# The Germans — Memoirs of an Infantry Officer character guide

> The Germans in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Germans, The Germans, God the Germans

**First appearance:** 0000-i-at-the-army-school

## Snapshot

The unseen enemy Sassoon's soldiers measure themselves against, invoked in jokes, grudges, and the quiet refusal to hear them belittled.

## Who they are

In the hospital ward and at the front, the Germans exist as both a military fact and a social test: officers joke about throwing bombs at them as a substitute for foxhunting, while the narrator nurses a secret antagonism to any slight against the German Army. That contradiction — hating the war yet respecting the adversary — exposes the gap between civilian cheerfulness and trench reality. The Germans matter because they are the mirror in which the book's soldiers reveal what they have become.

## In the story

### [II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/chapters/ii)

The enemy, seen surrendering and later found dead in Fricourt.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters/the_germans
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/memoirs_of_an_infantry_officer_se/characters