Comments: softcover, 175 pages, 300 black-and-white photos
ISBN: 978-1-47384-866-0
Price: $24.95
Publisher: Pen & Sword
From the publisher: The outcome of World War II was decided on the Eastern Front. Denied a swift victory over Stalin’s Red Army, from late 1941 Hitler’s Wehrmacht found itself in a bloody, protracted struggle that it was ill-prepared to fight.
Although many pictorial books have been published on Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, they are typically a collection of soldiers’ snapshots or “official” photographs taken by Propagandakompanien reporters. This book is different. It contains an extraordinary personal record of the war captured by a professional photographer, Walter Grimm, who served in a communications unit of the German army.
David Mitchelhill-Green brings Grimm’s previously unpublished photographs together with a carefully researched introduction. The 300 black-and-white images provide insight into the daily life and privations of the ordinary German soldier amid the miserable maelstrom of the Eastern Front. The Ukrainian people, many of whom initially welcomed the Germans as liberators who would free them from the yoke of Bolshevik oppression, are also seen in this fascinating study.
FSM says: Clear photography by a conscripted professional show the Wehrmacht’s time in Ukraine from start to finish, from its halcyon days at the start of the venture to the drudgery of occupation and the bitterness of death and defeat. For modelers, mainly a study in German uniforms and equipment, with glimpses of daily activities that provide display and diorama ideas.