Review

This offering from Pen and Sword is part of the ‘Images at War’ series. This series of books are soft backed offerings having a good card cover with a very good spine to the book that keeps the contents in good order. This book covering ‘Hitler’s Anti-Tank Weapons 1939 - 1945’ has been authored by Hans Seidler. This title from Hans Seidler is one of 9 offerings covering artillery of World War 2 for the most part, but he has also authored titles looking at specific battles during World War 2, the number of books I mention is only counting the titles available from Pen and Sword. The contents of this title are provided over 127 pages of good quality semi gloss paper.

The contents are presented in the following sections:
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Early Years 1939 - 1941
Chapter 2 – Operations in Russia
Chapter 3 – Stop-Gap Solutions
Chapter 4 – 1943
Chapter 5 – The End
Appendix 1 – Popular Towed Anti-Tank Guns
Appendix 2 – Converted Anti-Tank Guns
Appendix 3 – Hand-Held Anti-Tank Weapons

This offering from Pen and Sword is part of the Images of War series and is laid and logical manner. The author has provided a written introduction to each section which offers varying degrees of information to the reader. I would it is quite hard to author one of these titles as some subjects require a lot of information and getting the balance right is a skill that does not always manage its task. I would class the efforts of the author here as fair to good with some interesting snippets provided.

The weapons systems have been split up very well allowing the reader to quickly locate the weapons type they were looking for. The photographs that make this book series so valuable to the modeller are a mix I believe of propaganda, training and personal images. The result is a very nice selection of period photographic material that covers a wide number of subjects. For me personally it is images of weapons in the field that have been provided with extra protection by the crews and the camouflage techniques that made me stop, look and drink in the details.

As I have said the pictures are all period and come from a number of sources and that is a very good thing, but the pictures are only have the story as the author looks to have done some digging and provided well written captions in most cases and a caption in all cases. These captions provide details such as what is happening, where it is happening and what you are looking at. All told a great selection of images provided in a very affordable book.

Conclusion

This offering from Pen and Sword is part of the Images of War series provided me with what I expected from a title such as this. The text is minimal but does a good job of introducing each section of the book. I like that the photographs are not all propaganda and training offerings as those taken in the field may not be as sharp but they provide reference and details the other two types of image would not. For the artily fan out there this book offers a great visual reference title at a very reasonable price.