Soldaten: on fighting, killing, and dying : the Secret World War II tapes of German POWs

In November 2001, German historian Sönke Neitzel discovered a cache of documents from the Second World War.

They were the transcripts of German prisoners of war talking among themselves in prisoner of war camps, and secretly recorded by the allies.

In these apparently private conversations the soldiers talked openly about their hopes and fears, their concerns and their day-to-day lives.

They also talked about the horrors of war - about rape, death and killing.

Sönke Neitzel shared the material with renowned psychologist Harald Wezler and they set about trying to make sense of the vast piles of documents.

The result is 'Soldaten', a landmark book which will change the way we look at soldiers and war, and is as relevant to our modern conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was to the soldiers of the German Army in 1945.