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

Rating:
Summary: Good look
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: a very descreptive book
Review: This book tells you the info and has very nice full color ilistrations that help you visulize the men.