Book Review Hungarian Armoured Fighting Vehicles in the Second World War

Discussion in 'Books, Films, TV, Radio' started by von Poop, Dec 17, 2019.

  1. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Images of War
    Hungarian Armoured Fighting Vehicles in the Second World War
    Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives.

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    Eduardo Manuel & Gil Martínez
    Hungarian Armoured Fighting Vehicles in the Second World War

    Imprint: Pen & Sword Military
    Series: Images of War
    Pages: 112
    Illustrations: 150
    ISBN: 9781526753816
    Published: 2nd October 2019

    The hunt for mildly esoteric armoured things continues.

    Having recently read Kaloyan Matev's rather more substantial book on Bulgarian forces, I thought it might be interesting to look at something from the notionally less substantial end of the market covering a similar sort of subject. The Nazi satellite/allied states & how they drove to war.
    And it's actually not half bad.

    These 'Images of War' books don't always follow quite as standard a pattern as I might have thought.
    Plenty of (nicely produced) images, as per usual, but this one's actual text is far more a timeline of Hungarian deployment. Bit more general than some that focus on a single vehicle.
    I don't see much to complain about in that timeline (definitely not an expert - which is why I had a look), but the captions for the mostly vehicle-focused pictures appear very thorough, on a subject that usually gets minimal coverage, or at least the same old repeated info. I knew of indigenous Hungarian Toldi & Turan tanks & Csaba ACs, with a vague recall of the Zrinyi (Stug-like), but had almost no awareness of the Nimrod AA machine or Hansa Lloyd Halftracks. It does a starting job of fleshing them out a little. (Though I'd like to find much more on the halftracks - only mentioned lightly.)
    Don't expect full development history, but there's enough intriguing pictures to encourage further enquiry.

    It's interesting how much can be done with bikes, Tankettes & ACs before wars become a little more complicated. Equally interesting how a nation keeps attempting to produce local designs even as supplies from an ally build up a little.

    If you're a modeller, I dare say you'll find plenty of inspiration, and I can only applaud any & all efforts to shine a light onto these neglected armoured forces.
    If you want to grasp a tad more on Hungary's war, it doesn't seem a bad place to start.

    There might be a bit of strange translation going on in places ("The obsolete Hungarian Fiat 3000B tanks did not participate in the armed conflict due to their obsolescence." etc.), but absolutely nothing to disrupt the information flow, and better than some rather more expensive books can be.

    Thumbs-up, really.
    It can't pretend to be any sort of definitive text in a hundred-odd pages, but it kept my interest up throughout.

    ~A

    Cheers to P&S for the review copy.
     

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