Dichtung und Wahrheit in Malapartes "Kaputt"

The book "Kaputt" by Italian author Curzio Malaparte is an interesting literary phenomenon. It is no novel, and it is no factual report. In the center we find the writer himself in an apocalyptical travel through the horrors on the eastern front of the Second World War. Malaparte, who was a war correspondent of the Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera", wants us to believe that everything happened as he describes it. In this study his presentation of persons, sights and events is compared with the reality shown in the documented history. The outcome: Much is the result of exaggeration and the outflow of his flowering imaginantion.