi, between San and Vistula, and only by a miracle did not fall into Soviet captivity: at the last moment, having violated the order and abandoned his unit, managed to escape to the American occupation zone...Brunner spoke about all this in his memoirs - surprisingly frankly and cynically, without hiding the most unsightly facts, with a lot of interesting details of the tank war on the Eastern Front.