Can anyone recommend any books availible in Australia (Dymocks, Angus & Robertson, Napoleons etc) concerning the development, training and frontline employment of the SS and the Luftwaffe (Europe and Russia specifically - including the night-fighter forces).
I don't have a credit card (poor full-time uni student who doesn't qualify) so thatcounts out web-based sources and seeing as Australia isn't really home to the best selection of titles... Any suggestions would be most welcome to narrow down the choices I'm looking at (my birthday's coming up )
May I suggest you dump the outlets you've listed? I have found what I believe to be the best Aviation/Military bookshop is NSW (Sydney), possibly in Australia. They have a huge range of books, videos, DVDs, prints, action figures etc. Some titles they import themselves and so are not available elsewhere in Australia.
Would it be too difficult for you at least once shut up and honour the original question? Perhaps you should ask him why he especially wants nightfighter books. Perhaps he doesn´t have dayfighter books yet? Or if someone wanted books on sailing boats, you would ask why he doesn´t buy books on rowing boats as there are more rowing boats than sailing boats.
Sid, do get a new needle as the old one seems to get stuck.
BTW, Florian Berger´s new book book must be a nightmare to you as no less than 33 of the 98 biograhies (of winners of both the RK and the Nahkampfspange) cover Waffen-SS soldiers, yet according to your constant whining their share should be much lower.
Why is it wrong to wonder why someone is displaying an interest in the SS rather than the Heer? After all, the former was, in military terms, just a much smaller clone of the Heer.
Have you some objection to the promotion of the far more important German Army as a subject worthy of study? If so, why?
Or do you perhaps believe that the pre-eminent status of the SS should not be challenged for some reason? If so, why?
Day fighters are different in function from nightfighters. Sailboats are different in function from rowing boats. What was there original in military terms about the SS compared with the Heer?
I don't know about new needles, but I do know that "many a good tune is played on an old fiddle".
Fascinating factoid you offer in your last paragraph. Does Berger's book cover all such winners? Or is it selective?
Sid;
Don't get me started here.........the member only asked about SS books and then you started your WHY SS questions.
If someone asks about something, please stop questioning them on it.
Either answer them or don't comment.
I too wonder why you always have to question the motivations of those who focus on the Waffen-SS in their serious study or leisurely reading. Who really cares? Unless one is doing a psychological study of the membership of our community (as was apparently attempted, and reportedly without much success or accuracy, in "The Myth of the Eastern Front"), an answer to this question shouldn't be much of a concern. Maybe some people have an unhealthy Waffen-SS fetish. Others find something particularly interesting about the growth of a small, handpicked bodyguard for Hitler into a multinational combat formation, and find the careers of certain members thereof to be noteworthy and fascinating.
But to each his own, even if the "Why SS?" question has grown so tiresome. Personally, whenever I hear that a few more copies of my book have sold, I'm not asking "Why did they choose Leaders of the SS & German Police over a book on Generals of the Heer or Luftwaffe?"
~ Mike
"I am a historian before I am a Christian; my object is simply to find out how the things actually occurred."
Nobody has to take up my questions if they don't want to.
But if they get them wondering why they may have fixed on the SS to the exclusion of much more important military organisations then, whether answered or not, my questions serve a useful military-historical purpose, which I rather thought was the aim of Feldgrau.
If, on the other hand, the purpose of Feldgrau is to promote the Waffen-SS to the excclusion of the Heer, then please tell me and I will happily take my apparently embarrassing questions elsewhere.
Otherwise I will continue occasionally (and yes, it is occasionally) to ask such questions.
My questions threaten nothing and nobody who is genuinely interested in German military history. Indeed, they might well help them.
Those who are actually interested in the hard facts of German military history, I hope!
To them eternal over emphasis on the SS out of all proportion to its real military-historical importance is what is tiresome.
The fact that nobody seems capable of justifying this distortion of the historical record rather tends to confirm the legitimacy of the question "Why SS?"
We are now at the point where even well researched and accurate books (which Leaders of the SS & German Police ) might well be) are serving to further distort the historical record by over emphasising a subject area already over represented on the bookshelves. This, in turn, distorts the broader historical perception of younger readers (something complained about in another current thread on Feldgrau in regard to the US education system).
I, too have an interest in the non-German troops raised by the Germans in WWII, but this was neither initially, nor largely, a W-SS activity. In fact, the W-SS was initially opposed, so to view it purely through an SS prism would be distorting.
But then the SS military myth is not built up around these exotic and fascinating non-Germans with a multitude of their own national axes to grind. It is built up around the German W-SS formations. These, I would argue were basically clones of German Army mechanised formations and so should be studied as part of the Panzerwaffe.
The very premise of studying the Waffen-SS as a discrete military phenomenon is fundamentally flawed. There are other reasons to study it as a separate phenomenon, but I would suggest that these are essentially political, in the cases of both German and non-German SS.
Cheers,
Sid.
P.S. I am not questioning posters' motives, just their judgement. Given the weight of material on the SS, who can blame many younger posters for believing it was more militarily significant than was actually the case?
Similarly, who can blame those of us who know this for pointing it out occasionally? I rather think it is our duty.
35 years ago it was exactly the same,Sid.The only difference was that back then the "myth" was propagated by soldiers who had actually fought them.
Cheers.
)
