Book and Film Reviews

The Forgotten Battle of the Kursk Salient is the third English language translation of Valeriy Zamulin's near incomparable break-down and analysis of The Battle of Kursk. I have previously reviewed his two earlier works covering other aspects of this, one of the most important battles of the Second World War. I find this latest effort as ranking among his finest work. In this volume Zamulin once again returns to the efforts made by the Red Army's Voronezh and Steppe Fronts in defeating Germany...

Nigel Askey's Operation Barbarossa Series is nothing short of magnificent. Askey's work will span eight volumes when complete (including a full analysis, tables of organizations and equipment, and orders of battle for both the Axis and the Red Army's forces during Barbarossa). Nonetheless, please note that this review concerns itself only with the introductory volume and both volumes concentrating on the German forces deployed during Barbarossa and within the Reich in 1941. As a military...

Gregory Liedtke's Enduring The Whirlwind is more than anything else a deep dive into the statistics behind the first two years of the war fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Most importantly, Liedtke's work seeks to address the ongoing controversy over whether or not the numbers game played the key role in explaining the Ostheer's defeat at the hands of the Red Army. To do that, the author focuses the book on German personnel and material losses during the war's early years, and...

The Battle of Rzhev was a fifteen-month campaign that took place during World War II. During these battles the Red Army sought to not only evict German forces from a central position not far outside of Moscow, but also eliminate the bulk of Army Group Center. These battles formed a campaign so colossal that in a number of metrics outdid the fighting at Stalingrad. However, there is much controversy surrounding the Rzhev battles. As such, Svetlana Gerasimova's The Rzhev Slaughterhouse seeks to...