Alfred Andersch is West Germany's most famous deserter. His autobiographical account "The Cherries of Freedom" (1952) describes the circumstances of his desertion from Hitler's Wehrmacht on June 6, 1944, in Italy. But was he really a deserter? Since a text emerged in his estate, which Andersch had written in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1945, where his capture is not depicted as desertion, doubts have arisen about whether Andersch is rightly honored as a deserter at the Memorial to the German Resistance in Berlin. Until now, no attempt has been made to verify Andersch's self-description against military historical sources. This book gathers these documents and tells a somewhat different story: "The Cherries of Freedom" in the light of the records. A story of survival.