The Waffen-SS At Kharkov February-March 1943

Casemate has published Massimiliano Afiero's "The Waffen SS At Kharkov, February-March 1943" in the "Casemate Illustrated" series. This is a paperback, 7 X 10 inches, 128 pages, with multiple maps, photos and paintings. This is a translation from an Italian original. It also quotes very extensively from German documents, so much of this has been translated twice. However, the translation is excellent and I would not have suspected I was reading a translation in most of the text. It reads well.

The events of late winter 1943 at Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) are very well known among historians and military professionals. Manstein's "backhand blow" is a classic of operational maneuver that has been studied for decades.

The strategic background to this operation was of course the Red Army's smashing victory at Stalingrad. In the wake of that campaign, the southern sector of the German front in the USSR was in crisis. There was danger of a real collapse across the fronts of several field armies. However, there was also danger for the Red Army as their advancing units outran their logistics and became overextended. Into this crisis, Manstein entered, gathered a mechanized reserve, and over the course of several weeks rescued the German front and brought Red Army advances to a halt. He accomplished this while heavily outnumbered, and fighting under difficult weather conditions. 

Afiero provides a very detailed account of the operation, mostly by quoting German unit reports and memoirs, and then filling in the bigger picture with his own text. The book begins with a reasonably detailed timeline of major events, which provides a good bit of high level context. Next is a table of ranks in the Waffen-SS. Most of the book is Afiero's narrative of events, with frequent, lengthy quotes from contemporaneous German unit reports. Much of the time, one is literally reading unit diaries. Interspersed throughout are photos and profiles of some of the key personnel. If you are looking for a small-unit account of the Kharkov counteroffensive, this is excellent. If you are looking for a good overview and analysis, this is not the book for you.  

The seven maps in the book are of uneven quality and do not support the text closely. They show very high-level actions, whereas most of the text is concerned with very detailed, lower-level (division and below - sometimes down to the platoon) accounts. It is difficult to follow these narratives without maps that are equally detailed. If this book had detailed maps, it would be vastly better. 

Color plates are of ordinary quality, consisting of a few paintings of German tanks. I think these could have been omitted without any loss of quality here. 

Photo quality is uneven. There are just over 100 photos, and I would say a majority are out of focus or otherwise unclear. The best-quality photos are of individual soldiers. However, there is an odd repetition to some; there are many photos of the same people over and over, for example, when one of each would have been sufficient. There are three almost identical photos of Joachim Peiper, clearly taken within seconds of each other. However, I would say at least three-quarters of the photos were new to me, which is a plus. 

The following photos examples are typical. The poor focus is in the book, not in my camera. Broadly speaking, photos of equipment or large groups of people are usually out of focus or poorly composed. Close-up photos of individuals or very small groups tend to be in focus. 
 

Profiles of many Waffen-SS personnel are provided, such as Hausser, Hansen, Peiper, etc. These mini-biographies are handy, and to the author's credit he does not whitewash the war crimes of these men away. 

There are few photos of the Red Army, and virtually no information about their units or leaders.

Conclusion
This is a narrative of the SS Panzer Corps at Kharkov, not an overview or analysis of the battle as a whole. Those wanting very detailed, low-level, often first-person accounts of the actions of these units will find a treasure trove of detail here. This is let down a bit by mediocre photos and maps. 

Recommended With Reservations for all modelers.

Thanks goes out to Casemate Publishing for this review sample.

Reviewed by Dan Egan

 

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