Willi Heinrich

1920 – 2005

(9 August 1920 – 2005) was a German author and soldier. During the Second World War he fought in the , which suffered massive losses on the Eastern Front, and his combat experiences inspired his first successful novel, Das geduldige Fleisch (1955), published in English translation as The Willing Flesh in the United Kingdom and as The Cross of Iron in the United States (1956), and adapted for the screen as Cross of Iron (1977). He later wrote a series of popular genre novels and potboilers in the