The Oder Front 1945, Volume 2: Documents, Reports & Personal Accounts Hardcover – Illustrated, 15 Dec. 2014

this book is full of supplementary info about the Oder front battles in Jan-May 45. It does NOT tell the full chronological story of the soviet attack on the Oder, and to get anything from this book, you should already have a good knowledge of the events, from sources like Vol.1 and Tony LeTissier.What this 600+ page book does have is tons of supplementary info thats not in other english sources i know of. It looks at each of the Festungs in Poland and describes their battles, mostly in long summary but wuith a few juicy first person accounts to give a bit of excellent color to these largely unknown battles. The chapter on the fight inside Arnswalde is done in much fuller detail, and is great. It anylises Sonnenwende and shows that the attack was a pointless frittering of resopurces as the Soviets had already decided to stop before Berlin, and the attack barely diverted their buildup plans. The loss of Pomerania is described.Then there are chapters looking at the formation of german emergency units, the kampfgruppen first thrown against the russian advances. It looks at their woeful equipment levels, and shows what an amazing job the german replacemwent army did in cobbling new divisions together in the first 4 months of Jan 45. A lot of very obscure units have their actions described, again in summary but with first person highlights; obscure units like Pz.Jagd.Abt 1 & 6, KG Solar, SS REgt.Falke, SS Pz.Jg.Abt 560 AND 561; as well as better known units like Korpsgruppe von Tettau, Div Frederich Ludwig Jahn, 1st & 3rd Marine divs, Pz.Div Holstein. The info about all these obscure, short lived units of Heeresgruppe Weichsel is the fullest listing i know of in english. There are full lists of tank strengths of the Heeresgruppe from FEb, March & April, showing each unit sepoarately.So basically this book is a feast of facts and analysis about the units and battles that dont get elaborated on in normal histories. One of my fears before buying this expensive tome was that it might be full of reports and lists just for filler, but luckily it is actually full of analysis and original research, not filler. It is a treat for anyone interested in digging into the history behind the main events.

Everything good.thank you