Classic Texts
Waffen-SS Panzers: The Eastern Front
UK
USDuring the closing years of World War II, the panzer divisions of the Waffen-SS fought a magnificent series of battles on the Eastern Front. Waffen-SS Panzers is an account of these battles and covers the period from the recapture of Kharkov in early 1943, when I SS Panzer Corps prevented the collapse of Army Group South, to the last desperate attempts to hold the Red Army before Berlin in 1945.
Tim Ripley is a full time author and photo-journalist who is also a keen student of military history. He has written numerous books on hardware, tactics and campaigns, including Bayonet Battle, Operation Deliberate Force, Jane’s Pocket Guide to Modern Military Helicopters, Land Power: the Coalition of the Iraqi Armies, and SS: Steel Rain. He currently lives in the north of England.
Reviews
(3 reviews)
(3.67 out of 5 stars)
This book provides a good general overview of the Waffen-SS‘s actions on the eastern front, covering everything from the battle of Moscow to the last battles around Berlin. It's not quite a full history (it doesn't cover the actions of SS Division Nord in Finland, but I guess it's focus is more on the tank actions). The text is well written and much easier to read than some military history books I've owned, though that does mean that sometimes you find yourself wishing it went into a little more detail.The maps and the pictures are a nice touch, as you don't often get either in eBooks. I'd almost finished the book before I'd realised that there were captions for the photographs, though. It would have been good if they'd explained how that worked somewhere (you have to tap them!).
I bought this book looking for a decent account of the battle of the Cherkassy Pocket. The only ones I'd been able to find online seemed based on Soviet figures, which I think are far fetched. The account in this book is good although a little short and is focused on the actions of the Viking and Liebstandard Divisions. It has an excellent map of the advance of the relief force, but nothing on the troops in the pocket itself, which I think is an oversight. There is a useful order of battle in the appendixes for Cherkassy. I've only read a few of the other chapters (on Kharkov and Kursk) but they were interesting and I learned a few things I didn't know before. If you’re new to the subject I think this book would be a good introduction.
This book is very good, but not as long as I thought it would be. The last 30 pages are turned over to orders of battle and lists of equipment. I expect that's interesting to some people, but I'm not a wargamer, so I didn't have any use for them. The pictures are great, but they looked pretty terrible on my kobo. It's worth opening the book on your PC to look at them.
