First time poster here. I just have two questions regarding these two fine authors.
Does anyone know if George Nipe will publish anything new in the future? I really enjoy his books!
The Leibstandarte volumes by Heimdal is published in French and that's OK unless they are later published in English once I've spend a furtune on them. Does anyone know if these volumes will be french only?
I met George Nipe in the US NARA a few weeks ago and I understood he was still working on his book. Concerning the Leibstandarte set, it will not be translated in english ! Volume 3 (SS-KB Roth) has english captions for the photographs and the volumes 2 and 4 as well (probably).
George's next book will be about Kursk - and it will debunk a fair amount of what's been written about that battle over the past 50 years. I've proofed a good bit of the draft manuscript, and his use of German and Soviet original source material is simply some of the best work I've ever seen - he even went down to battalion level using original KTBs and other original sources (such as contemporary interviews and diaries). What comes through is how the performance of the II SS-Pz.Korps has been underrated all these years, when in fact the combat effectiveness & skill of the 3 divisions assigned to the Corps was far greater than I had ever thought. This battle represents the Waffen SS at what was perhaps its peak level of performance, that was never matched again after this battle. What also comes through from his analysis of the orginal wartime records is how poorly some of the more higher-regarded units performed, such as the GD (especially the tank regiment under von Strachwitz, whose performance bordered on the incompetent) and how other less-heralded units, such as the 11th Pz.Div., carried out its assignments in an exemplary fashion. His chapter describing how the Das Reich and Totenkopf defeated the Soviet counterthrust at Prokohorovka using mostly antitank guns and infantry weapons is especially illuminating. Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on a copy after Remy at RZM finishes with the editing process. I understand that a number of unplublished Kursk photos will also be included.
Cheers,
Doug Nash
Abbott: This sure is a beautiful forest.
Costello: Too bad you can't see it for all those trees!
Volume 4's title will be "Leibstandarte Archives" which is not quite accurate : in fact, the book will contain about 600 additional photographs (a good number comes from private collections, and you would pay attention to a spectacular sequence showing LSSAH in Metz in 1940 - 1941 which I have discovered in a small museum of the Lorraine (Lothringen) region) plus many documents (Gliederungen, extracts from personal files and KTB) and a few texts (concerning SS-Pz.Gren.AuE.-Btl.1 and the battles of Kampfgruppe "Mohnke" in Berlin, among others) and a complete Gliederung of SS-Pz.AA 1 of December 1944 with drawings of each of its vehicles.
