Fighting Men of World War II Axis Forces: Uniforms, Equipment & Weapons

This book is divided into four major sections, one for each of the major Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) and a section for the minor Axis players (Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Romania, and the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. Each section provides an overview of the national army, ranks, structure, uniforms, equipment, infantry weapons, heavy weapons and support weapons.Each section is loaded with photographs. Some are historical photos from World War II but most are color photos of museum quality originals (or replicas?) of the actual uniform, rifle, gas mask, or what not.About two-thirds of the book is dedicated to Germany. It covers the Germany Army as well the Waffen-SS, Gebirgsdivision, Fallschirmjager, and to a limited extent, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe Field Division, Spanish Blue Division, Legion des Volontaires Francais, Hilfswillige and Cavalry.The book does a remarkable job of covering the major and many minor variations of uniforms, equipment and weapons for a 400-page book. For example, 30 pages are dedicated to German pistols alone! However, the book's weakness is its coverage of the German uniforms. It covers the basic infantry uniform well and discusses how it evolved during the war. It also covers a few basic camouflage patterns but it is an inadequate reference for camouflage patterns and usage.Overall, the book is very good and the color pictures and scope make it a worthy investment.

This book gave me insight into a more personal side of history than what your teachers might tell you.It explains the weapons and equipment used by the Axis forces during World War 2 in great detail with many picture references.Being a history nerd myself I absolutely loved this book and could not put it down.Pros:*Great layout*Very informative read for anyone interested in history*Awesome never before seen photographs*Detailed descriptionsCons:*There are none!

This could have been a good chance to address two areas of World War II collecting often neglected, Japanese and Italian items, in addition to the wildly popular German relics. Instead, it became a book with pictures of decent quality and captions that appear to have been created by someone with no knowledge of the topic. The comments are either incorrect or outright fanciful. For example, on page 44 a KM EM buckle is labeled as having a brown belt, but the leather portion illustrated is actually a tunic protector. On the same page an overcoat is said to be for NCOs, while it has no NCO indications at all. The pattern continues throughout the sections on Japanese and Italian military items. In the Italian section, page 331 shows a model 1933 helmet with the OD paint and webbed chin strap of post war use. Any competent collector that reviewed the text and captions would have corrected these, and many other, obvious errors. Don't waste your money unless you only want to look at pictures.

As with its counterpart covering the Allies, this book is very entertaining and a quick guide to the material covered. While not going into great detail on an single item, it covers enough to aid in further research. The pictures are great.

This is a very complete book on the Italians, Japanese and German armies in WW 2. I highly suggest any novice to buy it. My only regret is that it did not cover military medals, which would probably be another book in itself. It goes over patches, uniforms, rank, weapons and othe misc. items. I wish a book like this would have existed when I was a teenager.

This is a scholarly work. It flows well. It is well illustrated and is well worth the time. It appears to be an honest, fair, evaluation.

I really appreciate the book. Well documented and in colour, a most for any modeller. I recommend it if you have an interest in WW2. I gone buy the other one Allied.Buy it

A lot of picture and information.

I awaited the publication of this title with great anticipation. It looked like this title would finally show real uniforms of Axis allied forces and judging from the title part "Axis Forces" I expected this to mean there would be pictures of Finnish, Hungarian and Romanian uniforms and equipment. Unfortunately this is not the case. This is my big problem with this title, it claims to deal with Axis Forces, but in fact it shows German, Japanese and Italian forces, and that's it.The second problem I have with this title is that the captions do not always tell the truth. Sometimes this is very obvious (as with a picture of a 3.7 cm PAK 35/36 where the captions tells you it's a 5cm PAK 38, but the shields of these guns really give their identity away), sometimes it is less so. But that means I'll be very careful to accept any facts I find in this title. But then, is it all bad?No, in fact the book is filled with colour photo's of uniforms, weapons and equipment of German, Japanese and Italian troops, and these pictures are a great reference source. At least, as long as you have some knowledge about said items from other sources, as then you'll be able to identify everything correctly.To give an impression of what you can expect, I'll give you an overview of the contents.Part 1 deals with Germany. It contains nearly 220 pages. Part 2 is about Japan and contains almost 80 pages. Part 3 contains 64 pages on Italy, and te Other Axis Forces get 14 pages combined. This means there's more pages and pictures of German pistols than of Hungarian and Romanian stuff combined (tell me if I'm nitpicking).The German part gives you an overview of shoulderboards (though no explanation about waffenfarben, the colours showing branch of service; though there is a brief table elsewhere in the book) and rankbadges, communications equipment and food containers. There's a chapter on basic uniforms, and these are shown worn by models. Instead of the way Histoire and Collection does it (with real people), in this title the human features are made plain grey, so only the uniforms are visible. Included also are helmets, officer's caps and men's field caps. Next are medals and personal field equipment (waterbottles, breadbags etc.) There are a few pages on medical equipment, pioneer equipment and this is followed by an overview of weapons. This part I really like, as it is very detailed. It even includes a couple of photo's of 5cm and 8cm mortars.This list of what to expect is not complete, but does give a good impression of what to expect. It is followed by sections on the SS, Mountain Troops, Fallschirmjäger and Armoured Troops.The Japanese part is somewhat shorter, but does give a good set of illustrations of uniforms, equipment and weapons.The part on Italy is briefer yet, but still a good selection of pictures of uniforms, equipment and weapons is given.The other Axis Forces part has a small section on Finland, with only a couple of rifles shown, a part on Hungary with 1 machine gun, two rifles and a pistol shown, and a few pages on Romania with only a rifle and a light machine gun. No other equipment or any uniforms are shown.All in all I find it difficult to recommend this book without reservation. Only if you take into account all of my comments, and still think you like it should you consider buying it. But if you do, the title does give you a good selection of pictures on German, Japanese and Italian items.

This book should be in the library of anyone with the slightest interest in the soldiers of WW 11.The mix of black and white photographs of the period,modern colour photographs of surviving uniforms and equiment and colour diagrams is excellent.The text and captions are well written.The book is more than an introduction to its subject while not being too detailed to put off the novice reader.

Excellent reference book for the areas of Axis uniform that it covers, but gets slimmer in detail for the Japanese and Italian.

I greatly recommend this book for anyone who is a WWII history buff.

good book gr8 price