A review by rebekahmay
Winter Men by K.E. Semmel, Jesper Bugge Kold

4.0

The war had taught him that things were never simply black or white. There were good men and evil men in every army, but most often both attributes could be found within the same person. If there was one thing the last few years had taught him, it was that man was neither good nor evil. People were good and evil. Even he was evil. He knew that. But hadn't he been a good father? Hadn't he been a good husband? Hadn't he been a good friend? He didn't want to know the answers.

Jesper Bugge Kold's Winter Men follows two brothers living in Hamburg during the Second World War and how, even though they don't hold the Nazi's beliefs, their lives get intertwined with the SS and the evil that went on under Hitler's rule. Winter Men was originally written in Danish and published as [b:Vintermænd|23173292|Vintermænd|Jesper Bugge Kold|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1410244514s/23173292.jpg|46726746], it has been translated to English by K.E. Semmel and I got it as a February Kindle First pick.

This book is split into three parts - leading up to the war, during the war, then the fates of the brothers as they ran from the war and the war came to a close. Dotted throughout are flashes to one of the brothers on the run in the 70s and 80s, and in the first part there are some flashbacks to Karl's time as a soldier during the First World War. In my opinion the flash-forwards didn't really add anything to the story, but there weren't many of them. The flashbacks were pretty interesting though, and I enjoyed reading them. The main story, though, starts in 1938 and ends in 1945. I think it was a very realistic portrayal of that time in Germany, judging by what I've read from that period, and the change of opinions (especially amongst the soldiers) as the fighting went on. The doubt that what they were fighting for was wrong, a farce, and the fear to voice these opinions in public.

I wasn't at all sure how this story was going to go and I was surprised at how good it turned out to be. The writing in this was really good, but there were a few sentences that were a little repetitive, that could have been worded a lot better, but I'm not sure whether it's just something that was lost in translation or maybe there's sentence structures that don't work in English as well as they do in Danish? I don't know, but overall it was well written.

Like I said above, this story is primarily about the two brothers and I really liked the perspectives of them both. I actually grew to like Karl so much more than Gerhard. For such a smart man Gerhard was very stupid at times, I think he turned out to be the worst of the two. The whole 'reveal' of who had originally reported him to the Gestapo wasn't much of a moment, since it was pretty obvious the whole time who it had been. To me, anyway. Karl's state of mind was so interesting to read about. The way his mind deteriorated was completely understandable. Gerhard was almost lying to himself the whole time, and I can understand why he did it. It would have been very interesting to see how he dealt with what he did while he was on the run and in the future but it was never explored, which is a shame.

We also got to read from August's perspective for a little while, and I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked him, he was one of the German youth that was thrown into being a soldier and never really had a choice, so it was good seeing how he dealt with everything.

Overall this was a really good novel, but there were a few things that kept it from being great. The lack of exploration in the flash-forwards, the odd badly worded sentence, some little changes would have made this amazing.