Customer Reviews

Badges and Insignia of the Third Reich, 1933-1945

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are a collector of WWII German militaria and you do not own this book, you should. Classic volume, features 64 color plates (illustrated by Malcolm McGregor) depicting virtually every patch or badge issued by the Third Reich. Each Item is accompanied by an incitefull description of each item. All-in-all, an excellent sourcebook by a world-renown militaria author. I also strongly reccommend any of Mr. Davis's fine books.

I bought both "Badges and Insignia of Third Reich" and "German Uniforms of the Third Reich" from Amazon.com. I was disappointed. I'm a modeller and looking for reference books for the German uniforms and insignias. But I found out those books may be good sources for the collectors or historians, but not for modellers. It should use tables for the illustration and catagorize the shoulder strips and insignias by ranks. It does not have enough information for the representation of color used around/on the shoulder strips and insignias.

I can understand the frustration of the modellers below, however, this book was clearly not written for them.

There are many online resources now regarding German Army rank insignia for those so inclined.

What this book does is give a very broad overview of the scope of German insignia throughout the Reich - from train conductors to the various branches of the military, the Party, the ladies auxiliary services, and more - even the Legion Condor is included.

Given the broad approach to this enormously complex subject, only a taste can be given. I would have preferred that the subject matter be broken up into many volumes, but I'm not sure the market would have borne such an enterprise.

The colour plates are brilliant - rather than photos of fading, rotting artifacts, McGregor has very nicely rendered each piece of insignia by hand. There is a scale bar on each page so one can judge the size of the insignia, all done to scale with each other, plus McGregor has found a technique to actually convey the texture of the embroidery in many cases.

Explanatory text is adequate, and there are period photos throughout the text that provide additional amplification, but not nearly enough.

Rated a 4 because of the technical quality of the coloured plates. Should not be considered the only resource for anyone interested in particular branches.

This book has the right idea. Shows the Insignias and Badges to the German Army as well as the other German forces. It explains in detail what they are and who wore them. It should have more detail and colour in the photos. The colour ones in the center of the book are not enough to show great detail.

As you would know that the German Military used different colours to represent the different units. So, in Black and White photos they would all look alike(for example a German Infantry officer, a Major shoulder board would have White on the bottom. and an Artillary officer would have Red on the bottom of the shoulder board).

Even though this book explains the different types of Insignias and Badges...The Authors should concentrate more on showing the realistic samples in live photos with colour more then even drawings.

I must say that there is a lot of good information in this book but the general layout leaves much to be desired, at least for me. The reviews that I read prior to my purchase, unfortunately did not sway me one way or the other. I hope that mine sways you!

The text is pages and pages away from the drawings and in order to read and "digest" the information, it is a constant shuffle between the text and the drawings and back again. A never ending read then moving to the pictures and back again. Though I read much of the book in this manner, I have all but given up on the book and will only use it as a "ready reference" and NOT a book to even hope to read and digest!

This is an okay book. It has some interesting facts -- good for reference. I was hoping for rank and insignia tables; e.g., a sergeant has so many stripes and a captain has this many bars or whatever. The layout is confusing -- you have to flip from the area with insignias to another area that provides a description. I was disappointed.