Voices of Victory by Geraint Jones

February, 1945. Eight months have passed since the D-Day landings, when the Allies gained their foothold in North-West Europe. Since then the British Army has fought near continuously against the German military. Now, they stand ready for their final test: the battle for the German homeland. Drawing on the sound archive of the Imperial War Museums and other personal acounts, military historian Geraint Jones brings this this often-overlooked period of the war vividly to life in the words of British soldiers who were there, from war-weary men who have survived many months of combat to new recruits facing Hitler's fanatics for the first time. In Voices of Victory we join the soldiers battling to break through the Siegfried Line and clear the Reichswald forest, where fighting was from one tree to the next. At the crossing of the Rhine we go into action with the commandos, and jump behind enemy lines with the Paras. We are taken into the horror of Belsen when the concentration camp is liberated, hear from the witnesses of the forgotten battles of April, and end the war deep in Germany, with victory in Europe.. Copies may be purchased from Amazon.

German Tanks in France 1940 by Steven J. Zaloga

Pegasus Archive review: The Battle of France was characterised by the relentless speed and aggression of the German blitzkrieg tactics, and in particular their use of tanks, yet as this book demonstrates, the German panzers of the era were not particularly impressive in comparison to their adversaries. The traditional explanation for their success is that they concentrated their armour within the panzer divisions rather than following the French model of diluting them throughout their entire force, but this book argues against this theory in favour of the superior training, tactics, communications, and logistics of the German crews, as well as the battle experience they had gained in Poland. It briefly describes each of the tanks used, with the Mk I and II's being by far the most common, reinforced by relatively small numbers of the much more capable Mk III and IV's, as well as self-propelled guns and captured Czech armour which had been incorporated into the German war machine. Also included are tables showing the specifications and quantities of each tank type used, the strengths of each within specific panzer divisions, and the losses sustained during the campaign. Copies may be purchased from Amazon or Osprey Publishing.

The Hill: The Brutal Fight for Hill 107 in the Battle of Crete by Robert Kershaw

Pegasus Archive review: The German airborne invasion of Crete was an enormous tactical success, but one which could easily have been a catastrophic failure, with the lightly-armed Fallschirmjager suffering the most horrendous casualties as they landed and struggled to form up. This book focuses solely on the struggle for Hill 107, the possession of which would decide the outcome of the campaign as it dominated Maleme airfield where the subsequent German reinforcements were to land. Robert Kershaw, a former commander of 10 PARA, examines both sides of the struggle, and in particular through the eyes of a number of individuals whose actions were pivotal. He describes the circumstances which led up to the German attack and the terrible toll taken on them by the New Zealand 5th Brigade, who emerged as confident that they must be victorious as the Germans were certain that the coming hours would result in their complete defeat. Yet he goes on to examine the confusion amongst the Brigade's leadership which, in the fog of war and under relentless attack by the Luftwaffe, became convinced that their position was in far greater peril than it in fact was, and so rather than ordering a battalion-sized counter-attack at a time when they would likely have swept all before them, remained on the defensive for several days and would ultimately lose control of Hill 107. Copies may be purchased from Amazon or Osprey Publishing.