33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Kursk Compilation, August 17, 2003
This review is from: Images of Kursk: History's Greatest Tank Battle, July 1943 (Photographic Histories) (Paperback)
I have been interested in the battle of Kursk for many years. I try to pick up anything I can about the battle hoping to glean some new facts. I ran into this title, Images of Kursk and decided to purchase it due to the interesting photos from the Russian perspective. After reading through the dry text which is really just a rehash or compilation of other books on the subject, I was not impressed. If you really want pictures from the Russian perspective, then this is a book you would want. If you are looking for new photos from the German perspective, dont get it. And if you are looking for interesting facts on Kursk, and dont already have reference material, then this is also a good summary book. But I found most of the text was a quotation from some other source I already had!
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well, the pictures are nice, March 18, 2004
This review is from: Images of Kursk: History's Greatest Tank Battle, July 1943 (Photographic Histories) (Paperback)
The book gives a good introduction too Russian and German artillery and tanks. After that it simply tells you that some corps attacked another with x amount of casualties on so and so day. Without any maps, (the book only has two), this long narrative is quite useless to the reader. Furthermore most of the authors conversions from kilometers to miles and meters to yards are incorrect, I found this quite disconcerting. I still found the book an easy read though, however this is probably because I don't mind reading about one attack after another written in laundry list fashion. Without maps though the reader will never remember any of the tactical situations described in the narrative. It is for these reasons that I gave the book only two stars.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Soviet Propaganda Images of Kursk, April 21, 2007
This review is from: Images of Kursk: History's Greatest Tank Battle, July 1943 (Photographic Histories) (Paperback)
The title of this book is completely misleading. It should be called "Soviet Propaganda Images of Kursk." The book is chock-a-block full of images relating to Kursk, but 80% or more of the pictures are from the Soviet perspective and most of these are obvious propaganda photos of German prisoners, destroyed German tanks and other armored vehicles, dead German soldiers, captured German weapons, "heroic" Soviet soldiers, Soviet partisans, Soviet officers, Soviet T-34s aplenty, etc.
Some of the chapters appear to have no photos at all from the German perspective. Exceptions are a chapter on re-arming the Wehrmacht in preparation for the battle and a chapter on the SS spearhead operations. But this only discloses that the author could have provide a more balanced photographic perspective but purposefully chose not to do so. Oddly enough, there isn't a single photo from the German perspective in the chapter on the great tank battle near Prokhorovka, 12 July 1943.
The book's saving grace is that the Soviet photos were previously unpublished and that does help enlighten the reader about the Soviet forces, particularly the unappreciated widespread use of Soviet women in the Red Army and the underpublicized vast numbers of tanks and other vehicles the Soviets received from the Allies (by mid-1943, the USA alone had shipped over 100,000 military vehicles to the Russians), without which the outcome of this battle (and many others to come) may have changed.
The book even includes photos of the Soviets anti-tank attack dogs, which were armed with bombs and trained, Pavlovian style, to run under tanks looking for food. Unfortunately for the starving dog, as it went under the tank a trip wire exploded the bombs, killing the dog. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the dogs could not be trained to distinquish a German tank from a Russian tank and the dogs often ran back into the Russian lines exploding themselves under Russian tanks, taking out the Soviet tank and crew as well. Because of this, the Soviets eventually gave up on anti-tank dogs.
The book is divided into chapters from the build-up by both sides to the battle, the battle itself, and advances by the Soviets after the battle, when the Germans had to retreat back to their original lines and then beyond them, due in part to Hitler's decision to pull off the attack and transfer divisions to Italy to counter the Allied invasion of Sicily.
The book is well-written to the extent the reader is informed of the deployment of troops on each side during each stage of the battle, but there are only a couple of maps provided in the whole book and unless you're familiar with the battle it is hard to follow along. A map should have been included with each chapter, showing the status of the battle, troop movements, German advances, and the Soviet rings of defense, which were over 100 miles (180 km) deep and contained about 1.3 million soldiers.
The book is also somewhat misleading to the extent the reader is given the impression that the Germans are continuously suffering large losses (true) but the Russians are not (untrue). In fact, it is generally believed that in this battle the ratio of Russians killed to Germans killed was about 4:1. The ratio for Russian tank and other armor losses to German armor losses was even greater, about 5:1. The problem, of course, is that the Germans did not have the resources to replace such heavy losses, while the Russians did.
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