The Last Panther: Slaughter of the Reich - The Halbe Kessel 1945

As I noted in my review of  Tiger Tracks , Wolfgang Faust’s first “memoir,” it is difficult—perhaps impossible—to pass judgment on one of his books without also considering the veracity of the other. I’m convinced that Tiger Tracks is, at best, a fictitious tale the author created by drawing on his wartime experiences; at worst, it’s exaggerated historical fiction written by a fraud and advertised as a memoir to fill the publisher’s coffers.Which is the case with The Last Panther? Or is it, in fact, a legitimate memoir written by a German Ostfront veteran?There is a lot to analyze in attempting to answer these questions. For that reason, I have broken my review into subsections. Please comment if you feel I’ve left anything out or erred at all in my analysis, as I am legitimately interested in uncovering the truth. I should mention that I have read The Last Panther twice: once for leisure, and the second time with a critical eye.(Also, if it is of any interest to the reader, I am a social studies teacher and a voracious reader of history books and memoirs, particularly those relating to the Eastern Front in World War II. I am not a combat veteran.)CONCERNING THE LEVEL OF DETAILAs was the case in Tiger Tracks, the most convincing aspect of The Last Panther, in my estimation, is Faust’s great attention to detail. His knowledge of the Panther tank, especially its mechanics, is considerable. He speaks at length not only about its construction but also the everyday maintenance required to keep it running, the lifespan of its engine and transmission, and even things as specific as common causes of overheating and the turret’s inability to rotate when the engine is not running.Other minutia strike me as items a fraud would not think to mention, either. For instance, would a counterfeiter really think to talk about emptying spent shell casings from the tank (Page 38)? Would a fraud include an aside in which the narrator weighs the Hetzer self-propelled gun’s positive contribution to the German war effort against the King Tiger’s (Page 82)? How about wasting valuable print space by describing checking the Panther’s motor oil (Page 28)?While these things strike me as the thoughts of a genuine veteran, I find it very curious that Faust has so little to say about his tank crewmen. Indeed, the only character besides Faust who is mentioned by name is “The Capo,” the Leutnant in command of Faust’s Panther platoon. Virtually every other memoir I have read has focused heavily on the comradeship among soldiers, yet Faust barely talks about his fellow tankers. Why?Critics of The Last Panther have suggested that the acute detail with which Faust describes events in the Kessel, often in midst of battle and under the influence of schnapps, amphetamines, and morphine (Page 85), is indicative of the memoir’s fraudulence. I dispute this critique for the simple reason that Faust writes in the narrative style; his memoir was obviously not intended to be a history book, but rather a recollection of the final days of the war as he experienced them.To put it another way, I don’t doubt that Faust missed a few things or mixed up some events/locations even if The Last Panther really is an authentic memoir.  The Forgotten Soldier  by Guy Sajer (an excellent German memoir also written in the narrative style) has been criticized for its lack of strict adherence to verifiable facts despite its proven legitimacy. The same might be happening to Faust.In any event, a lot of the things Faust relates in The Last Panther are, in fact, verifiable, as I will demonstrate shortly.UNITS, LOCATIONS, & OTHER IDENTIFIERSUnlike in Tiger Tracks, Faust mentions some units by name in The Last Panther. He writes that he was made commander of a Panther in the 21st panzer division following the destruction of his Tiger I in defense of the Oder River in early 1945. In the Halbe pocket, hiding in an unnamed forest on the East side of the encirclement, not far from the rear guard (which he identifies as the 32nd Panzer Division), Faust writes that his Panther was one of three still left from a platoon of six, and with them were “several” SS King Tigers (Page 5). Is this credible?Antony Beevor writes in The Fall of Berlin that only thirty-one tanks remained in the Halbe pocket at the beginning of the breakout, and of these, only half a dozen or so were definitely Panthers; Beevor also writes that there were “around 10” SS King Tigers (Beevor, 330). Could Faust have been the commander of one of them? I don’t see why not. Faust also reports fighting alongside six to eight different SS King Tigers during the battle, which is an appropriate number.In short, the numbers and units all check out, though I will also note Faust does not let us know his platoon number or his CO’s real name, making it impossible to dig deeper.SPECIFIC LOCATIONS MENTIONEDFaust mentions few specific locations. He names three towns: Heiden, which was shelled and burned to the ground, Munchehuf, whose civilian women were raped in the town square, and Schlepzig, which was devastated by a katyusha attack, all in late April, 1945 (Page 5). Light research on my part has not yielded any record of these attacks in other sources, but considering Schlepzig was a town of less than 1000 people, it is not illogical to suggest that these specific instances of violence might have been glossed over by the history books in favor of covering destruction on a larger scale, of which there was plenty in the Battle of Berlin and the Halbe pocket.FAUST’S ROUTE TO THE ELBEFaust’s route in The Last Panther takes him from the cover of an unnamed forest to a village called Markhof, where his tank engages the Russians alongside his two fellow Panthers and a handful of SS King Tigers. From Markhof, Faust travels through the Spree forest, then to Halbe proper, where German armor again engages the Russians, who have plenty of Stalin tanks and anti-tank guns. From Halbe his Panther goes across the Autobahn, then to the Elbe River, where he reaches freedom.Faust’s descriptions in The Last Panther indicate that he was part of the third and final organized breakout attempt from Halbe. Maps of the battle confirm that the route he describes taking along the “corridor” to the Twelfth Army and the Elbe is legitimate. The only problem with this is that any counterfeiter worth his salt would surely use all the same information I referenced to ensure that the route taken by characters in a fraudulent memoir matches the route taken by actual participants in the battle. In sum, Faust’s route checks out, but it proves nothing about the veracity of The Last Panther.INSIDE THE KESSELBecause of the tactical situation inside the Halbe pocket, which amounted to near chaos, I do not question most of Faust’s descriptions of violence and disarray in The Last Panther. In fact, some of them, even the most outrageous, are corroborated by legitimate sources. Hans von Luck, for example, describes some of the violence done against German civilians in his memoir,  Panzer Commander , and he took part in the comparatively organized first breakout attempt from Halbe. Erwin Bartmann recounts sexual liaisons with German women amidst the chaos of the Battle of Berlin in  Fur Volk und Fuhrer . Antony Beevor acknowledges in  The Fall of Berlin 1945  that drunkenness was at times widespread, and order was hard to come by.Other details ring true as well. When Faust claims he “never saw a grave being dug or the earth being smoothed over a corpse” (page 38) in the Kessel, I don’t doubt him—there wasn’t any time to bury the dead (Beevor mentions this as well). The savagery of the violence described, including executions of Germans carried out by frantic SS men, the wounded being left where they lay to die, and the intentional shelling of civilians by the Soviets all occurred. These are documented facts.What I find a tad ridiculous is that EVERY death in The Last Panther is spectacular. Most destroyed tanks catch fire, and their crewmen all burn; seemingly every third T-34 loses its turret. Decapitations are legion, and the few tank crews whose vehicles are not engulfed in flames are mowed down by machine gun fire as soon as they exit their damaged vehicles. Horses run around on fire, and elderly civilians are left to burn in collapsing, flaming buildings. Everything seems to be burning all the time.Again, I acknowledge that the historical record maintains that all these things happened in the Kessel, but Faust revels in the gore too much. Everyone is blown apart or burned to death or squashed under the tracks of tanks, and Faust witnesses more decapitations than Robespierre!I also noticed a suspicious number of nearly identical descriptions between The Last Panther and Tiger Tracks. Both books see a tank radio operator/machine gunner impaled through the chest by an armor-piercing round. Both contain multiple descriptions of bodies being flung out of destroyed tank turrets as they hurtle through the air. Faust describes multiple instances in which one of his tank’s armor-piercing rounds penetrates an enemy tank’s armor and is redirected upward out of the turret, taking body parts of the enemy tank crew up into the air with it. How many times did these seemingly astounding events actually happen? I don’t know for sure (we are talking about the Eastern front, after all), but it all seems to resemble a bad action movie more than authentic history.In Faust’s defense, Antony Beevor confirms many of the things recounted in The Last Panther (Beevor, 328-338):1. Faust refers to the “law” of the Kessel—“he who could take what he needed, had to take it” (Page 81). Beevor mentions tankers siphoning fuel from whatever vehicles they could and infantry looting corpses for food and ammunition.2. The wounded and sick were often abandoned and run over by vehicles when left near roads.3. Heavy bombing, strafing, and artillery barrages, including the use of incendiary and phosphorous shells as Faust describes in Halbe proper, were rained on soldiers and civilians alike in the Kessel.4. Panzers were forced to drive slowly through forests to avoid being bombed by Sturmoviks in the open, plus the soil was difficult for the tank tracks to grip, further slowing their escape.5. Exhausted and wounded soldiers and civilians clung to tanks whenever possible.6. Both propaganda leaflets dropped by Soviet planes and the recorded pleas of surrendered German soldiers played over loudspeakers were used to try to convince the Kessel soldiers to surrender.7. The feeling among the SS in the Kessel that capture meant execution sparked an utter ferocity in the SS against everyone—Germans and Soviets, soldiers and civilians alike—that is well-documented. Beevor suggests that executions might have exceeded 10,000.MISCELLANEOUSSome critics have claimed Faust must be a fake because he erroneously describes the “Iron Cross” being worn by his fellow soldiers. In fact, on the backside of the title page there is a note explaining that the German term “Ritterkreuz” (the German word for the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross) was translated as “Iron Cross.” If we are to believe that this story was actually translated from a German manuscript, then it’s simply an error in the English version, not evidence of Faust’s fraudulence.THE PUBLISHERIf anything leads me to question Faust’s credibility, it’s the shadiness surrounding the publisher. A brief aside about Tiger Tracks, Faust’s first “memoir,” which relates to the veracity of The Last Panther:Tiger Tracks is billed as “the classic panzer memoir” and was supposedly published originally as “Panzerdämmerung” (Panzer Twilight) in Germany in the 1940s (per its own title page). One small problem: Neither I nor anybody else talking about Tiger Tracks on Amazon or anywhere else on the internet, at least as far as I’ve seen, has been able to find any record of such a book. Indeed, one reviewer on a blog even claims to have contacted a German reader who informed the reviewer there is no mention of the original memoir anywhere on the German net.Take a look at the backside of the title page in either of Faust’s books. The copyright is held by “The Estate of Wolfgang Faust.” I don’t know enough about copyright law to say if this is indicative of anything—perhaps this is a small point in favor of Faust’s legitimacy? He needs it, because researching the publisher does nothing to help his case. Sprech Media seems to be almost universally derided by posters on history forums, and other titles listed on its Amazon page have all been flagged as fraudulent by reviewers. A Google search of Bayern Classic Publications, in charge of publishing The Last Panther globally, yields more of the same.Most curious of all is the complete absence of information, both online and in the book itself, about the publisher. There is no contact information to speak of, no address, no website, no mention of who formatted the memoir for publication… Clearly, Sprech Media is uninterested in being contacted by anyone for any reason.There is a brief introduction in The Last Panther written by alleged editor and translator, Chris Ziedler, who also mysteriously does not turn up in any Google searches to do with Sprech Media, Bayern Classic Publications, translating, or publishing in general. Indeed, it appears “Ziedler” (not Zeidler) is quite a rare surname in the United States. How convenient.I could go on, but it is clear to me that Sprech Media and all its affiliates are totally spurious publishing entities.CONCLUSIONTiger Tracks is pretty obviously fictitious in my estimation. It is not so clear, though, what to make of The Last Panther. If not for its affiliation with Sprech Media, I would be inclined to consider it legitimate. If only it was possible to contact the publisher to find out for sure…I am not sure what to make of Faust, or if we should even believe his two books were translated from original German manuscripts. Sadly, because of the questions surrounding the publisher, I must conclude that The Last Panther is fraudulent, which is a shame because it is a truly gripping read.I will say this: Even if it’s not real, The Last Panther is still worth reading as historical fiction. It is definitely the superior of Faust’s two “memoirs.” Just be aware that what you are reading is probably not factual.

I am aware of the controversy surrounding whether this book is a real memoir or historical fiction. I think the issue is a bit immaterial. As stated by other reviewers, there is plenty of details here that are spot-on with what we know of German and Russian equipment, the overall situation, and the the conduct of the war at this stage in late April 1945. But if you want a history book, this is not what you are looking for. This is 1st person account of how it was for the remnants of the 9th army in the Spree to get to the Elbe told by a Panther commander - the story might be real, or it might be imaginary, or a mix of the two. Probably the latter. Maybe "Wolfgang Faust" is a pen name of someone that simply collected separate stories of what transpired, who knows. But the battle of the Halbe Pocket did really occur and from what we know from other bona-fide history books, it aligns with the story on this book pretty well. If any Panthers from the 9th army did make it to the Elbe, they must have gone through something of what is described here - this account has to be very close to the what transpired during those last 10 days or so. It was close enough for me, perhaps as close as any real memoir can be. It is an easy read, engaging and the price is nice too.

Being a military man myself and really enjoying these types of work; "The Last Panther" was gripping, suspenseful, and raw. The book centers around a Feldwebel (comparatively same rank as I was, a Sergeant) attempting to keep he and his crew alive through impossible, nightmarish odds, in one of the last functioning Panther tanks of the Third Reich. He and his tank are in a race against time and the Russian war machine to escape west, to avoid the certain doom of Russian capture to find relative safety in American capture. The language that the author uses is both gripping and descriptive. You are left to imagine the absolute carnage that is unfolding on the tired, weary and battle worn combatants and the civilians that follow them, as the Russians close in behind them. The feeling of impending doom and suspense is palatable, every page is a shock at the in-humanity these people faced between constant shelling, harrying by enemy aircraft, and other means of destruction.Small things in the piece, like the way the author described facing the new Josef Stalin type heavy tanks that could fight and kill German King Tigers, was absolutely gripping. Too often we only hear the History Channel emeblishment of the Tiger tank series-- whilst absolutely a marvel of battlefield strength, it was not the quantum shift if armored warfare that we sometimes believe. It was interesting to hear the German tankers thoughts on things like why he thought those said Josef Stalin tanks reloaded so slowly; his hypthosesis was that they gun used a two part charge and projectile system (like a battleship). I know that he was spot on from hindsight in 2015, but it's astonishing to hear his deduction from 1945 as he faced down the gun.It's important that the world not turn a blind eye to works like these, lest we lose entirely the first hand account of what actually took place here. Too often we are left with the Hollywood image of these battles, which is an absolute mockery of what these people actually endured. One passage that really stuck with me is when the author described his retreating element coming into contact with a group of 3 Russian T-34 tanks that were dug in to defend against German retreats such as this. The battle unfolds in great detail as the author describes the tension and stress of having his gunner engage targets that are also engaging him. At one point in this battle, 2 of the three T-34s are destroyed and one final Russian tank remains. The Russian tank emerges from his defensive position, in a gallant attempt to ram tanks in the german element, knowing that they are ultimately doomed. The author describes this tank commanders action as heroic and even goes as far as to elude to the fact that this "Hero of the Soviet Union" and his actions, while incredibly valiant, were ultimately in vain and would most likely would never be recorded or remembered.It is through works like this, that we can respect, admire and never forget true courage and true determination. It is my hope that my review here influences somebody to purchase this book and pay omage to this incredible human history. If just one person does so, this will have been a success.

I really enjoyed reading Wolfgang Faust's books. They're very gripping and make for a fantastic story.But, sadly, that is what it appears they are. Just stories.I wouldn't have a problem with them if they were placed in the same category as 'Biggles' etc. But to call this non-fiction is a stretch. I agree with many of the other negative commenters. Try to compare this against other genuine wartime novels and you will notice that the amount of detail he uses, and the ridiculous amount of action he is involved in, is far in excess of most other people.Not only that, but try to search for these people. Go on, try. You won't find a thing. Anywhere.I actually think this is highly dangerous territory. To find out that these books, including, I am now informed, 'D-day through German eyes', may be fraudulent should be hugely concerning for those looking to understand history in an unbiased manner.It should also raise valid questions as to who vets so called 'non-fiction', and what to what extent the author or the publisher bears responsibility for the content.

I'm giving this one star not because it isn't a great story but because I don't believe that this is the authentic memoir it claims to be. Google Wolfgang Faust and you will find no record of him. My best guess is that this work of fiction was probably written by an American author (The Americans are favourably portrayed in the book), most likely a military historian who is very knowledgable about WW2. Even the name Wolfgang Faust feels like a made-up name, like "Chauncey Gardener" or "Harry Flashman". I bought this because I thought it was an authentic memoir but I just don't believe it is.

This claims to be a memoir. It is not. It is fiction written by someone who has played World of Tanks a lot and read some Leo Kessler or Sven Hassel. It is not translated from German (I speak and read German, and there are several phrases and concepts used that simply don't work in German). The faux-redemptive ending where the battered Feldwebel rides into the West on the engine deck of his battered Panther surrounded by wounded children is frankly laughable. And I'm confident the writer has never been inside a tank, let alone a WW2 tank, in combat.If Charles 'Leo Kessler' Whiting's Kuno von Dodenburg and Panzergruppe Wotan float your boat, then I guess this is worth reading if you can get it on Kindle for a quid, as I did. If you are looking for factual history, buy Max Hasting's 'Armageddon'.In times defined by fake news and the tactical use of history, I think this kind of product is dangerous, not funny.

After a few pages the alarm bells started ringing. If this was written by a German wartime serviceman then I am a Chinese uncle. It is a good read but complete fiction although the author has done some research on armoured vehicles.

This is a very well written, gripping account of the last terrible journey for the teenaged Panzer crew by their 20year old Cdr. written by him shortly after the war ended. The detail is graphic and brutal. The suffering of the population as the Red Army closed in is unequivocal. At the end it really was every man for himself as the survivors crossed that damaged bridge over the Elbe in an urgent exhausted bid to get to the American side. it's a valuable historic reference which I feel should be promoted and read, lest we allow ourselves to forget the real horrors of war.