AFV Photo Album Vol 2 Book Review

by Michael Benolkin

Review

In the last weeks of World War 2, the remnants of the German forces that fought across western and southern Europe had withdrawn and were making their way back into Germany using the remaining lines of travel which included roads and rail in Czechoslovakia. While the US and British forces pushed the Germans north and east, Soviet forces were pushing west. In one engagement, General Andrej Vlasov who commanded the German's Russian Liberation Army, turned his forces against the SS after receiving a plea for help from Prague as the SS was attempting to destroy that city before continuing into Germany. Vlasov knew that the Russian Army was three days away, but Prague wouldn't last that long against the SS, so they risked capture and successfully neutralized the SS in the streets of Prague.

This title looks not at the battles inside Czechoslovakia, but rather the aftermath of those battles. As the combatants of the war withdrew under fire or after the end of hostilities, hundreds of armored vehicles were left in place across those lines of communication and in populated areas across Czechoslovakia. Photographers documented the wide variety of German, Soviet, and Romanian combat vehicles that were knocked out, abandoned, or even loaded onto rail cars before being abandoned.

This is volume two of the series which provides extensive photo coverage of the combat aftermath in Znojmo Railway Station, Ceska Trebova, Veseli Nad Luznici, Tabor, Brloh, Pilsen, Slavonice, Strakonice, Stitina, Dolni Lhota, Dolni Benesov, Tisnov, Jevicko, Svojanov, and Prague. The narrative, which is published in both Czech and English, provides a concise description of each photograph as well as the events that led to the imaged aftermath.

The authors also include a section at the end of the title with nice color profiles of a sampling of the German and Soviet combat vehicles left behind. While some of these photos have been published previously, they haven't been placed into photo context with other relevant photos that provide different angles and views of a given scene/group of vehicles along with good captions to help understand what you're viewing.

If you're looking for some interesting photo history or perhaps some inspiration for your next modeling project(s), these photo albums have a good mix of subjects to choose from. These will be a nice addition to your reference library.

My sincere thanks to Stevens International for this review sample!