Christopher Ailsby is an expert on the Third Reich, the military awards of the Third Reich and the German Armed Forces in the Second World War. The owner of an unrivalled photographic archive on all aspects of German life in the twentieth century, he is the author of several best-selling books on the period, including Combat Medals of the Third Reich, Hitler's Black Guard at War, SS: Roll of Infamy, SS: Hell on the Eastern Front and Waffen-SS: The Unpublished Photographs. He currently lives in the east of England.