Customer Reviews

The German Order of Battle, Vol. 1: Panzers and Artillery in World War II

While Mr. Nafziger's work compiles much valuable information about the German armored and artillery forces into a single volume, there are certain aspects of the work that detract from its worth.

There are occasional typos such as "Detuschland" which are unfortunate and hard to understand in an era of spell-checking routines built into every word processor.

Perhaps the largest problem with the volume is what has been left out. The most glaring omission has been the Panzer and Panzergrenadier units of the Waffen SS. It would be very handy to have a single English language source on all of Germany's armored units during the war. Mr. Nafziger does include Luftwaffe armored units, and hybrid organizations such as Panzerjaeger and Sturmartillerie. However, it appears the heavy independent tank battalions rate only minor mention, and the listing on Panzerjaeger units is, by Mr. Nafziger's admission, incomplete.

There is only occasional mention of the theaters in which the units were employed. This seemingly minor omission greatly reduces the worth of Mr. Nafziger's work, for it means once again works more difficult to obtain (Tessin for example) must be consulted to perform true order of battle analysis. Even a sketch outline of when the unit was in which theaters would have been far better than nothing. This is particularly needed in the case of Heerestruppen (army and corps level units) as there are practically no works addressing their deployment during the war.

I also wish Mr. Nafziger would make more use of original German terms instead of nonstandard translations. For example, he refers to "garrison artillery" [?], which I believe to have been what the Germans called "Festung Artillerie". The lack of mention of "Festung Artillerie" units in the work tends to support this belief, but such second-guessing should not be necessary in a reference work.

There appear to be some minor factual errors in the book, such as a bicycle brigade in Poland in 1945 that is not mentioned. Overall, though, for the units that Mr. Nafziger has chosen to include in the work, the material appears to be accurate and quite well organized. One can easily locate a particular unit and determine its equipment and organization at various points during the war.

The tables of organization for various units during different points in the war are very useful, as are the listings of the Heerestruppen artillery park units. I would like to be able to give this book a higher rating, but it unfortunately is like many English language books on the German OOB in that it addresses the topic incompletely.

Having said that, for the layman it is an excellent reference. It is only for the specialist that the omissions in the work have real significance.