Anthony Tucker-Jones

Unfortunately this is missing a description of the tank types involved and their abilities. For example the author mentioned the Hotchkiss tank which in fact was a small tank, lightly armed, sporting a tiny main gun in the same breath as a centurion tank which was a heavy behemoth with a large main gun. A reader that does not know the many, many tank types mentioned in this here book, will not be able to form a complete picture of the forces involved and the battles fought which the author selected from the French Indochina war to the 1991 Kuwait. All in all, there is otherwise plenty of information, if a bit dry. In conclusion it is more or less about the battles that tanks participated in then about why tanks were used or how specific tank types fared in those battles.… (més)

There’s an argument that lack of support for the Axis allies is one of the many reasons the Third Reich lost the Second World War. Although this is mostly intended as a book of photographs, there’s some support for that in the accompanying text; Germany was reluctant to transfer modern armor to the Bulgarians, Finns, Italians, Magyars, Slovaks, Spaniards, Romanians and Ukrainians until it was too little and too late. Thus when the Soviets smashed through around Stalingrad in 1942 the Axis allies had to try and stop T-34s with obsolete – recycled French R35s – and underarmed – Hungarian Turans and Italian L6/40s – tanks. At the very end, the Hungarians came up with some decent self-propelled guns and the Germans dished out a few Pz IVs. Since most of the Axis allies changed sides to try and get a deal from Stalin, this led to Hungarians fighting Romanians, both with German equipment.

As far as photographs go, there are plenty, so if you’re a military modeler and want to build a model Turan II or an L6/40, this will help. Only covers the Russian campaign, so there’s no mention of Italian armor in North Africa. There are no maps, which handicaps campaign and battle descriptions in the accompanying text, no references, and no bibliography. For a little more on Italian armor, see Iron Arm and for more on relations between Germany and the Axis allies see Germany and the Axis Powers.… (més)

Life and Death on the Eastern Front – A Rare Collection of Pictures

Anthony Tucker-Jones and Ian Stewart Spring have gathered a fine and disturbing collection of pictures. Pen and Sword have published a large number of books from the Eastern Front, but they are all in black and white. Now they publish the book in rare colour pictures from the time, these have not been coloured recently, from the very early colour film.

This book has been collated into three sections, starting with the invasion and the ground war, then the war from the skies, and finally behind the lines with the captured Prisoners, to the daily lives who were living under the Nazi yolk.

The colour pictures help to drive home the nature of the eastern front and how it could be cold, wet, and frozen in winter. While in winter it could be hot, and sometimes felt like there was nowhere to hide for soldiers. Staff cars covered in layers of mud almost all the panzer grey was covered.

There are plenty of pictures of German army and some of the redeployed armaments captured in France. An example such as the two-man French Chenillette d’Infanterie, which looks more like a toy than a killing machine, on a double page.

A great book and an interesting addition to any collection on the Easter Front.… (més)

The Battle for Warsaw 1939 – 1945 – Haunting images of war

This book brings together some rare photographs for the various battles for Warsaw, all of which evocative. Throughout the Second World War, the city of Warsaw suffered worse than most cities across Europe. It was bombed from the 1st September 1939, and that would carry on for the duration of the war.

Prior to the outbreak of war, Warsaw had often been referred to as the ‘Paris of the North’, by the time the war ended it was a ruin. Her people had suffered misery upon misery, she had seen her city bombed, but the biggest stab in the back was as the Soviets sat watching Warsaw being bombed to destruction by the Nazis as retribution for the Warsaw rising in 1944, the Nazis doing to the Poles which would save them a job.

The pictures of highly evocative, a young boy sat amongst the rubble of 1939, the people of Warsaw feeding on dead horses and other animals as the German’s starves them in to surrender as they bomb them.

The horrors of the Ghetto, the pictures of Jews being rounded up by the Germans, remind you that evil walked amongst us, while the world looked away. Pictures of the German artillery shelling Zamehofa Street, which had been considered a Jewish stronghold. Or the fires which were set on Nowolipie Street, where the SS troops watched on knowing the Jewish fighters could only jump to their death, or suffer serious injury and then suffer at the hands of the SS.

From the haunting pictures of the Home Army, to those killed in action against the enemy, to the soviet ‘liberation’. To the soviets Warsaw reminded them of Stalingrad and the destruction that had been brought by the Germans.

The collection of pictures in this book are highly evocative, and while the Russians and Germans try and hide the blame for starting the war, these pictures reminded that the victims and Warsaw did not ask to be invaded or bombed. While German’s point to Dresden and the bombing of that city, to accuse the allied bombing as a War Crime, no mention of that they did time and time again. But then Russians, like the Germans have their own Sonderweg. Our job is to remind them they were no innocents, and this book is testament to that.… (més)