Noba Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 A good read on North Africa from a British / Commonwealth perspective would be the Australian War Memorial series. There are three books that cover the Mediterranean theatre of war. To Benghazi by Gavin Long. (Aust. 6th Div) Greece, Crete and Syria also by Gavin Long. (6th and 7th Divs.) And Tobruk and El Alamein by Barton Maughan. (9th Div) All cover the campaign from an Australian view as histories, with large input to the overall war as it affected them. Thus the 6th Aust Div. attacks to take Bardia and Tobruk are covered comprehensively, but also the lead up battles by 4th Indian Div with 7th Arm. Div. are described as well. Operation Crusader is covered widely as part of 2/13 Battalion operations. These battles are covered down to platoon level with the details immersed in well written prose. With maps and sketches, there is a wealth of situations that could be turned into CMAK battles. (I'm sure the Beta testers are using these as reference...) The political situations between the Australian and British governments, Blamey and his problems with the British Commanders are all there. I have the 1987 reprints which were done through Collins publishing and the Australian War Memorial. Highly recommended. Noba. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mouse Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 If its tactical schooling you want, you could try Panzertaktik German Small-Unit Armor Tactics (Wolfgang Schneider). Hard cover, large format (9”x12"), 512 pages, 600+ photos, maps and diagrams. Wolfgang Schneider has written the definitive account of German Army small-unit tactics in World War 2. Using period training manuals, after-action reports, countless interviews with Panzer veterans and his own experiences as a highly successful armor commander in the Bundeswehr, Schneider describes period Panzer tactics and couples this narrative with related maps and diagrams and hundreds of exciting photographs. Indeed, the photographs alone are worth the price of the book. Drawing on many previously unpublished sources, the photos illustrate all of the concepts presented in the text. Concentrating at the battalion level and below, Schneider discusses the major types of small-unit operational art — the offense and the defense — as well as road marches, reconnaissance, command and control, working with other arms of service, life in a tank, armor training and gunnery and the future of armor. The text provides useful insight into armor tactics for both the layman and the armor professional. Check out Fedorowicz Publishing 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malakovski Posted May 15, 2003 Author Share Posted May 15, 2003 Originally posted by Mouse: If its tactical schooling you want, you could try Panzertaktik German Small-Unit Armor Tactics (Wolfgang Schneider). Check out Fedorowicz Publishing Sounds perfect, but Jesus H...85 bucks?! Can anyone else weigh in on this one? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Posted May 15, 2003 Share Posted May 15, 2003 If it is the one I think it is, I know two people I would trust who hate it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malakovski Posted May 16, 2003 Author Share Posted May 16, 2003 Originally posted by Andreas: If it is the one I think it is, I know two people I would trust who hate it. That's a very risky $85 then. How about the four books Battlefront sells re: German and Russian Infantyr and Tank tactics? I assume some people here have ordered them, and they are a much more reasonable $20... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John D Salt Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 Originally posted by Malakovski: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mouse: If its tactical schooling you want, you could try Panzertaktik German Small-Unit Armor Tactics (Wolfgang Schneider). Check out Fedorowicz Publishing Sounds perfect, but Jesus H...85 bucks?! Can anyone else weigh in on this one? </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SgtMuhammed Posted May 16, 2003 Share Posted May 16, 2003 Why does that nearly always seem to be the case with a lot of decent books. There are a couple out there that I want to pick up but their $100 (84 Euro, 60 Pound, for the international audience) tag is a little steep right now. Guess I won't have a choice once I start grad school. Here's another good one. I am reading it right now. "Rommel in the desert" by Volkmar Kuhn. It has some scenario material in it and is a fair read. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 Malakovski, Try these: PANZER ARMY AFRICA, James Lucas BRAZEN CHARIOTS, Major Robert Crisp TUG OF WAR: The Battle for Italy:1943-45, Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell THE TRAIL OF THE FOX: The Search for the True Field Marshal Rommel, David Irving THE BATTLE HISTORY OF THE 1st ARMORED DIVISION "Old Ironsides," George F. Howe "Desert Warfare Warfare: German Experiences in World War II," by Major General Alfred Toppe, Combat Studies Institute, U.s. Army command & General Staff School THE RAIDERS: Desert Strike Force, Arthur Swinson, BALLANTINES ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II THE DESERT GENERALS, Correlli Barnett WEST OF ALAMEIN, Colonel G.B. Jarrett Regards, John Kettler [ May 23, 2003, 03:40 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 "Spot and the Big Blue Ball" 'See Spot Run' 'Run Spot Run'. Classic. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wisbech_lad Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 S Jary "18 Platoon". Probably only available second hand. E Waugh "Sword of Honour" trilogy I think is underrated. Not much about tactics though! http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/modules/HI128.htm is an interesting bibliography from an undergraduate course, with comments 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grisha Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 Malakovski, For some insight into the Soviet side of small unit tactics there's little to none in english. Two books I'd recommend are by Dmitrii Loza:</font>Fighting for the Soviet Motherland.</font>Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks.</font> Though a bit disjointed at times, they do give a good account of the Soviet method and their concerns at the small unit tactical scale. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Chapuis Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 Originally posted by Snowbart: Enemy at the Gates was a very good read about the epic of Stalingrad. It has hardly nothing to do with the terrible movie made under the same nameNever read the book but have to agree about the movie being horrible. The thing that made it sooooooo bad IMO was when Zaitzev and that girl started getting it on right there in front of everybody. :mad: What kind of idiot would think that would make the movie better? I get plum flusterated when ignorant scenes like that are thrown into a movie. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Chapuis Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 Originally posted by Malakovski: How about the four books Battlefront sells re: German and Russian Infantyr and Tank tactics? I assume some people here have ordered them, and they are a much more reasonable $20... I also am interested in what people think of these. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blow2 Posted May 23, 2003 Share Posted May 23, 2003 Try With Our Backs To Berlin by Tony LeTissier,or the truly excellent Forsaken Army by Heinrich Gerlach.Panzer Commander, the personal history of Hans Von Luck is good, too. B 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malakovski Posted May 23, 2003 Author Share Posted May 23, 2003 Wow...someone actually reads past page one on the forum! Thanks again for all the advice. My Amazon wishlist is now many pages, though it looks like I will also be visiting some used bookstore in the near future. Still, no one has commented on the small unit tactics books sold by Battlefront (not the ones in the long biblio). Surely someone has ordered them? Originally posted by Cpl Dodge: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malakovski: How about the four books Battlefront sells re: German and Russian Infantyr and Tank tactics? I assume some people here have ordered them, and they are a much more reasonable $20... I also am interested in what people think of these. </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjelinek Posted May 24, 2003 Share Posted May 24, 2003 I'm finding "Panzers On The Eastern Front" a good read. It teaches tactics while stepping through actions of roughly regiment size and detailing down to infantry companies, tank platoons, and gun/artillery batteries. The chapters are broken down into examples and the tactics learned from each action are identified and dicussed. Some ideas can be applied directly to CMBB some would be more abstract. It is written by General Erhard Raus and follows his 6th Panzer Division through the eastern front. It is edited by Peter G. Tsouras, US Army National Ground Intelligence Center. Has anyone else read this one? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pavlov Posted May 25, 2003 Share Posted May 25, 2003 $0.02 Don't be put off by the movie, Enemy at the Gates is a good read. It gives a good mixture of personal accounts and strategic overview. I'm also partial to Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945, Stalingrad, The Spanish Civil War, etc. Good overview of strategy and political context but little in the way of tactical information. If you want a well written account by a foot soldier, you must read Roll Me Over by Raymond Gantter. Another personal account that's worth looking at is If You Survive by George Wilson. It starts at Normandy goes through to the end; beginning as foot soldier and ending as company commander. Not as dense writing as Gantter, he has a straight forward style and more of a focus on tactics. And, yes, Stephen Ambrose is seriously overrated, (IMHO). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowbart Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 The weird thing about the movie Enemy at the Gates is that it is actually based on a novel called The War of the Rats . Enemy at the Gates was written in the early 70's. I guess they liked that name a little better for their movie. But you should not mix up the movie with the book, because one gives the other a bad name. I'll let you figure out which. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schwarze Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Franz Kurowski- Panzer Aces Siegfried Knappe- Soldat Hans Von Luck- Panzer Commander 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
von Lucke Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 What, somebody talkin' smack about Hans? Yah, it's not full of blazing fire-fights, but if war-porn of the Kurowski-style is more to yr liking, I can see how von Luck's low-key autobiography might not be to yr taste. Personally, when compared to the bluster of most WW2 German officers self-aggrandizing, I found his self-deprecating style rather refreshing --- especially considering his less-than-stereotypical career. Right now I'm reading the auto-bio of another less-than-stereotypical officer: Popski's Private Army. Don't know who Vladimir Peniakoff is? For shame! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pcpilot Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Try "Enemy at the Gates". I dont have the author's name right now. But this book is a well written story about the terrrible fight for stalingrad. It brings to quite horrible reality war and what it really about. You'll never look at that battle the same and all else will pale in comparison. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Murray Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Pretty much anything by David Glantz is worthwhile reading. Almost everything written by former WSS officers is not ( they have a tendency to gloss over/ignore war crimes, etc.). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastables Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Originally posted by Rob Murray: Pretty much anything by David Glantz is worthwhile reading. Almost everything written by former WSS officers is not ( they have a tendency to gloss over/ignore war crimes, etc.). Bearing in mind that other Historians such as Zetterling and C.lawrence have questioned and pointed out his over reliance on secondary soviet sources and the problems in that itself. Never little things like reporting soviet casualties figures lower than actul in finland. Using Paul carrel as a german source etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Don, I tend to agree with you on the German sources. Some are very good (e.g. Scheibert, who he uses a lot in 'From the Don to the Dnjepr'), others are highly questionable to abysmal (e.g. Carrell or Piekalkiewicz). I have my doubts on whether what Glantz presents is truly the last word on the Soviet-German war, as ISTR is claimed in some books. What it does though is portray a very good view from the other side of the hill, with all the warts that are associated with historical research in a society that inspired Orwell to write 1984. Being aware of these potential pitfalls, the books are very important additions to the body of knowledge of the war in the Soviet Union. They have to be taken with a grain of salt, which is to be expected seeing where the data comes from. Having said that, I have very serious doubts about some of the claims made and conclusions drawn at TDI about the value of e.g. going to German first-hand records, and their accuracy, or even the interpretation of the German loss figures in Kursk that seems to prevail there. I would for example not agree that a German infantry division in 1943 is not seriously incapacitated by losses of 2,000 men, because the infantry division has 11,000 guys in it. Or the idea that losses of tanks and infantry in 12.PD in summer 1943 are somehow not that important to gauge the effect on its combat effectiveness, as long as the artillery is not affected, since that is the big killer. For me it comes down to what is available - I read a lot from other sources, but Glantz certainly has a very important place in my reading schedule, despite the undoubted shortcomings. I do however think that the books are not all, and that he maybe focussing more on KTBs and other primary sources from the German side now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grisha Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 As Andreas points out, Glantz' work is refreshing in that it finally mades a serious effort in providing a more balanced picture through the inclusion of the Soviet perspective and source material. His work isn't spotless, but whose truely is? Regarding Zetterling and the Dupuy Institute staff, they aren't without their biases either - the result of an over-reliance on statistical data. My advice is to read material from both sides of the fence, so to speak, then make your own informed decision. [ May 28, 2003, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: Grisha ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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