The Planning and Preparations for the Battle of Kursk: Volume 1 offers much to chew on for anyone interested in this battle. In this first volume of what is meant to be a two-volume set, the author does a number of things that significantly advance our understanding of the 1943 combat around Kursk. Read on to find out why I recommend this book for my readers.
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Steve Mercatante
on: Aug 29 2025 - 6:23pm
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Steve Mercatante
on: Aug 3 2025 - 2:20pm
The Defeat and Attrition Of The 12. SS-PanzerDivision HitlerJugend is meant to be the first of two new books further exploring the armor-heavy battles on the eastern end of the Allied lodgement in Normany. I have just finished it, and recommend it to my readers.
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Steve Mercatante
on: May 9 2025 - 5:20pm
Operation Bagration, An Incomplete Truth offers an in-depth and fresh take regarding how the Red Army finally defeated Germany's Army Group Center, and is a book I believe is worth reading. In this month's book review I explain why.
Review Type: Army Group Center, Boris Sokolov, Eastern Front, June 1944, Operation Bagration, Red Army, Steve Mercatante, World War II
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Steve Mercatante
on: Dec 17 2024 - 10:15pm
Combined, the two initial volumes of the Solomons Air War series offer a detailed and richly illustrated look at the August-October 1942 campaign in the air over Guadalcanal and the seas around the island. Readers can find my review here.
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Steve Mercatante
on: Aug 9 2024 - 4:28pm
Our latest reviews have had a heavy German Eastern Front focus. This month we turn our attention west to Normandy during the summer of 1944. There, one of the most mythologized battles of the Second World War unfolded in a clash of armor that resonates to this day. That is the subject of this month's book review.
Review Type: 7th Armoured, After the Battle, Caen, Cromwell Tank, D-Day, Daniel Taylor, Normandy, Operation Perch, Panzer VI Tiger, Steve Mercatante, Villers-Bocage, Wittman
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Steve Mercatante
on: Jul 22 2024 - 5:33pm
Our prior book reviw focused on the remembrances of German combatants at Stalingrad. This month's review tackles a book focused on the Soviet side. Perhaps even more so than my last book reviewed (and given the ubiquity of German memoirs, interviews, and first-person accounts of the battle), this rare look at what actual Soviet participants in the battle experience and felt is something you should not pass over.
Review Type: 62nd Army, Chuikov, Eastern Front, German Sixth Army, Jochen Hellbeck, Mercatante, Stalingrad, Volga River, World War II
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Steve Mercatante
on: Apr 30 2024 - 5:54pm
Stalingrad is a battle that fascinates on so many levels. Survivors of Stalingrad offers yet another. This book's searing first-person descriptions as to what it was like to survive the hell that was the final months of the German Sixth Army's existence during the winter of 1942-1943 is truly a must-read.
Review Type: Don River, Eastern Front, Ju-52, Kalach, Operation Uranus, Paulus, Reinhold Busch, Sixth Army, Stalingrad, Steve Mercatante, T-34, Volga River, World War II
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Steve Mercatante
on: Feb 25 2024 - 8:30pm
Photographic research can be a powerful adjunct to primary documents and secondary sources such as operational military history, memoirs, journal articles, and other such publications. The Battle of Stalingrad: Then and Now is a great example of that idea.
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Steve Mercatante
on: Dec 5 2023 - 1:28am
The Germans And The Dieppe Raid is well worth your time. James Shelley's reasearch is thorough and comprehensively explains how the Wehrmacht defeated Operation JUBILEE in spite of relying mostly upon a second-rate "static" infantry division to do the heavy lifting in terms of defeating a well-trained and equipped Allied raiding force. The book also provides considerable analysis as to what this victory meant for the more important fighting in France that would come two years later in 1944.
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Steve Mercatante
on: Aug 15 2023 - 5:39pm
By July of 1944 (with the Allied success of D-Day coupled with the even bigger Soviet success of Bagration) it was obvious Germany had lost the Second World War. The German military commander-in-chief of the western front was Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. By that point in the war Rundstedt had acquired a reputation for saying and doing what he saw fit, regardless of the consequences.
So, perhaps it was no surprise that on July 1, 1944 he bluntly informed Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (the
Review Type: AFU, Bakhmut, Bradley IFV, Combined-Arms, Leopard MBT, Rundstedt, Russia, Special Military Operation, Steve Mercatante, Ukraine, War in the Ukraine, World War II
