Veterans know: to see the true face of war, you need to visit not even the battlefield, but front-line infirmaries and hospitals, where all the pain and all the horror of death appear in an extremely concentrated, condensed form. The author of this book, Oberarzt (senior doctor) of the 6th Wehrmacht Infantry Division, more than once looked death in the face - in 1941 he walked with his division from the border to the Moscow outskirts, saved hundreds of wounded German soldiers, personally participated in battles, and was awarded The Iron Cross of I and II classes, the German Cross in gold, the Assault badge and two stripes for the destruction of Soviet tanks. Of his entire battalion, which numbered more than 800 bayonets in the summer, only 28 people survived to the end of the battle of Moscow... This book is more than just another memoir about the Second World War. This is not only a stunning story about the horrors of war, about life and death on the Eastern Front, but also a ruthless, surgically precise analysis of the reasons for the defeats of the Wehrmacht, a bitter and honest answer to the question: why the war that started so successfully ended with the complete defeat of the German army, the fall of the Third Reich and capitulation of Germany?