For some years now the books
of Sven Hassel - once traded feverishly in every playground across the UK - have been out of print everywhere except Finland. For kids of the 1970s, these luridly titled paperbacks (Legion Of The Damned, Blitzfreeze, SS General), with their even more lurid covers, were their first introduction to the horrors of war. Supposedly based on Sven's own wartime experiences, the books followed the misadventures of the 27th Penal Regiment - a motley collection of deserters, criminals and other undesirables - as they fought their way from France to Russia and back again. Hassel's books were perfect school reading; a world away from the heroics of Saving Private Ryan, they told what it was like to survive the brutality and insanity of the Nazi war machine, helping develop in their young readers a hatred of all forms of authority, a love of cursing and farting, and an awareness of the similarities between sadistic Prussian officers and vicious, sexually repressed physics teachers.

Many have questioned the truth of Hassel's admittedly credulity-stretching accounts; one Danish journalist has even accused him of having never left occupied Denmark, claiming the books were ghostwritten by Sven's wife. Whether fact, fiction, or a bit of both, Hassel's pulp classics still provide one of the best arguments against war - not that it's morally wrong, but that it inevitably pits the common men of one country against those of another - men who should be eating, drinking and fucking, rather than blowing each other to bits.

Blitzfreeze, Comrades Of War, Liquidate Paris, Legion Of The Damned, Reign
Of Hell and other Sven Hassel titles
are available now from Cassell, priced £5.99 each