German Fighting vehicles 1939-1945
Chris Ellis, Peter Chamberlain and John Batchelor (Illustrator)
64 pages
published in 1975

German Fighting Vehicles 1939-1945 is the companion book to German Tanks 1939-1945 and part of the Purnell's history of the World War Special. It traces the development and use of all those other armoured fighting vehicles used by the Germans in World War II. Written for an audience of interested laypersons, it is not as technical minded as you would like at times, but neither is it written too in too popular a style.

The German involvement in designing fighting vehicles is a long and involved one and after reading this book you will still only have a overview of it, but the authors have certainly done a good job in making it a good overview. Detailed in this book are armoured cars, half tracks, assault guns (Sturmgeschütz), tank destroyers (Panzerjager and Jagdpanzer), self propelled artillery (Panzerartillerie and Sturmpanzer), Flakpanzer and finally the huge 600 mm self propelled big guns like the Morser Karl.

Much of the appeal of this sort of book lies in the photos and artwork and both are lavish. The artwork is in the capable hands of John Batchelor whose work you must have seen if you are at all interested in World War II warfare and war machinery. In fact, some of the stuff in here I've seen at least in three or four other books, it has been recycled so much. All the major types talked about in this book are represented by a drawing of his, sometimes also with line drawing detailing the various variants.

The focus in German Fighting Vehicles 1939-1945 is vry much on the development and technical details of the covered vehicles, rather thanon how they were supposed to be used or their track record (no pun intended) in battle. At times, this can be a bit confusing or boring, but for the most part the text seems clear enough without sacrifising accuracy. Keep in mind however that this was published in 1975, so parts of it may very well be out of date, especially with the opening of the wartime archives in Easdtern Europe and Russia, which were out of reach until 1991 or so...