Customer Reviews

Blitzkrieg in the West (After the Battle)

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Over 600+ pages of goodness. The collection of historic photographs is astounding, most of which I'd never seen before. Just as interesting are the comparative photos taken by the author; in some cases the scenes are virtually unchanged over course of 50 years. Many of the 'current' photos are circa 1980's however the investigation done by the author and his contributors is extensive and impressive. Having been stationed in West Germany in the 80's, I can attest to the difficulty of finding obscure locations, yet alone trying to match an exact location to a picture from a long ago point in time.

The text is also very good. Fast-paced and lucid Pillud is careful to let the reader know that much of the history is keyed to the photographs and that coverage is given to actions that are well covered by photographic evidence and not necessarily to the relative importance of the action to the overall outcome. That said, I found the narrative and first person descriptions riveting. This is a volume that I'll be going back to often and would make a great accompaniment to a more in-depth history of the invasion of France and the low countries (although it does just fine as a stand-alone history).

For the modeler, this volumes provides enough inspiration and diorama ideas to keep one busy for a lifetime. All in all an excellent purchase and heartily reccommended to anyone with an interest in this time period. I only wish that I had discovered it earlier.

'After the Battle' books are in a class by themselves. They offer a fascinating blend of history and archaeology not to mention setting standards for research and illustrative material. Jean Paul Pallud was written several of these hefty history books and his BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST THEN AND NOW is a typical example of the fine work he and the After the Battle editorial team produce.

BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST THEN AND NOW weighs in at 640 pages. It traces the 1940 attack that overwhelmed the Low Countries and France, beginning with pre-war preparations, moves and counter-moves and then gives a blow-by-blow description of those incredible days that saw Hitler's legions sweep across Europe.

As with other AtB titles, the research is impeccable; the writing, insightful and appealing; and the illustrations, simply incredible. BLITZKRIEG features well over 2,000 well-captioned, vintage and contemporary photographs, maps and diagrams that compliment the text. And the then-and-now photo matches are particularly interesting; Pallud has proven to be quite a detective in identifying locations 50 years after the fact. It was especialy interesting to see pix of the variety of AFVs the combatants went to war with; some looked like WWI rejects.

BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST THEN AND NOW may not be THE definitive history of the 1940 sweep through Europe but it certainly ranks high on my list. It brings the various campaigns and personalities to life in an evocative, extremely well-illustrated manner. Highly recommended.

The After the Battle series is consistently well written and documented history. No Hollywood Spaghetti World War Two BS here. Here you will find good honest authorship, and great before and after shots. I would like to see more up to date shots on this subject and with some of the earlier series. The world continues to destroy it's past to make way for what is currently PC, so the effort would be timely and tremendous. This book covers the early phase of German conquests in WW2. Many shots may be seen yet again on the Battle of the Bulge AtB. Another great book in it's own right. As Russia is now open for tourism, I'd like to see an effort to do an AtB Book on the many WW2 Russian battles, or maybe the Barbarossa campaign as they have done for other subjects. The binding on the book is better than some and the size is large but appropriate for an effective pictorial. An A plus for this one!