Customer Reviews

Collins Atlas of World War II

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I chose to purchase this Atlas on account of its author, John Keegan. The Atlas is presented in an an attractive format. Each page contains a description of the battle/era alongside a map portraying the relevant events. The maps are clear, colorful and diverse. Map topics range from political developments (pre-war), strategic military events and tactical battle views, down to the battalion level. Of particular interest I found the Stalingrad map, which clearly displays the city's various districts through an isometric view. It's the first map I saw of its kind, and provides excellent understanding of a battle conducted in urban terrain. On the downside, the pages are too small for my taste, degrading the level of detail in the maps. Additionally, while ideally covered in conventional Atlases, I believe that this Atlas should have provided a geographical survey of the battlefields, describing the topography, demography, climate and land-type. It would have saved me the need of consulting another atlas. All in all, an excellent buy, and an interesting read on its own, although mainly suitable as a companion to other WWII literature.

The Collins Atlas of World War II is by no means comprehensive -- but it's not meant to be. What it is and what it does very well, is give an overviews of battles and situtations from the war. It does this with a ton of full-color maps, supported by text and charts. The maps, to be sure, are somewhat small -- but the book is small. It atlas offers itself as a well-illustrated overview, and it more than keeps the promise. The price is extremely enticing.

This is a generally excellent reference source. It contains clear, comprehensive, and well-drawn maps on a variety of issues relating to World War II, including for example, shifting political boundaries and allegiances, as well as battles. The troop formations and movements for major battles are very well done. All charts, tables, and maps are in color for further clarity. The text itself (each mini-topic is given a two-page treatment) is also very well-written.

But a shortcoming to the book is its slant on references to certain activities involving the Soviet Union at the outset of World War II (and beyond). For example, the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland in September 1939 is politely described as an "intervention," suggesting that the Poles somehow needed to be invaded by the Soviet Union to protect themselves. In addition, after the Soviet Union invades Finland and Finland reaches a temporary accord with Germany to protect itself against the Soviet Union, Finland is categorized as an "Axis" power. Furthermore, the Soviet Union's takeover of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania is described as a peaceful process whereby, after the Soviet Union established a military "presence" in these countries, they were annexed to the Soviet Union. (The book does disclose, however, the little-known fact that the Soviet Union, after its mutual non-aggression pact with Germany, "annexed" the province of Bessarabia and portions of the province of Bukovina from Romania.) Further, the book discloses that the Soviet Union took 3 million German soldiers prisoner and says they may not have been treated well but gives no indication whatsoever on how many died (even the Soviet Union's capture of approximately 250,000 members of the German Sixth Army, of whom it is generally estimated 90-95% died in captivity, does not merit a mention). Yet the book does mention the Soviet capture of 600,000 Japanese soldiers as prisoners of war, then mentions that 10% of them died in Soviet captivity, purposely implying that the death toll among German PWs was the same rate when it fact it was several times higher. Finally, the Katyn forest massacre is included in the index but there is no actual discussion of the event in the book.

The point of this seeming digression is that book should only be viewed as a starting point for the topics it discusses, not a comprehensive treatment.

The book is divided into five parts: (1) "The Prewar World"; (2) "The Axis Advances"; (3) "Turning the Axis Tide"; (4) "Allied Offensives"; and (5) "Allies Victorious". There are no photos other than an introductory one for each part. As noted, there is an index. The index does not include any persons, places, or things mentioned in the many maps and tables in the book. I.e., if an American general is mentioned in the text on one page and a map on another, the index only includes the textual reference.

The perfect Military Atlas of WWII probably does not exist since one could always wish for more or for less detail and features. This one is an acceptable compromise even if I would have wished for more complete coverage: for example it does not cover the 1942 campaign in the Crimea, around Sevastopol and on the Kerch peninsula (of questionable strategic importance, but of tactical excellence for its commander FM von Manstein; should be given the same importance as Rommel's Tobruk).

Still this Atlas has a wealth of information including
* a summarized timeline on the top corner of each left page
* www links at the top of each right page
* detailed maps of tactical movements with topographical features and longitude/latitude in most cases
* maps other than tactical: economies, losses, expulsions, resistance, camps
* an accompanying text of quite high quality.

But there are unfortunately minuses:
* the format is too small for the level of detail and the wealth of information
* there is no legend explaining the topographical color coding (see for example as illustration Pimlott's Atlas The Atlas of WWII )
* there is no km or mile scale (again see Pimlott's for an example) which for a less experienced user may confuse the concepts of tactical movement in say the Crimea versus say the Caucasus

And finally there are some blatant errors:
* page 83: "2 north Caucasus jan-apr 1942" should read 1943 instead of 1942
* page 96: "Kassserine ...German counterattack on 14 May" should read February, not May.
And those are only the ones I caught so far so there may be more.

This colorful atlas is a mild abridgement of the The Times Atlas of the Second World War. That large coffee-table atlas is my favorite for WW2. However, the Collins Atlas includes about nine-tenths of its larger brother in a more portable package. In the Collins edition, the pages are smaller, some of the two-page overview spreads are gone, most of the maps are redrawn in a cleaner graphic style (though with less relief detail), some smaller maps are absent, photographs are now only in section dividers, the large timeline at the front of the Times Atlas is now split up into mini-timelines for each spread, and websites are listed. I still prefer the Times Atlas overall, but the Collins Atlas is a terrific value and can be carried around for reference when I'm reading other books on WW2. I am glad I have both.

the maps are small, hard to read without a magnifying glass and are not complete. i wish someone would put together good maps of the eto and pacific