Customer Reviews

Waffen-SS Soldier: 1940-1945 (Warrior, No. 2)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is fine if you know little of the Waffen SS or the German army during WWII. The photos are generally weak, providing few action shots. Most are typical portrait shots of significant SS figures. The four pages of color plates are drawings which provide little value. The text is general and provides no new insight for anyone who is a serious student of the German army in WWII. This book falls into the genre of those titles sold at hobby stores, to assist in the painting of military figures. Even in this context, it does not merit a strong review.

Waffen SS Soldier is an uneven effort from Osprey Publishing. I agree with one review that said the photographs in the book are weak. The Waffen SS, perhaps more than any other Nazi Army organization, has unparalleled photographic documentation. I find it a shame greater use was not made of it.

As with all Osprey titles this book is not meant to be anything more than a general overview and a jumping off point for greater research. On that basis I recommend it.

However, there is one part of the book that I must criticize. On page 24 there is a reference to St. Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. The author posits that Himmler took his organizational model from the Jesuits and that Hitler often referred to him as "my Ignatius Loyola".

Of course none of these remarks are place in any kind of context and the reader is left with the impression that Hitler, Himmler and the SS were buddy-buddy with the Jesuits.

That the editors allowed this to go to print I find appalling and insulting. The Waffen SS had about as much in common with the Jesuits as they did with the Salvation Army.

It is a well known F-A-C-T that both Hitler and Himmler especially hated both Christianity and the Catholic Church. Nazi ideology, especially as practiced by the Waffen SS, was daimetrically opposed to everything the Jesuits stood for and for the author to leave his reader with any other impression is a gross error and monumental misrepresentation.

This flaw almost makes the book not worth buying.

This book was first published in the Warrior Series #2. If you have not purchased this book before under the old title buy it. The photographs, drawings and diagrams are top quality in true Osprey tradition.

The photographs and describtions in this book are of very high quality. I even bought my brother (a history professor) a copy of this. The 64 pages are well concentrated to give a lot of info in a short, condensed version of a decent reference book.

This book must be an attempt to cash in on the interest in this topic. The book is woefully biased, shamelessly propagandistic, and the information the author provides is just plain incorrect on page after page. Factual errors abound. I'm surprised his editors let him get by with so many mistakes. This author can't be passing himself off as an 'historian.' I would recommend just about any other of the numerous authors who examine the history, battles, and personalities on this topic. I find this book useless, sensationalistic, and a waste of time and money.