Pen & Sword- The Red Army Towards the Oder Then and Now

Book Specifics

Edited by Daniel Taylor

ISBN: 9781399059039

Price: $42.95

Hardcover,  6.8" x 9.7", 224 pages with 192 black and white photos

What's Inside

The book, as are others in the series, is based on a compilation of three articles originally published for After the Battle magazine from Polish author Tomasz Zgoda highlighting the Red Army's winter offensive of January 1945. The original author was born and lived in the setting of the book and extensively visited the former battlefields there. Familiarity with the Polish, German, and Russian languages has also allowed for consultation with documents and accounts from all three perspectives, including Russian war diaries that paint the narrative of detailed military operations at the time. The format of the book allowed the editor to expand and enhance the text and photos- including renaming the original text's Polish naming with German naming that better matches the wartime maps present in the book. The original Polish naming is present in parentheses so as to preserve the original naming system for longevity. The book is broken down into the three articles as shown in the table of contents:

Unlike previous installments of this series from Pen & Sword, this one is not so much in the same format as the magazine- reverting more to book chapters as opposed to scans of the magazine. The text is informative and doesn't get too overbearing in regards to which specific unit was where- therefore not leaving the reader overwhelmed with Roman numeraled units and the like. The maps included in the book are clear and I find very interesting-- especially the one from the first section of Posen, with its eighteen forts encircling the city and the central Citadel. The "Then and Now" aspect of the book pairs wartime images with modern-day images of the same location. In some cases, it mystifies me as to how much unchanged the areas are 70 years later. 

In some cases, the images are blurred and hard to make out, but that is definitely due to their age and to the wartime movements of the subjects in the photo. Photos vary from two to three per page, with most often the wartime and modern images paired together. The map photos, like the one I attached above, are of excellent quality and I often use these to scan and resize and use as extra details in my models. The images are new to me and I always get urges to recreate some of the images in my model settings. There are no color photos inside--the only ones present are on the coverslip of the book.

Conclusion

This series is an excellent resource for acquiring the issues of After the Battle magazine which is no longer available. The photos and maps are of great interest to those interested in the Eastern Front, and the format gives a great perspective of what one area can look like in time over the span of 70 years. Whether you are a modeler or just interested in the Eastern Front of WWII, this book is a worthy grab- despite it being a bit thinner than previous volumes in the series. 

Highly Recommended to anyone interested in the Eastern Front- specifically the reversal of German fortunes as the Soviets advanced towards Germany.

Thanks goes out to Casemate Publishing for this review sample.

Reviewed by Michael Reeves

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