Images of War: Tanks & Armour at Leningrad 1941-44

The newest book in the "Images of War" series is Ian Baxter's "Tanks & Armour at Leningrad 1941-44". This is a paperback, nice quality paper, with about 150 photos and accompanying text. The Table of Contents is below. 

This is a better title than some of Mr. Baxter's other work, which I have reviewed here several times. As often happens, the title is misleading. From the title I expected a photo collection of both German and Soviet AFVs from the over two-year Leningrad campaign. But the content is overwhelmingly German. There are 31 photos of  Soviet equipment as the main subject - 30 if you consider that the photo of a T-34 on page 80 is a repeat of the very same photo on page 45. However, this is a huge improvement when compared to Baxter's book on armor in Ukraine which had only a handful of photos of Soviet subjects. 

The main purpose of the book, of course, is to display the photos. These are generally better quality than I have seen in other recent reviews. The captions are best ignored; they often make no sense at all. Equipment is frequently misidentified, and this is not obscure stuff. Twice, T-34 tanks are identified as KV-1s, and a platoon of Panzer IIDs are mislabeled as Panzer IIIs. Other equipment is often not identified at all. That said, the photos are pretty good. They are useful modeling references and have a pretty good variety of German equipment. There are quite a few photos of both Soviet and German equipment that I had not previously seen.   

Quite a few of these 88mm Flak 18s are in the book too. 

There are a lot of military bridges in this book, and they were probably photographed a lot because the region around Leningrad is swampy and cut by a lot of lakes and small streams. 

Another interesting bridge photo. 

Nice idea for a diorama. 

One of the T-34s the author identifies as a KV. 

In addition to the photos, the book has a few short chapters on the course of the Leningrad campaigns. Unfortunately, this campaign is not well served by English language books. A really deep dive is available from David Glantz, but a more casual reader who just wants to hit the high points has a tough time. Baxter does not tell us much at all about Soviet operations, nor does he put the campaign in context of its terrain and its place in the overall war. So the text here is not especially useful. I would recommend anyone interested in these campaigns pick up something else. There are several OOBs (Orders of Battle) that are very, very basic and not connected to any maps or decent campaign history.  

In sum, this is a useful photo collection marred by a brief text. 

Recommended with reservations for Beginner researchers and builders.

Thanks goes out to Casemate Publishers for this review sample.

Reviewed by Dan Egan

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