As someone who can’t get enough information about the conflict on the Eastern Front, I was quite interested in getting hold of a copy of this book to see if it could offer any fresh perspectives.

As it says in the title, the book looks at the Barbarossa campaign of 1941 which saw the German Army at it’s peak and the opposing Russians struggling to gain traction until that years unusually harsh winter blunted the German advance toward Moscow. The introduction offers the reader a concise background to the campaign and then it launches into the photos.

The book is broken down into sections covering such subjects as the German & Soviet soldier, their motorised vehicles, artillery and so on. There is a good mix of both professionally shot propaganda photographs and also more candid shots taken by individuals who took a camera with them on their big adventure across Russia and it is these photo of friends, their locations and the sights they saw which I found most fascinating.

The book also contains ‘the colour of war’ - a section showing a selection of the uniform and kit items of both sides in colour which would be a useful reference to modellers.

A great reference book featuring many pictures that I’ve not seen before and definitely worth a read to anyone with an interest in this fascinating subject.

Neil Barlow, GD Aufklärung

A superb collection of photographs, many published for the first time.

Military Historical Society

Operation Barbarossa brings together a truly wonderful collection of images from the first months of madness of Hitler’s bonkers Barbarossa. The photographs are all entirely new to me, and the pleasure of browsing the pages is something you can enjoy again and again.

There is absolutely nothing to criticise about this book from first to last and I would imagine it would offer inspiration to re-enactors and model makers alike. The captions are excellent.

The quality of reproduction is first class and the range of subject matter, broken down into infantry, armour, vehicles, artillery and so on, is so good that it could go on forever. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. My favourite chapter is the one for Soviet armour, inevitably showing abandoned or destroyed vehicles. The lumbering KV2s are my favourites, a link to Tamiya kits of a bygone youth. It brings on smiles and memories of a silly afternoon shooting a lot of knackered tank models up with a BB gun when it was time to put away “childish things” – as the rhyme goes. I digress…again.

Whatever way you sent your childhood models to Valhalla, this book will keep your grown up interest in military history in full focus. It is the best photographic book I’ve had for review since I got the gig with WHO.

www.warhistoryonline.co.uk