Germany's Eastern Front Allies 1941–45 (Men-at-Arms, 131)

A good book about this subject. However, their battles are not covered too much.As Romanian I found this book incomplete about Romanian armed forces involved in the war against USSR, since the Romanian Air Force (the largest after Luftwaffe) and Romanian Navy (which also saw some action in the Black Sea). The Axis allies ORBATs are really good.Other countries also lack deep coverage.Too many big photos...and the price is somehow too much.With little more effort a much better book could be written.

Good introduction to the subject.

Interesting but short, good reference, good photos. I picked it for the Finnish material, again short but okay.

Great

This is the first in a two a two part series. It profiles Nazi Germany's allies including Finland, Rumania, Slovak, Hungary and Italians. The fact is, these troops were not respected or well used. German leadership never fully trusted their allies even though they needed the manpower. So they were often given occupation duties or employed as cannon fodder. These nations were motivated by maintaining their borders and identities while sharing in the spoils of war. Like most Osprey titles, this is an introduction or overview of the subject. In that guise it is highly credible. I am fascinated by Italian troops fighting in the Soviet Union especially the Alpini. I recommend Sacrifice on the Steppe: The Italian Alpine Corps in the Stalingrad Campaign, 1942-1943 by Hope Hamilton if you want to learn more.

I'll attempt to concentrate my remarks on what I think prospective buyers want to see - a description of what is inside the book; as with all MAA titles, different people want different things, some are interested primarily in uniform details, others in history. This book offers a good deal of detail in many areas. As always, do not make this your sole source of information, but it is a great start on many subjects not covered anywhere else, not even the internet. The book starts with an historical introduction to the politics of Eastern Europe, dividing Eastern European participation in WW II into 5 phases and providing some nice maps. It then looks at several different nations in turn - Finland, Hungary, Romania (mis-spelled "Rumania" throughout the text), Slovakia, and "Other Allies" - primarily Italy with a mention of the Spanish contingent. These "other Allies" have their own titles in MAA. The overviews of the nations concentrated on politics and also have reasonably detailed orders of battle, including divisional compositions which also give an idea of how large their militaries were. The focus is on ground forces, with little said about air forces (and nothing about naval forces, for the simple reason that what little naval forces some of these combatants had played little or not part in the Eastern Front campaigns). Nice touch was the inclusion of a chart with AFV national markings, and there are good detailed sidebars on the rank structure of the Finnish, Slovakian, Romanian and Hungarian armies with nicely done insignia sketches as well as info on branch/corps insignia. Photos are good, and colour plates cover the four main nationalities well. Chappell is always good, and these seem to be some of his better figures; nice variety of poses and very clear details. Comparing the info on Romanians in this volume to that presented in MAA 246, one can see that there are many details left out, but the basic essentials are all presented here. As a uniform enthusiast, I was pleased with the insignia information alone - this information isn't available anywhere else. Those looking for detail on equipment, armour, small arms, will need to look elsewhere. Nice supplement to the other books in the MAA line dealing in more detail with some of these same subjects.

OSPREY'S FIRST VOLUME TOUCHING ON GERMANY'S EASTERN FRONT ALLIES IS A GOOD LITTLE PRIMER FOR THE BEGINNER. GOOD GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT ROMANIA, HUNGARY,FINNISH, SLOVAKIAN ALLIES AND THEIR ROLE ON THE EASTERN FRONT. VERY SPARSE INFORMATION ON ITALY AND CROATIA, AND A GLANCING REFERENCE TO SPAIN'S CONTRIBUTION (OSPREY DEALS WITH THIS IN AN ENTIRE VOLUME ELSEWHERE IN THE SERIES MEN-AT ARMS). STILL WORTHWHILE AS A STARTING POINT. VOLUME 2 DEALS WITH THE BALTIC ALLIES. BOTH GOOD READS.

Good history book on WW2, good price

Another excellent Osprey book. Informative and well illustrated.