SS Armour on the Eastern Front 1943-1945

This is one of those rare books where everything is perfect. You have great format, photos, and maps. Pictures of various types of Waffen SS armor from 1943-1945 when momentum switched to the side of the Soviets. Despite being at a great disadvantage the Waffen SS continued to display impressive combat skill. This isn't about the political aspect of the war. I strongly recommend this book for those interested in the Eastern Front.

Excellent photos with decent text. The subject is interesting and handled adequately.

A good book with great photos

For a book on SS armour on the Eastern Front, there are a surprising number of none armour photographs, troops, and general “landscape” shots. And as such, I’m disappointed in it, the title being a little misleading. Another thing that disappointed me was the lack of cover of some vehicles, specifically the Nashorn and Marder IID. One photo of each. A quick Google / Bing / Yahoo image search brings up more.Yes, it has plenty of new-to-me photographs, one or two of which are quality close ups, and in a couple of instances, a couple of photographs of the same vehicle from different angles.Would I buy this book again, given the option? No.

This is an excellent photo album of SS units on the Eastern front 1943-45. The content relates to Zhitomir-Berdichew, Chekassy pocket, Tarnopol-Kamenenets/Podolsk, Kovel, Warsaw and Budapest. By far the majority of these photos I never seen before and they are superbly and accurately described and captioned. Also included are several maps outlining the frontlines and main thrust of SS forces and opposing Soviet forces. If any criticism can be made of this book it is that unlike another excellent J.J Fedorowicz publication 'Operation Citadel A Text & Photo Album Vol 1: The South' that offers some analysis and account of the fighting, this book contains none (other than the excellent captions). There is no overall narrative to give an account of the conflict of where photos were taken. The assumption maybe that the reader is already familiar with these battles, but an accompaning text (even if brief) would have helped portray the strategic situation, actions taken, and result.

I recently purchased this book for $70.00 on Amazon. A steal! I was, at first, a bit dissapointed to see that it was a bit thinner than I had expected. I suppose I was expceting something on the order of "Tigers in Combat" or one of Jean Restayn's "Citadel" albums. However, any doubts were put aside as I cracked the book. This book is chock-full of the kind of photos for which we pay big $$. With all do respect to the previous, negative review(er), a negative reveiw of this book is absurd. The color plates are outstanding. I couldn't find the artist listed, but I believe they are by Restayn. Panzer artwork simply doesn't get any better than that! As far as captions go, if you're worried about the captions, why are you buying this book? I would chalk up any lacking captions to the difficulty in translation. Heck, I have five or six photo books that are entirely written in languages which I cannot read. I can look at the photos though. I know what I'm looking at and I like what I see here. The photos are all that matter, to me anyhow. They are the reason I bought this book. They are the reason I'd recommend it to you.

I am not always a fan of JJ Fedorowicz Publishing's books as they can be a little too celebratory in tone of the combat achievements of the Germans in WWII, but each to their own. However, the best of their photo albums are outstanding and this volume by Velimir Vuksic is the best of the best.It covers six operations from Zhitomir in December '43 to Budapest in early '45. For each there is a very clear and well produced map to set the context plus well thought-out texts to each picture. The pictures themselves are all of excellent quality, no doubt having been given the full PhotoShop treatment but this has clearly been done with great care and skill. It is a large format book and on a typical double page there will be one photo on one of the pages and two on the other. There must be a good few hundred photos but only half a dozen or so have I seen before, and I have other photo albums totalling some five thousand photos from the Eastern Front. This is one of the major strengths of the book, the very high quality of the photos plus their originality. Velimir Vuksic deserves to be congratulated on his research, as on much else.All in all the photos themselves, the layout, the maps and text combine to produce the best of the Eastern Front photo albums.Highly recommended to the both the usual suspects such as me who have a weakness for WWII photo albums but I also recommend it to those who may not have bought such books in the past. It is the best of the best and will enliven all your future Eastern Front reading by allowing you to better imagine the reality of the environment in which the combat took place. A large number of the photos show both German units plus a great vista of Soviet landscape allowing the reader to better understand the tactical implications of the land over which the war was fought.Outstanding.

I'm a huge fan of Fedorowicz books and own the majority of their titles. But I have to say I don't see what all the fuss is about on this title. The captions are amateur-ish "It was simply called the "King Tiger" or Tiger II, and had an impressive weight of 70 tons and frontal armor of 180mm. Its long 88mm gun could destroy all enemy tanks." The color plates too are lacking, both in quantity and intersting subject matter (do we really need 5 views of a solid dark yellow Panther?" Some are even recycled. Finally, for a title with "SS Armor" in it, there are painfully too many photo's of grenadiers standing around next to trucks. Many of the photo's quality isn't up to the "professional" standards the books mentions, and more than a few are old rehash. I'm selling mine, truly disappointed for $95.00!!!

Great photos never seen before