The Battle of Kursk was quite possibly the turning point in the Second World War. Though that contention is of course debatable, the fact that Kursk can be considered in such terms speaks to its importance. Moreover, for enthusiasts of armored warfare Kursk featured not only one of the greatest concentrations of armored fighting vehicles in history but, in a battle within a battle, few continue to attract as much interest as the clash of armor that occurred in July of 1943 near the small Russian town of Prokhorovka.
Gregory Liedtke's Enduring The Whirlwind is more than anything else a deep dive into the statistics behind the first two years of the war fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Most importantly, Liedtke's work seeks to address the ongoing controversy over whether or not the numbers game played the key role in explaining the Ostheer's defeat at the hands of the Red Army. To do that, the author focuses the book on German personnel and material losses during the war's early years, and then looks at whether or not the Third Reich was capable of replacing those losses.
I previously reviewed and endorsed Volume One of Igor Nebolsin's two-volume set entitled Stalin's Favorite. Here, I shall examine what Volume Two has to offer (subtitled "From Lublin to Berlin, July 1944-May 1945). Like Volume One, Volume Two offers Second World War armored enthusiasts a treasure trove of information about one of the Red Army's top combat armies and the mechanics of tank warfare in general.
Continuining where he left off Nebolsin takes the combat history of the 2nd Guards Tank Army (hereinafter referred to in this review as the 2nd GTA) into the war's final year (and well
The Battle of Rzhev was a fifteen-month campaign that took place during World War II. During these battles the Red Army sought to not only evict German forces from a central position not far outside of Moscow, but also eliminate the bulk of Army Group Center. These battles formed a campaign so colossal that in a number of metrics outdid the fighting at Stalingrad. However, there is much controversy surrounding the Rzhev battles.
As such, Svetlana Gerasimova's The Rzhev Slaughterhouse seeks to "lay out the history of combat operations in 1942 and early 1943 on the central - the Moscow - axis
Igor Nebolsin's Stalin's Favorite offers Second World War armored enthusiasts a treasure trove of information about one of the Red Army's top combat armies. One would be hard pressed to find an English language translation of a Soviet army's combat history, and in doing so here the team of Nebolsin and Britton have performed an invaluable service.
As the mouthful of a sub-title indicates this is the first of a two part look at the 2nd Guards Tank Army (hereinafter referred to in this review as the 2nd GTA). This volume covers events from the 2nd GTA's formation late in 1942 up to June of
Dr. Boris Sokolov's Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky offers a unique look at not only the life of one of the Red Army's top Second World War era senior officers, but also interesting insight into a Red Army at war. Detailed English language treatments of the Red Army's personnel are rare. For this reason alone this book is an important one for any student of the Second World War. And minus a few oversights the author does a credible job of providing a detailed study of Marshal Rokossovsky.
Sokolov's work is organized into fourteen informative, albeit at times lengthy, chapters beginning with
Stephen Barratt's two-volume set Zhitomir-Berdichev (sold separately) should go down as the definitive look from the German side of the hill at the critically important combat operations on Army Group South's left flank during the lead up to the far more famous Battle of the Korsun Pocket.
Piggybacking upon my recent review of Tomb of the Panzerwaffe is another well done work covering the tank heavy battles in Hungary that occurred in the final year of the Second World War. In this case Kamen Nevenkin’s Take Budapest ably documents the first Soviet drive on Budapest during the fall of 1944, and in that process provides a firm foundation for those interested in this particular aspect of the Second World War.
The first four of the book’s eleven chapters detail the political, economic, and strategic underpinnings of the Hungarian campaign.
Norbert Szamveber’s Waffen-SS Armour in Normandy covers the combat history of the SS-Panzer Regiment 12 and SS-Panzerjager Abteilung 12 during the Second World War’s Battle for Normandy France; which lasted from June 6 to just about the end of August 1944. These two units served as the armored core of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend; a unit noted for both is ferocious fighting skill and at times criminal disregard for the laws of war.
Waffen-SS Armour in Normandy is organized around its primary goal of providing readers with access to open source publication of the original unit
