Panzer Warfare on the Eastern Front/Hans Schäufler

[Jukka Juutinen]

http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/panze...-front/p/3519/

Read so far some 60 pages, and so far it is most interesting reading. The book is actually a compilation of personal accounts ranging from ordinary tankers to officers up to generals. One minor fault is that there is no mention on when each account was originally written.

Note that Hans Schaufler has also witten the history of the Pz.Rgt. 35, and there might be some overlapping accounts (I haven't compared them side by side).

This book has much better font that the Pz. Rgt. 35 book, and is in hardcover.

[Nokose]

Jukka or anyone else that gets a copy of "Zhitomir-Berichev: German Operations West Of Kiev 24 December 1943-31 January 1944 volume 1" by Stephen Barratt, please advise if it is any good. I'm not interested in any campaign books that are dry of personal combat experiences and air coverage. This was always an interesting battle.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Is Barratt's book out yet?

[Nokose]

Amazon is saying that it ships in 1-3 months which means it will be available through them about Christmas most likely. Casemate now states it will be released on the 19 August. It has a review by David Glantz there but the last Glantz book I read it took me a year to finish it was so dry.

[mars]

Nokose, if Amazon told you some book would be available in 1-3 month, what they actually are telling you is "This book is not available now, and we do not know when it will be available", only the amazon status you could trust are "Ship in 24 hours" or "Ship in 2-3 days".
My only questions for Zhitomir-Berichev book is whether it is only from German perspective or it covers both side of stories? I will be disappoint if former is the case, since this battle was fought almost 70 years ago

[Nokose]

According to what I read it is only the German side. A lot of the Russian side of the story (from the recent Russian books) is only now starting to come out in English. Books that I got in Russian for $17 (postage included) are coming out in English for $70 (postage charges not included). It does say that a map booklet comes with the first volume to follow the movements which helps in not having to flip ahead or back while reading. But if it only describes events from the ranking officers, I am not interested.

[mars]

Yes, I see your point, but Russian WWII archive was available like 15-20 years ago, besides, Soviet WWII memoirs and unit history were published for decades, so that in nowadays, any research ,regardless his nationality, who is researching WWII East Front history, must master both German and Russian language, this is why I like Kamen Nevenkin’s work, his recently published “Take Budapest!” though mostly is from Soviet perspective, it also includes very detail information from German and Hungary point of view. Dénes Bernad’s “From Barbarossa to Odessa” would be another good example

[Jukka Juutinen]

As far as I know, Russian archives are not "available" in the Western sense that virtually anyone can walk in and request to see nearly any document (not sure of e.g. French practice, but in Finland it works that way), as you really need a local contact plus money to get it.

[Nokose]

I know that Valeriy Zamulin's books (one printed in English so far) have have changed how people in Russia and the rest of the world views the battle of Kursk now compared to what was written under the Soviets. As far as Soviet era memoirs the cold war era still has some people wondering how much the old regime influenced what was written but it's always good to read how two sides match up on reading about the same incident. James R. Arnold wrote a book recently using Russian, French, German and English sources called "Napoleon's Triumph" on the battle of Friedland. He could probably weave a good eastern front battle history using both sides with the right sources into English.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Zamulin's book (the one in English) is indeed very good, but obviously with his background is much more conductive to access to Russian archives than a Western author.