Customer Reviews

German Secret Weapons of the Second World War: The Missiles, Rockets, Weapons, and New Technology of the Third Reich

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Not a bargain at any price. What few illusrations there are are tiny, the text provides no information not presented elsewhere dozen of times. A real waste of money.

This is a very technical book written on a level that many may feel is over their heads. At times it reads as if it were a manual of the weaponry or perhaps an instruction sheet guiding users on the specifics of implementation during war.

This work has some interesting detail, but it's hard to overlook the misspelled German throughout the book. Had this book been written in a more "laymans" approach it would have been a much easier and more enjoyable read.

Overall, one of painstaking research, but also one of difficult reading.

This book at first seems very ordinary with its monochrome blue cover and its dense text. Once you start, it's a whole different story. The book almost reads like a novel and is a real page turner. No details appear absent (at the level the book is pitched). I find this technology fascinating and enjoyed the book immensely. In short, don't judge a book by its cover, once you start reading you will find out how good this book really is. The only thing missing is more of the same !

Overly technical in places and light on information in others, limited illustrations and photos are very small not the authors best work, the hardcover version only has a glued spine and as such started to split almost immediately.

This book leaves a bad taste. It quickly becomes obvious that the author Ian V. Hogg took the existing body of knowledge, added a lot of conjecture and unsubstantiated "anecdotes" and mixed it together to create a "new" book that contains nothing new at all. There are countless other books on this subject all much better researched and written than this one. A good alternative for starters is Bill Yenne's book on the same topic.
Mr. Hogg gets a lot of the details wrong and even goes so far to add dozens of German spelling mistakes: a liberal sprinkling of Umlauts does make it look more German but sorry, the names are still all wrong. In the appendix alone there are so many examples of sloppy writing: it's "Panzertod" - not "Panzertodt", "Springbock" - not "Springbok", "Orchester" - not "Orchestra" and so on. Add an unprofessional style along the lines of "The Navy was somewhat smug about this super-gun, and the Army somewhat put out. And in the 1920s Army planners decided that Something Must be Done to relegate the Paris Gun to second place in the history books". Seriously? No note about the actual background of the K12 gun, what drove the decisions etc. - just quite silly speculation at a first-grade writing level. Again, the book is full of these! After a while it gets quite aggravating.
There are also major holes in this book where Mr. Hogg decided to forgo coverage: for example full-size submarines get a whopping 11 lines of text. The hydrogen-peroxide motors gets one line of text, the midget submarines another whopping page and a third. Other topics get lavish treatment and the impression at a whole is that of an unbalanced book.
Overall a missed opportunity, pass this one by, there are MUCH better options.

The seemingly inexhaustable spate of literature about the Third Reich continues unabated with the 1999 publication of "Secret Weapons". Prolific author Hogg details German weapons projects (some saw action, some didn't) and the technical details behind each. Too much technical, descriptive information is contained, much of which could have been better done with illustrations. Also, Mr. Hogg spends too many pages on Werner Von Braun's well-known V-2 rocket. Interestingly, much of German secret research was devoted to artillery and shells for artillery pieces, and Mr. Hogg is obviously an expert in this field. Many of the secret weapons are mundane improvements of existing technology, and not the dramatic weapons that one is led to expect.

I purchased this book from Doubleday Military History Club at an exurberant price here in Australia. (I could have gotten it for less from Amazon). The high price heightened my expectations. But, alas, what a letdown. When I read retoric like: ...giving Hitler an atomic bomb to further his dreams of world dominion... it makes me laugh. The other typical flaw of Bitish books is the German spelling. Mr Hogg, buy yourself a German Dictionery from Amazon at a reasonable price, take some history lessons from Mr David Irving and then write a book on the British atomic tests in Maralinga, Australia.

Even the book is technical in nature I have read this book several times and it is awesome. It is amazing that the Germany's "wonder weapons" of World War II lead to today's development of inter-continental ballistic missiles and the modern air-to-ground missiles. Just imagine if the war lasted into 1946 we would be dealing with these "wonder weapons". This is a must read for history buffs!!!

Don't judge a book by is cover.that is the mistake i made on Ian V.hogg book.the information on the book looked like a summary of sellected weapons of the Third riech.history is really written by the victors.i could not ignore the baised comments and lies about the third riech.As a historian one is supposed to distance himself of the demonization process and baised conclusions.their were no pictures to illustate what the weapons looked like but word problems that the reader had to solve.it is no secret that the allies exploited on german technologyand it is fair to say that 90% of all the weapons we see today are the direct desendants of hitler's top sectert weapons.it is for this reason that the weapons in the soviet,american and british arsenals resembled and one another.the author also dodges the question of germanys nuclear project.hitler did have a nuclear weapon at the end of the war and it fell into allied hands and thus both sides aquired the weapons that gave rise to the cold war.Read the book by birlin historian entitled Hitler's Bombe,getmany was the first to detonate the first atomic bomb.the author is ignorant of this or is delebrately dodging the questions.what is the big deal the war is over the soviet union is fallen and it is safe to reveal the truth right now.