Operation Blau was the German operation to attack south to the Caucus Mountains so that the army could overtake the Soviet oil fields in that area. To get there they had to take several towns including a little known city called Stalingrad. This involved a tremendously long march across the relatively unpopulated steppes and across a myriad of rivers and streams. This was all over roads that quickly deteriorated under the heavy equipment and became a nightmare of mud when it rained.

To say that the average German soldier was not expecting this sort of territory when the war began would be an understatement at best. These were conditions to which he was not prepared and in which he had not been trained. Things only got more and more tenuous as the supply lines stretched back the many hundreds of miles behind the army. Add to it that motorized equipment was always in short supply and that they were fighting a rather determined enemy who knew that retreat often meant death at the hands of his own people and one has to be rather amazed at how well the army did with these circumstances.

Most of you are aware that these Concord books are primarily a uniform and markings series. The book it chock full of very well done images, mostly from the Bundesarchives, that cover all aspects of the ground war during that time. Several of the more interesting or more representative subjects are provided in full page, full color illustrations. This is the sort of thing that figure builders and modelers who are into dioramas really like and one of the reasons this series is so popular.

The book opens with a nicely done historical introduction that gives one a look at where the book fits into history. Each of the images that is in the book has a caption to point out items of interest. I was somewhat surprised by what I thought were quite a few errors in spelling and tense in both the historical section and the image captions. They are nothing that removes the meaning of the information, but silly mistakes that one reads on various reader boards ('duel' instead of 'dual' for instance). However, it is the images and the illustrations that make the book and in this sense, this in another superb photo book that is recommended for any enthusiast.

September 2013

Review book courtesy of www.dragonmodelsusa.com . Get yours at your local retailer or ask them to order it for you.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please contact the editor or see other details in the Note to Contributors.

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