Sven Hassel: Difference between revisions

* [[Cool Pet]]: Porta has a habit of adopting animals as unit mascots -- ranging from Stalin the cat to Ulrich, a 'friendly' black panther who gives everyone heart attacks.

* [[Cunning Linguist]]: Porta's magical ability to communicate with anyone they come across has saved their skins on several occasions, especially when they unexpectedly encounter enemy soldiers while [[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]]. In a subversion of the trope Porta's Russian is actually atrocious, but as the Soviet army had a large number of minorities who spoke little or no Russian this doesn't seem unusual.

{{quote| "He's going round telling the world you're nothing but a cleaned-out rabbit's head, stuffed with sauerkraut, and if you're lucky enough to get back from the front he's going to see to it you get deported to a cowshit-stinking hole in South Bavaria where the entire population consists of village idiots!"}}

* [[Depraved Dentist]]: Porta and Tiny both collect gold teeth from dead soldiers.

* [[Ensign Newbie]]: Any time a young, inexperienced lieutenant is mentioned, you know he might as well be wearing a [[Red Shirt]].

* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: Several times the heroes find out about things that other Germans, or the Soviets, have done that repulse even these hardened killers. When they get a chance to show their disapproval in concrete form, it gets...messy.

* [[A Father to His Men]]: Oberst Hinka (commanding officer of 27th Panzer), Lt Ohlsen, and of course The Old Un.

* [[Freudian Excuse]]: When we find out about {{spoiler|Julius Heide's}} home life and background, or {{spoiler|Tiny gets a letter from home hoping he'll die soon so that his mother can collect on the government insurance on him}}, it's hard [[Tear Jerker|not to feel sorry for them]], even though one is a [[Jerkass]] and the other is often a bully.

* [[Military Maverick]] / [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: The penal soldiers often fit this trope in various ways, as do some of the people they meet.

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Drunken parties are often interrupted by the enemy attacking and the celebrants suddenly dying in brutal ways.

* [[Nazi Germany]]: Who they're ostensibly fighting for, no matter how unenthusiastic or cynical they are about the cause.

* [[Nice Hat]]: Porta's top hat and Tiny's grey bowler.

* [[Obligatory War Crime Scene]]: At some times, the heroes come across things that even they find repulsive.

** An aversion of this trope actually, because ''everyone'' commits atrocities in these novels (even on the Western front), rather than one obligatory war crime scene to avert accusations the creator is “glorifying war”.

* [[Playing Possum]]: Veteran soldiers never pass an enemy corpse without putting a bullet in it.

* [[Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil]]: Hassel clearly states that the soldiers he serves with have commited rape, although (no doubt because the author realises it would be crossing the [[Moral Event Horizon]] for most readers) we never actually see it committed by the main characters. Instead the Old Un averts Tiny's attempts to molest any woman they come across.

* [[Rasputinian Death]]: Whenever Porta et al decide to murder someone as a result of their black market activities, there invariably follows an entire chapter of bungled attempts which end in the victim either dying by accident or just going insane.

* [[Royal We]]: Gregor Martin always describes his [[The Nameless|unnamed]] [[General Ripper]] this way (e.g. "my general and our monocle") right up to the moment the general commits suicide ("And then we shot ourselves!") after which he's described normally.

* [[Shot At Dawn]]: 2 Section carries out several executions, including one in which they're forced to shoot the only general they've come to respect.

* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: ''SS General'', ''Court Martial'' and ''Assignment Gestapo'', in which dedicated officers end up being executed -- usually after long periods of mistreatment in prison -- for refusing to throw away their soldiers' lives in a meaningless [[Last Stand]].