The guys that get all the recognition for success and failures in war are the commanders. It is their abilities to command and to perform strategic and sometimes tactical thinking that often determine the outcome of a battle or event. In WWII, even the side that is defeated can have superb leaders and this book by Osprey contains the brief histories of those from the Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe and Kreigsmarine.

The author states in the opening pages that there may well be some resistence to including Waffen-SS men in the book, but (though it may be difficult for some), he has managed to concentrate on their abilities to command. Only one or two of these men were anything less than straight-forward in their dealings with the enemy. Included in this section are men  like Paul Hauser, Theodor Wisch and Kurt Meyer along with ten others.

For the Kriegsmarine, there is Karl Doenitz, Otto Kretschmer and Eric Topp and three others. What really surprised me is not only was Eric Topp still alive when the book was published, but many of these men only recently (as in the last 10 years) passed on. Few died during the war.

The Luftwaffe listing includes Albert Kesselring, Adolf Galland, and Kurt Student. Several of the seven men in this section were involved with paratroops and Kesselring was the only Luftwaffe general given command of an entire sector of the war; in this case the defense of Italy. He was quite successful in this and held up the Allies for the last two years of the war.

The book has superb pictures of each man and is finely illustrated by Malcolm McGregor. Gordon Williamson has authored a number of books  and his portrayals of the men in this book gives one a good idea of what sort of personality each of them had.

In all, I found this to be an excellent look into the abilities and careers of Germany's more interesting personalities.

May 2006

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