Review: Waffen-SS handbook

Waffen-SS handbook
Gordon Williamson
ISBN: 0750939117

I found this book in a bookstore, and due to difficulty in finding Waffen-SS books in the 'average street corner bookshop', with this one exception, and based on Mr Williamson's previous good Osprey titles, I decided to purchase it. I spent several days flipping through it and was disapointed. I was somewhat disapointed by the introduction which basically said that the truth about the Waffen-SS lay in the 'middle', despite the fact that Mr Williamson knows that the majority of Waffen-SS soldiers were not criminals, but soldiers like any other. Although there are quite a few good photographs, obtained through contacts with veterans and collectors, which make the book worth keeping, the information in the text contains nothing new that has not been seen in other books. It's descriptions of units, for example the foreign volunteers, is even weaker than unit articles on the major WWII German web sites. The same with the biographical section of famous Waffen-SS personalities. The medal and decoration chapter also was quite weak, and it appeared only slightly changed from Mr Williamson's Osprey title 'WWII German Battle Insignia'. Despite the good photographs, many of them are badly captioned, for example a photo of the Danish Waffen-SS volunteer Per Sorensen being in Hamburg 1941 with the Trifos collar patch being labelled as a Flemish Waffen-SS volunteer of the Flemish 27. SS Division 'Langemarck' just because Langemarck later wore the trifos collar patch. At the end, the small and weak bibliograhy, only several books, tells it all. Not a lot of effort was put into in depth research, eg archives.

Basically recommended only if you are intrested in seeing a few unpublished Waffen-SS photos.

K