The Legion of the Damned (novel)

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The Legion of the Damned (original Danish title: Fordømtes Legion) is the first of author Sven Hassel's World War II novels, published in 1953. The book covers a chronological period of a number of years, starting with the hero's arrest and time in Nazi death camps, and ending with his being an officer and company commander on the Russian front. All of Sven Hassel's subsequent war stories, from a chronological point of view, fill in details omitted by this book.

The book provides a moving account of life as a soldier in European Russia during the Second World War.

It is more solemn and more serious than all of its successors, save perhaps Wheels of Terror. In some respects it seems to be modelled on Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, in particular the parallels between Willi Beier and Kat.

The book opens with the hero being tried and convicted as a deserter, and as a result being sent to concentration camp. He spends a number of months in camps, particularly Gross Rosen and Lengries, where he is involved in bomb disposal and also witnesses a number of atrocities committed by the SS guards, before abruptly being "pardoned" and dispatched to a penal regiment, the 27th Panzers.