Customer Reviews

Armor Battles of the Waffen SS, 1943-45 (Stackpole Military History Series)

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

 

 

Will Fey's `Armor Battles of the Waffen-SS, 1943-1945' is not, as one might suspect from just the title, an analytical military history, nor is it the author's personal memoir: it is instead a varied collection of battle reports or `experiences' written by at least fourteen (including the author) Waffen-SS Panzer commander veterans. The author, who first fought in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, later served with the 102nd (redesignated 502nd) SS Tiger tank battalion as a Panzer and platoon leader. A decade after the end of the war he continued his career in the Bundeswehr. His book was originally published in German as `Panzerkampf'.

After a short overview of the Waffen-SS Panzer units the initial part of the book covers the war in Russia 1943-1944, including the battles for Charkov, Kursk and Warsaw, the second part covers the Western front 1944 (Normandy to the Ardennes) and the third part the final battles in the East in 1945. Sadly there are only two maps included (the Mortain counter-attack and Caen to the Falaise pocket 1944) so the reader will want to keep his atlas handy, especially for the Eastern front battles. A general knowledge of the main WWII campaigns comes in handy also, although sometimes a brief introduction or `setting the scene' is given. The final part of the book consists of Appendices, including an eight page summary (apparently by an American author) of the history of the Panzer complement of the 2nd SS Das Reich division. Noteworthy is that no mention is made of the massacre of French civilians by Das Reich in Oradour in June 1944; the killing of American POW's by Kampfgruppe Peiper during the Battle of the Bulge is however given attention, and vehemently refuted. The other appendices give information such as the main types of WWII battle tanks, interesting for the general reader perhaps but not for a specialist. Thirty-seven photographs are included, but no specific unit or campaign orders of battle.

The reports themselves, all of them tactical in scope, vary somewhat in length and content. A few give a rather dry synopsis of towns captured or lost, tanks destroyed and overwhelming Russian superiority in numbers. The best or most readable reports read like one was right there with the author in his Panzer, amidst the powder fumes, heat, tension, fear and quite often the elation of `a kill'. Taken as a whole this book provides the reader with an eye-opening collection of the nitty-gritty of tank combat in WWII, from the German perspective: the close-knit Panzer crew working as a team; desperately hand-cranking engines that won't respond to the start button; fixing damaged tracks under fire; sinking armor side-plates into a river to be able to ford; turrets swiveled manually when the engine (and thus the electricity supply) is switched off; Typhoon rocket attacks; the vital importance of the on-board machine guns; the vulnerability of tanks without infantry support; bedding down under the Panzer at night; the list goes on.... It is interesting to read that even when a Panzer was disabled quite often at least some of the crew escaped, albeit usually wounded. The tank types most frequently mentioned are the Panzer IV, Panther, Tiger and King Tiger. Those readers most interested in the grand finale of the war in the East are well catered for: in total more than a hundred pages are devoted to reports on the relief of Budapest, the battles for Vienna, Berlin etc.

After an initial reading this reviewer found only a few mistakes or oversights in the text: the lake in Hungary mentioned on p.232 should probably be Lake Velencze, not Balaton; the SS-Panzer Corps mentioned on p.266 should be the IIIrd (Germanic), not the IInd. Also the Tiger I engine is given various horsepower strengths at times. One other small quibble is that at times the section headings leave it unclear whether one is reading the report of the same commander, an `anonymous' part or a general overview. The translation reads well, there are no obvious awkward Anglo-German mix-ups.

In conclusion: if you are looking for a German-perspective account of tactical Panzer warfare in WWII, buy this book.

Panzer ace Willi Fey survived the war having earned the Deutsche Kreuz in Gold for his actions in Normandy and fought in the final battles for Berlin. This cheap reprint of the Fedorowicz classic is a translation of Fey's original German text Panzerkampf im Bild first published by Munin Verlag. As a fund of personal accounts from Waffen SS tank commanders it provides unrivalled reference material, from the hot spots of the Russian front and the battles for Charkov in early 1943 to an account of Jagdtigers in action in the final days of the war..
Fey had transferred to the Waffen-SS from the Heer and was posted to Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 102. The Tiger crews enjoyed great success in Normandy & France as a static defensive vehicle, a role it was forced to perform due to Allied air superiority. The static defense also took away mechanical unreliability from the tanks & conserving valuable fuel without taking away the advantage in firepower.
The actions for which Fey won his German cross in Gold are recounted in detail here and are typical of the type of material presented by individual SS tank commanders in the book.
By the beginning of August 1944 the German lines in Normandy were crumbling. On 8 August as Allied forces crept towards Vire, west of Falaise, Willi Fey as an SS-Unterscharführer from the 1st Company of sSSPzAbt 102, launched an attack, supported by the 1./Pioneer Btn 600 under Oberleutnant GAUL, on a column of 15 Shermans and gun carriers from the 23rd Hussars/11th Armoured Division, sighted approaching down the valley from the direction of the hamlet of Houssemagne. Opening fire at a distance of 600 metres, 4 Shermans are rapidly put out of action. Fey's Tiger «134» is disabled by a number of hits. Kommandeur Pz. Ab 102 Obersturmbannführer Weiß orders Fey to blow up his Tiger. Fey continues firing at the Shermans accounting for 14 off them in a 30 minute action. His Tiger is towed back to German lines later that night. Weiß recommends Fey for the Deutsche Kreuz in Gold following this action and the award is presented by General II Panzerkorps Bittrich on 15 September 1944...
It should be stressed that there is little in the way of documentary evidence for the accounts presented here ( certainly British records do not record the loss of 15 Shermans on the day in question ) but the book works fine on a purely descriptive level..herein are the sort of personal accounts that Tim Ripley's works on the Waffen SS Panzer arm so lacked..
Despite individual Tiger actions like this, disaster befell the Tigers at Falaise with 102nd SS-SPz Abt " DAS Reich " losing all its Tigers although claiming to have knocked out 227 tanks in 6 weeks. The 101st LSSAH claimed over 200 including Wittmans tally at Villers-Bocage. However not many Tiger I's crossed the Seine after Falaise.
Post war, Willi Fey achieved high rank in the Bundeswehr ( Federal German armed forces..)
Once again, thanks to Stackpole for this fine re-print..

I have purchsed several of this series, and all have been in perfect condition. I have been interested in militaty history since a teenager (1963) and am 60 now. These are informative books.

I would agree generally with the other reviews, that this is a collection of battle reports, possibly oral histories. I would have liked to see reference and/or foot notes and a bibliography so that other sources could be researched. I doubt this would serve as a primary source for any historical thesis, but I did find it interesting.

Bought this book years ago, hardcover. Paid $80 or $120 for it, signed.
It was worth every penny. I have a WW2 and military library with over $10,000 worth of books in it, and would not part with this one no matter what.
A trove of information, and CORRECT!

A prosepctive reader should know up front that Willi Fey's "Armor Battles Of The Waffen SS" is as much an apologia for his SS- service, and an attempt at rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS, as much as it is a history. Fey inexcuxably glosses over well-established atrocities by the Waffen-SS (according to Fey there was no Malmedy massacre, and Peiper was framed). He attempts to paint Germany's invasion of Russia and the resulting brutal war as an honorable struggle against barbarism and cruel bolshevism which Germany nobly undertook on behalf of all Western Civilization (and for which the West should even today be grateful). He is even resentful of how generously the US supplied the Soviet Union, and is at pains to point out how many Soviet tanks were American-built. One has to wonder whether the post-war "de-nazification" programs completely overlooked Fey.

But even with such failings there are still gems of history to be found. Fey's book is not itself truly a history, with smoothly-flowing chronology and a narrative which weaves the parts into a whole. Rather, Fey has stitched together a quilt-like creation, consisting variously of official after-action reports of battalions or regiments, individual reports by tank commanders or crewmen of single actions within a larger battle, and portions of diaries or memoirs. Structurally it makes for a confusing hash. But there is defintiely meat here.

As mentioned in other reviews, much of the writing is a dry recitation of battles and a summing up of victories and losses; just so much bean-counting. However, the excerpts of diaries and memoirs are for the most part riveting, even jaw-dropping. Such is the remembrance of a tank commander of the weeks-long struggle to escape from the Halbe Pocket in April of 1945. The immense suffering of both the fallen and the survivors as they struggled around the clock, day after day, in countless savage battles for their lives is brought to life. Even those readers who are familiar with other memoirs of war on the Eastern Front will be struck by how vividly the ferocity of the fighting, as well as the growing feeling of panic among the SS troops, is portrayed.

I was stunned as well by Fey's accounts of the final days of fighting in Berlin, and how the very last armored vehicles controlled by the Reich were brought into action. I had never read anywhere of German armor being used in the last couple of days in Berlin, and this account I found to be a revelation. Simply breathtaking.

For all the book's faults, and notwithstanding Fey's intellectual dishonesty and wilfull blindness about the SS, these two accounts alone, for me, make the book worthwhile. I would say that the general reader might do better elsewhere since there are so many well-written and honest memoirs available, even among former SS members. But this book is almost vital for the serious amateur interested in armor battles of the SS in World War II. There is a flavor of desperation about the final battles which I have found in no other work.

This book, reflects experiences of some of the battles where the Waffen SS were involved. Is not a detailed description of battles or unis involved, is more a collection of reports that provides colour to other books or other informations that reader may have, reflecting report writers involvement and anecdotes.

This book on the Waffen ss is 100 percent opposite what they did. The Waffen ss under himmler were murders. They took no prisoners and murdered thousands of civilians in Russia with their ss einsatzgruppen particularly Jews. There atrocities against civilians in France and us army soldiers at the malmedy by pieper portrayed in this book has a hero but got what he deserved later in life in France. Sepp Dietrich the former butcher was not very bright and brutal field commander. Under sepp's command the leibstandarte so said general eberbach killed thousands of Jews. No mention of general George Patton or operation cobra that between them knocked these nazi hitler jug end fanatics off the map panzer Meyer was another murderer his hitler jug end were the most indoctrinated of all ss divisions Meyer murdered 50 Jews near modlin in Poland and burned a village new Kharkov. In Normandy he took no Canadian prisoners. The das reich Waffen ss were the worst. They surrounded the village of orator sur gland in France shoot all the males and burned all the children and women in the church.

Kinda disappointed with the book. Disjointed presentation that did not really hold my interest that much. Of course, it was written by tankers of the Third Reich, so I should have expected the presentation as it was.