Take Budapest/Kamen Nevenkin

[Jukka Juutinen]

http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/pro...-Budapest.aspx

Expecting to get my copy next week!

[Jayslater]

Another one of my commissions! :-)

Jay

[John Beaman]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/pro...-Budapest.aspx

Expecting to get my copy next week!

Jukka, be sure and let us know your opinion of this book compared to other, English language, books published in recent years on this subject.

THX

[Jukka Juutinen]

Will do! Based on what Nevenkin has written on some other fora, the book should have plenty of new archival findings. Here is some info from Kamen's page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Take-B...928079?sk=info

[Csaba B. Stenge]

If you are looking for more books about the armoured warfare in Hungary in 1944-45, I can recommend you the meticulously researched books of Norbert Számvéber, who is the chief of the Hungarian Military Archives.
One of his works is coming soon in this subject:
http://www.helion.co.uk/days-of-batt...y-1944-45.html

But I suppose, it won't be the only one, since most of his monographs, published in Hungary will be translated sooner or later.
All of them are very high quality works.

[mars]

By the way, Nevenkin will publish another book contains more detail information about the battle of Budapest early next year
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Entrapment-O...2719396&sr=1-2

[Dénes Bernád]

Being one who assisted his work and knowing him personally, too, I can assure you that Kamen's book will be well worth the purchase. He extensively relied on Soviet archival sources very few Hungarian authors had access to. He also cast a fresh set of eyes on this highly interesting topic, usually described rather unilaterally either from the defenders' or the attackers' point of view. How much is repeated information? That I cannot answer, unfortunately, until I'll have my copy in my hands.

[Jukka Juutinen]

I have my copy in my hands now, and so far I have read about 60 pages. I find the book so far excellent as far as the content is concerned. Nevenkin describes the events from German, Soviet and Hungarian perspectives. Plus he writes well. The beginning of the book has an emphasis on the political development. Hitler's failures as a statesman need not be repeated, but Churchill's failure as such is evident in this book as well, and this is to be commented given the prevalence of the hagiographic accounts on him even today. Stalin who never forgot that a war must always have a political goal treated W. C. like a marionette. Perhaps the best short description of the latter is by Captain Russell Grenfell who wrote that Churchill tried to be too much a Whitehall warlord when he should have been the Downning Street politician.

The book has extensive apendices, and one is a most interesting glimpse on the ideological traditions of the Red Army. In an order (signed by Rodion Malinovsky) to prevent looting etc. on Hungarian civilians, the text begins "The enemy should be beaten and annihilated with the utmost hatred...". While one can imagine that e.g. Eisenhower might have signed such a piece of text, I bet that e.g. for Montgomery it would have been simply unbearable language for a disciplined professional officer to sign.

Nevenkin's reasoning that "...prolongation of the struggle for the Hungarian Plain and the hostile atmosphere that surrounded the Red Army,..." explained Soviet troops' misbehaviour is in my opinion too simplistic for the core reason lies most probably with the combination of Russian people's cultural characteristics coupled with Bolshevist ideology.

The book is overall very well designed with a pleasant reasonably small font, though placement of maps could be better. However, whoever edited the text has made some odd choices. E.g. all ordinal numerals are written as normal numerals, e.g. "3 Army", not "3rd Army" or "3. Army". Germans are Germans and Soviets are Soviets, but Hungarians are mostly "Magyars". Then there are inconsistent mixed language terms like "23 Panzer-Division", yet "4 Police-Panzer-Grenadier-Division". One one spread (pgs 66-67) German General Friessner is spellt "Friessner", "Freissner" and "Frissner".

But, overall so far an excellent book!

[John Beaman]

THX Jukka.

Keep us appraised as you read on............

[Jukka Juutinen]

I have progressed a bit further, and I did note that occasionally Soviet units have an ordinal indicator (e.g. "3rd") while tables and listings seem to have the proper dotted ordinal indicator.

And based on the source notes, Nevenkin has used plenty of Russian archival sources. And he keeps writing well. I E.g. compared to David Glantz Kamen writes much more livelier text while still not succumbing to "poetics". I do have to add that the maps can be described as lukewarm only.