world war 2

Yet another well-presented Osprey publication , no 397 in their campaign series.The author and artist have both been featured in numerous Osprey soft-cover titles and here they once more offer in 96 pages a concise, nicely illustrated and readable slice of WW2 history. The format of these short...

I asked to review this book as I had spent some time on Bougainville in 1997 as part of the ANZAC Truce Monitoring Force and recall the island being littered with aircraft wrecks and other detritus of WW2. Another of Osprey's excellent Air Campaign series, Operation Ro-Go is a detailed account...

Hans Seidler is an enthusiastic collector of WW2 memorabilia and an authority on German formations and equipment. He has many titles in print with Pen & Sword's Images of War series including; Hitler's Tank Killer - Stürmgeschutze at War 1940-1945, Battle of Kursk, Luftwaffe Flak & Field...

Another offering from the pen of Ian Baxter, written for the Pen & Sword publishers in their Images of War series. The book was published in 2023 and is the 60th title by Ian Baxter. Ian Baxter is an author and photographic collector whose books draw an increasing following. Among his many...

The Hagley Wood Murder was a bizarre case from the early Second World War that has has all the elements of a rather far fetched Detective novel. An unidentified woman’s body stuffed into the hollow trunk of a tantalising named species of tree, a Wych Elm found by lads out looking for birds eggs...

Leyte Gulf 1944 (2) by Mark Stille covers two of the four battles that make up the Battle of Leyte Gulf battle as a whole. This book looks at the battles of Surigao Strait and Cape Engano; the others are the battles of the Sibuyan Sea and off Samar. It'sa bit tricky to review this book without...

In my opinion this is a beautiful book (probably not exactly what the Author was aiming for), not in the same way that a coffee table book of photos of The Grand Canyon or Snowdonia is, but beautiful none the less. The author Professor William S Andrews is I suspect a little bit more than...

Leyte Gulf by Mark E. Stille is a new analysis of the largest sea battle ever fought. I’d heard of it but knew little about it; for those who don’t know about it, it’s in 1944 between the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy off the coast of the Philippines. When people describe Leyte Gulf as...

The Battle of The Atlantic has drawn a myriad of writers, the ASW sector probably being the most intensively written on. Writers include Jonathan Dimbleby, Brian Walter and Marc Milner. The first question might be what does this work bring to the field of action? The author has a sound maritime...

Waffen SS Versus Soviet Rifleman is a volume in Osprey publishing’s Combat series. In it the author Chris McNab compares and contrasts the two combatants concentrating on the period surrounding the Rostov-on-Don and Kharkov campaign of 1942-43. As ever these Osprey reference books are superb...

This has been a very difficult review to write because the book often reads more like a novel than historic fiction. I don’t wish to denigrate the author or publisher, but for a book of this sort surely we ought to have references backing up the stories? The brief list of acknowledgements just...

Hitler's Air Bridges by Dmitry Degtev and Dmitry Zubov looks out how the Luftwaffe tried to supply cut-off elements off the Germany Army in World War Two. The majority of this was on the Eastern Front but the attempts to maintain the forces in Tunisia are also covered. One of the things that...

Soviet Tanks in Manchuria 1945 is by William E. Hiestand. The subtitle – The Red Army's ruthless last blitzkrieg of World War II – captures the contents pretty well and gives a clear description of what the book is about. This is a rarely-considered part of World War Two in the West: we did not...

I received this book for review at Christmas 2023. On starting it I put is aside and waited till well after family festivities before returning to it to review it. Not because of the quality of the book but because I found the subject matter particularly difficult. That is not a criticism of...

Great Escape Forger. I have read many accounts of the experiences of allied POWs in the Second World War. One of the outstanding features of these was the grinding monotony and boredom suffered by them during those long and in many cases idle days stuck behind the wire. Carl Holmstrom was one...

Voices of Russian Snipers. Eyewitness Red Army accounts from World War Two. In the shadow of the current Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the very obvious deficiencies on the modern Russian Army in so many areas, it is interesting to read a book that deals with its much earlier and quite...

Acres of writing have examined the battle of Verdun which was von Falkenhayn’s scheme to bleed the French army dry. By close of play the casualties suffered by the 2 armies were about 305,000 dead and some 400,000 wounded. A period of ten months. By contrast the battles for the Rzhev salient...

The Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres have spawned some excellent British naval books but in the Pacific theatre post Singapore many of the works relate the US Navy. The story of the delightfully named USS Marblehead begins long before the Second World War. She was an Omaha class light cruiser...

World War 2 photo books are two a penny but the Images Of War series have produced a good piece of work. It is probably of particular interest to serious military modellers but could also make a good accompanying book to have when reading one of the weightier Ardennes tomes such as Snow & Steel...

The Second World War was a time of a sea change in amphibious operations, Accounts of Gallipoli, the Zeebrugge raid and other First World War operations all record the difficulties of disembarking troops swiftly in the face of opposition. For the historically minded The Riddle Of The Sands...

Special Duties Pilot by John M Billings. John M Billings I suspect would make a good dinner party guest…. Do people still have dinner parties? Born in 1923 in Massachusetts he took his first flight at three years old (as a passenger obviously). After that his path was set. After the gentle...

This is one of those books that does what it says on the cover and does it well. As the editors (for some reason that is not explained they chose not to refer to themselves as authors) are at pains to state, the term “Blitzkrieg” is one invented by the British Press, not the German Wehrmacht...

The thrilling story of how nine young women, captured by the Nazis for being part of the Resistance, launched a breathtakingly bold escape and found their way home. As the Second World War raged across Europe, and the Nazi regime tightened its reign of horror and oppression, nine women, some...

I have a great respect for the soldierly skills and professionalism of our Royal Marine comrades, but I’m also aware that they, like their USMC brothers, have a very active PR machine. The timing of this book when the RM is desperately trying to reinvent itself and secure its place in the shadow...

Twice married as I am I consider myself quite acquainted with the espionage capabilities of the fairer sex. As an amateur student of history I was also aware that female spies had been used on and off throughout the ages. Carve Her Name with Pride was required viewing in our house. I had also...

I must admit that when I received this book I though " oh God here's more pictures of tank, me on tank ,tank on fire , tank fallen over ,tank in snow etc etc " like so many other boring books of this nature. However I was absolutely pleasantly surprised and was taught very much by this story of...

This book describes the evolution of tactics and equipment in armoured warfare during the second world war, including European, North African and Far East theatres of war. The authors are the sons of the curator of the RAC Tank Museum and the publishing is by Pen and Sword, so an excellent book...

Before the Second World War the Italian Army considered that Monte Cassino might be that rarest of military things, an impregnable position. In the winter of 1943-44 the British Army in Italy did their best to prove them right. This well researched and readable book details the Cavendish Road...

Our generation would readily assume the cruiser is a naval fixture and fitting. In fact the cruiser as we know it only emerged in the late 1860s as iron hulls supplanted timber. Until then there were battleships of the line, frigates ,corvettes etc of various rates and a plethora of sloops...

‘Hitler’s Peace' by the late Philip Kerr was first published in 2005 in the US. It has now been published for the UK market some fifteen years later, two years after the author’s death. Perhaps best known in the UK for his Bernie Gunther series of detective thrillers set in 1930s-1950s Berlin...

Black Tulip by Erik Schmidt (sub-titled The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, The World’s Top Fighter Ace) is a biography of Erich Hartmann, who flew fighters for the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front in World War Two, was then held by the Soviets after the war and joined the West German Luftwaffe n...

Illustrated war histories can be a series of loosely related photographs assembled with little effort and dumped on the market in the run up to Christmas. This book from Brooke S Blades is in a different category. The author has assembled 245 pages of text and illustration devoted to a 5 month...

Brian Flett's Ian Fleming and SOE's Operation Postmaster describes a deniable Special Operations Executive mission in World War Two and its link with Ian Fleming's James Bond. This has been a challenging review to write. On the one hand, the Special Operations Executive, James Bond...

The Normandy Invasion is a central part of any Second World War history. The day that Germany’s defeat was sealed by the Allies; 6,939 vessels, 156,000 American, British and Canadian troops and countless air sorties threw an invasion force ashore in a tight interval set by weather fronts and...

Hello, I want to expand my collection by buying a uniform from ww2. (In parts, I don't need to buy it all at once). I was thinking about a British or German infantry uniform. (I know German uniforms are more expensive). Does anyone has a uniform they would recommend I look for/advice? Edit to...

The Paratrooper Training Pocket Manual 1939-1945. Airborne Assault was one of the great military innovations of the 1930s and 40s. The German in particular demonstrating the potential of elite parachute and glider borne Infantry in the opening movements of the war in Europe. In particular the...

Special Operations South-East Asia 1942-1945 by David Miller describes, in some depth, three special operations missions conducted in World War Two. He has conducted extensive research into them, two of which are not well-known, and brings the stories to life well. From the title of the book...

There are reams of D-Day books covering every aspect of the landings, tactics, uniform and equipment. Some are helpful if visiting but this is aimed squarely at those planning (and making) a visit. The book gives some background notes, some really helpful points on using the guide and some...

That the war on the Eastern Front in the Second World War was conflict on huge scale is no surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of military history. But the actual scope and intensity is something difficult to grasp when the actually facts and figures are presented. Keith Cummings...

In the dying days of World War Two, when the fate of nations was being decided by the triumvirate of Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin, Hitler’s Austrian homeland provided a scenic backdrop for the last stand of Army Group South. Killing Hitler’s Reich, The Battle For...