Fortress Europe: European Fortifications of World War II

Rating:
Summary: Superb fortification history!
Review: A good fortification book consists of a good balance of text, photos and drawings. Fortress Europe is an excellent fortification book. The text, photos, and superb drawings describe not only well known WWII fortifications such as the Maginot Line and Atlanticwall, but the more obscure fortifications of WWII Europe, such as the Soviet Molotov and Stalin lines, the Greek Metaxas line, and Yugoslavian fortifications. In many cases this is the first English language technical description ever given of these fortifications. This is a must have for anyone interested in WWII fortifications.

Rating:
Summary: An Interactive Book on Fortifications!!!
Review: Five Stars or Four Stars - a difficult choice. WALLS OF WAR is indeed a classic, and possibly this book shall be also. Like WALLS OF WAR, FORTRESS EUROPE contains some inaccurracies. The most outstanding problem is the lack of photos and what appears to be missing information on some of the drawings. A problem is that many fine descriptions of fortifications are not accompanied by illustrative material. At 400 pages I do not know where they would put addditional material with what seems to be over 150 oustanding illustrations already included. On the plus side, which far outweighs the problems, in addition to all the information on such a large number of fortifications presented the Introduction includes an Internet site address. On this site is a link to an Update Page where information is added and/or corrected, and on the other pages of this site are links to Maginot, Czech, Vallo Alpino, and other fortification pages which include many colorful illustrations of items covered in FORTRESS EUROPE. These internet pages compensate for the missing illustrations. The only problem is that some of us have limited internet access and there are hours of material to view. The site even has a FORUM where readers can submit questions for more information on these fortifications. This site the FORTRESS EUROPE book is linked to turns this work into a truly interactive work. The 5 Star rating is based on the positive internet support this book features. ---H.Zarska

Rating:
Summary: A classic work.
Review: This book, like Mallory and Ottars WALLS OF WAR is destined to become a classic on the fortifications of World War II. It covers many defenses I have never even heard of. The drawings are magnificent. On the downside I have noticed some minor errors which are either from the authors or the publisher, but this does not detract from this work. The only thing that might be missing is more illustrations and a little more coverage of the Balkans and Iberia. Still I have seen nothing to compare to it and we may only hope this leads to more books on that go into greater depth on some of the defensive systems covered in this work. --Doug Dallas