Who's better, Richard Allen or Sven Hassel?

I suppose I'm part of the generation that read S.H. as a teenager (our big brothers read the "skinhead" boox) When I moved to my house several years ago, I found all of the sven hassel books in a box, & re-read a couple. They were bloody awful. However, I've probably read worse, by more "respectable" authors. Me and a few ov my friends came up w/thee "Sven Hassel Test" - look as herr hassel as being like channel 5 - it's the dividing line - above it is readable (if crap) below is landfill. I put all of the sven hassel books in a box, and bunged it in the eaves of my attic, thus he is helping to keep my house warm. I don't know what the modern equivalent is, probably whatever is popular w/teenage boys at present. As far as literary quality goes, I expect all of those sword & sorcery trilogies one sees in what is still misleadingly called thee "Science Fiction" ov bookshops are similatly awful, and all of the sub nick hornby & sub trainspotting guff we get here is as bad at best, & prob. worse.

There was a danish guy who fastidiously researched hassel's real-life story IIRC his real name was pedersen, and he wasn't a soldier, but he was an informer, who never got punished for it, 'cuz his books were seen by officialdom as an acceptable take on denmark's behaviour during ww2 - ie not a collaborator nation.....also, the first one was ghostwritten by a fairly respectable danish author, whilst the rest were ghostwritten by his wife!!!!! I remember the first being quite different, so this could be true. IMO quite fascinating for such a crap literary oeuvre.

All I can remember apart from this are that the singer from blyth power used to call himself josef porta, and good ole steven wells used to bang on abt him in thee NME a lot.

In my final year at uni I did a dissertation on Richard Allen for a joke / to annoy my prissy, condescending tutor. It kinda backfired because I ended up being stuck with all these horrible books and really having nothing to say except that it was low rent, violent porn. The only interest is the fact that kids bought them in hundreds of thousands in the seventies, like they go to see Vinnie Jones at the cinema now. But who cares?

Fave Skinhead moment: the rugged docker guffawed as the third dart stuck in Joe Hawkins posterior. "Treble Arse!" he roared

What's interesting about them I guess is the unexpected return - in a TV-and-fillums age - of the 'penny dreadfuls' which characterised 19th century working-class fiction. Blood and thunder and repressed sex, except now the sex wasn't so repressed.

Richard Allen - still no doubt commands big money from second-hand book punters.

Sven Hassell - 30p if you're lucky mate.

those prices are ass backwards then man, Sven H. is *SO* better than Richard Allen.
The "real" Sven Hassel story - me & my friend Phil, when we were 14/15, knew that he was in fact the same age as us, a year older at most. It was obvious!

Guys,

The "bio" of Hr Hassel herein is based on reports by an anti-Hassel Danish journo who has since been discredited. The official bio (from publishers, journos with integrity, etc.) is as the man himself describes in Legion of the Damned, i.e. he was caught in the general inter-war depression, migrated as a guest worker to the newly resurgent Germany, a close personal tragedy caused him to quit the factory he and a friend had been employed in, got propaganda'd into the Wehrmacht, was disgusted by German "activities" in Poland resulting in desertion, caught, imprisoned, "pardoned" as expendable cannon-fodder for Op Barbarossa, and therein several years of indescribable hell in Russia watching all his new chums get topped - messily. Read LotD and compare to the others. LotD is the auto-biog. Wheels of Terror (film of same is crap) is an expansion with fictional embellishment. The rest are grunts eye view fictional accounts of the Eastern Front campaigns - Moscow, Stalingrad, the Kursk salient, German aid to Finland, etc.

These are supposed to be anti-war books. Whatever you might think of them, you have to agree that this is so - I've read the lot and can honestly say there is absolutely no <> way you'd get me involved in any of that crazy bullet-throwing malarkey!!! QED: his anti-war objective achieved.

To the Clown that has put the books in the attic I am sure if he retrieved the books and gave them to a person who would appreciate the stories for what they are not Fact but Fiction with Fact thrown in he would maybe have them explained to him..
The Journalist in Denmark was A Dilusional Characther who if he had researched as he stated he did would have come across the actual pictures of Sven with his Comrades.
In a time where it is all to easy with the documentaries on channels eg;History channel to forget in the main the German people where just as much victims of the Nazi party as the rest of the world Sven is there to give a touch of perspective.

Sven Hassel was really in the 27th Panzer Penal Regiment. Joseph Porta, Old Man(Willie Beier), died, and there is reall pictures of them to, you can find theese pictures at www.svenhassel.net/ilustra.htm , Porta died on hospital somewhere in germany after being cutted up in his under life with a knife!! old man got artillery grenade shrapnels in both of his shoulders and in one of his foots, took him many hours to meet heaven. Von Barring got mad and got on mad house where he probably was killed by german doctors, they called it "mercy-killing". and this danish reporter truly must be some kinda lier. i will check up on him, i bet he is of the type which is trying to crush famous persons. u all know that type, Sven Hassel really was in 27th Panzer penal Regiment. 2 bataljon. 5 company. 2 platoon. end of that story.

Tore

He certainly recollects serving.

I was at the bookshop last night, looking for something to read. A row of book spines with the hilter's ss runes on the spines caught my eye. Hassel's bonkers novels are, remarkably, in print again, wtf.

I got enough abusive emails as a result of my old post upthread that I eventually had to write a message rule, server-side deleting all mail sent to "achtung_panzer@demon....."

Funny old world, eh.