Military History Book Shop

Bolt Action Rulebook, 3rd Edition. A fast paced squad based Second World War war game, aimed firmly at the skirmish level. Includes a simple but flexible army building system, army lists for Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, USA and United Kingdom, each with plenty of variety. Has a nice simple vehicle system, using standard building blocks and special rules to produce a wide range of vehicles with the ability to fine tune your selection. An interesting random activation system makes each turn very unpredictable, while a limited number of reaction options don’t make it too powerful if one player gets to most of their troops first. Fun, with a simple basis but enough special rules to give plenty of flexibility(Read Full Review)

War Story – Occupied France, Dave Neale & David Thompson. A cooperative adventure game that is a combination of a pick your own adventure game and a board game, with the players taking on the role of a team of four SOE agents infiltrating occupied France. Each agent has different stats, some have special abilities, so the choice of agents affects your game. Early choices will have a long term impact, with the game keeping track of the results of earlier encounters and sending you on different paths later on depending on earlier results, so each game will play differently. Plays well, and with linked scenarios has plenty of scope for replaying. Works well as a solo game, but will feel very different with a team arguing about every choice! (Read Full Review)

Central European Wars 1918-21, Philip Jowett. Looks at the numerous small wars that broke out around the borders of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire in the aftermath of the First World War, which involved most of the newly independent nations, each of which was created with border disputes built in! Most of the fighting was small scale, although the Romanian invasion of Hungary reached Budapest and occupied it until the Entente powers pressured them to leave (Read Full Review)

Jagdpanther vs 17-Pdr Achilles, North-West Europe 1944-45, Frank Baldwin. These two vehicles were very different weapons, and hardy ever clashed directly (perhaps even only once!). This book looks at why the two vehicles were so different – what experience had led to this, how they were developed, how they were meant to be used. Good material on their physical characteristics, with good comparisons of the guns – the only parts directly comparable! Combat section looks at their overall use in Normandy and into Germany, with only a single example of a direct clash (Read Full Review)

Crusader vs M13/40 – North Africa 1941-41, David Greentree. Looks at the main British tank of 1941-42 and the best Italian tank to see combat in North Africa, focusing in particular on the year between their respective arrivals in the theatre and the 2nd Battle of El Alamein, where the majority of surviving Italian tanks were lost. Shows that the Italian tank was superior at first, but was outclassed by the Crusader III, although most importantly by the arrival of the M4 Sherman. The combat section shows how these two tanks were always part of a much larger, more complex battle, rarely fighting purely against each other (Read Full Review)

Partisan Warfare in Greece 1941-44, Phoebus Athanassiou. Looks at the brutal partisan war in occupied Greece, where two major partisan forces – the Communist ELAS and Monarchist EDES organised along the lines of formal military forces and inflicted heavy loses on the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians who were occupying their country, as well as on each other during the regular outbreaks of conflict between the two main partisan groups (Read Full Review)

Turning the Tide – the USAAF in North Africa and Sicily, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. Looks at the dramatic evolution of the USAAF in North Africa, where it arrived in small numbers as a novice force, and ended the campaign battle hardened and greatly increased in size, having helped inflict heavy losses on the Luftwaffe that the Germans never fully recovered from. Includes a good mix of narrative and eyewitness accounts, with a broader analysis of what was happening (Read Full Review)

Bagration 1944 – The Great Soviet Offensive, Prit Buttar. Looks at perhaps the most succesful Soviet offensive of the Second World War, which saw the destruction of the German Army Group Centre, Soviet troops reaching the Baltic, East Prussia and the Vistula, and broke open a hole in the Eastern Front that the Germans were never really able to fully repair. Looks at the state of the front before the offensive, both side’s plans (showing that the Soviets had a clear advantage here, with detailed well thought out plans for the offensive, while the Germans expected it to fall further south), and the dramatic course of the campaign itself (Read Full Review)

US Navy Pacific Fleet 1941 – America’s mighty last battleship fleet, Mark Lardas. Looks at the US Pacific Fleet of 1941, the last time the main US Navy fleet was based around the battleship, and the victim of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Shows that it was a powerful fleet for the time, with good logistics, well designed ships and weapons (apart from the dreadful torpedos and poor light AA guns), but flawed assumptions about the Japanese intentions, and plans that assumed the daylight fleet battle would still be the key to a wartime victory (Read Full Review)

Manila Bay 1898 – Dawn of an American Empire, Brian Lane Herder. Looks at the Philippine part of the Spanish-American War, including accounts of the sea and land battles of Manila, the first of which made an American land intervention almost inevitable, the second of which saw them establish an unpopular occupation of the islands and triggered a costly Philippine war of Independence. Good material on all three side’s plans, capabilities and actions during this conflict. Shows how superior the US Navy was to its Spanish opponents, but how the US victory on land relied to a great extent on Filippino insurgents who seized control of Luzon(Read Full Review)

The Killing Season – A New History of Autumn 1914, Robert Cowley. A detailed examination of the fighting at the start of the First World War, covering the French and Belgian contributions in more detail than is often the case, and acknowledging that by the end of it the first battle of Ypres was a largely French battle. Looks at the huge human coast of the first few months of the war – the most costly of the entire conflict – where open warfare and modern weapons combined to make the battlefield appalingly deadly, before moving onto the emergence of trench warfare, the ‘dash to the sea’ and the bitter, brutal fighting around Ypres and along the Yser River, the last places where the Germans might have achieved a breakthrough (Read Full Review)

The Man who Stopped the Sultan – Gabriele Tadino & the Defence of Europe, Edoardo Albert. A biography of a military engineer who helped develop defences to cope with the new high powered artillery introduced into Italy by the French at the start of the Italian Wars, and which had blasted their way through older fortifications in days, when older methods might have taken weeks or months. He gained most fame as the chief engineer for the Knights Hospitaller during the second (and eventually successful) Ottoman siege of Rhodes, where his skills helped prolong the defence so long that the Sultan eventually allowed the surviving Knights to leave with military honours and their possessions. (Read Full Review)

The Dido-Papers, The Letters of a Victorian Midshipman, John Johnson-Allen. A fascinating first hand account of the experiences of a young midshipman, from a remarkable collection of letters he send home while he was serving along the west coast of Africa and South Africa just before the scramble for Africa began to transform the area. Provides a really atmospheric view of life on a Victorian warship and of the varied world to be found along the African coast before European conquest really started to accelerate (Read Full Review)

German Soldier versus British Soldier – Spring Offensive and Hundred Days 1918, Stephen Bull. Looks at three examples of the key battles of 1918, one German victory at the start of the Spring Offensives, one Allied counterattack as the first spring offensive ran down and one Allied victory late in the ‘100 days’, allowing us to compare how the British and German troops compared on the attack and on the defense and looking at how both sides had adapted their tactics as the war went on. Shows that both armies had massively altered how they fought by 1918, producing a very different type of fighting to the static trenches of 1915-17(Read Full Review)

Pearl Harbor – Japan’s Greatest Disaster, Mark E. Stille. A detailed examination of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, looking at the planning on the Japanese side (both for the attack itself and the overall war), the American defences of Hawaii, how the attack was actually carried out, and its long term impact. Makes a very good argument that the attack was a major strategic mistake for the Japanese, uniting the Americans in a way little else might have done, while doing spectacular but surprisingly unimportant damage to the US Pacific Fleet. Also argues that the Japanese plan included a series of major flaws and only the poor American response saved them from a costly setback(Read Full Review)

Sumatra 1944-45 – The British Pacific Fleet’s oil campaign in the Dutch East Indies, Angus Konstam. Looks at the Royal Navy’s return to Far Eastern waters as an offensive force, the series of carrier raids against the Japanese controlled oil industry on Sumatra that both helped cripple that industry and gave the British valuable experience before they joined the Americans in the Okinawa campaign. Demonstrates how quickly the Royal Navy learnt to emulate the US Navy, taking advantage of their vast experience of large scale carrier operations (Read Full Review)

The Dummy Drome, Rob More. Looks at a decoy airfield built at Sarclet in Caithness, acting as a decoy for RAF Wick. Written by a native of the area, who was born three and a half years before the outbreak of war, and so can combine his own childhood memories with the stories told by older relatives and locals. Covers local memories of the construction and operation of the dummy drome, and then moves on to the Home Guard, Auxiliary Unit and the underwater flame projectors build into local beaches. An excellent examination of the impact of the Second World War on a very remote and rural part of Scotland (Read Full Review)

Devil’s Fire, Southern Cross – The Conclusion of the Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign October 1943-February 1944, Jeffrey R. Cox. The last in an impressive series of books that covers the Solomon Islands campaign of the Second World War, looking at the invasion of Bougainville and the decision to bypass Rabaul and the resulting smaller scale invasions that effectively isolated that major Japanese base. Very good on the naval and air aspects of the campaign, with good coverage of the Japanese and American sides of the conflict (Read Full Review)

Emperor Titus – The Right Hand of Vespasian, Marc Hyden. Looks at the life of the second Flavian emperor, and the first Roman emperor to success his biological father. Much of the book covers his time as a general during the First Jewish-Roman War, both before and after his father’s rise to the throne. His short reign saw the destruction of Pompeii and the completion of the Colosseum, two of the most iconic events in Roman history, so despite his short reign he was still a major figure (Read Full Review)

Royal Navy Monitors of World War II – Britain’s battleship-calibre gunboats, Angus Konstam. A look at the four monitors operated by the Royal Navy during the Second World War, all armed with two 15in guns. Only two or three were ever in use at the same time, but we see how they made a significant contribution to the fighting in Normandy and at Walcheran as well as examining the wider use of naval gunfire support.(Read Full Review)

Super-Battleships of World War I – the lost battleships of the Washington Treaty, Angus Konstam. Looks at the designs for even larger battleships produced during and just after the First World War, in Japan, the UK and the USA, focusing on the design process that created them, the Washington Naval Treaty that cancelled most of them, the technical specs of the various designs and finally how they might have been modified if they had entered service (Read Full Review)

Spitfire I – Phoney War and Battle of France, Tony Holmes. Looks at the development, production, entry into service, pilot training and tactics and the first combat experience of the Spitfire Mk I, a period where it was uncertain how good the new fighter would actually be, and where it started to prove it was equal to the established Bf 109.(Read Full Review)

Konstam, Angus, Royal Navy Grand Fleet 1914-18, Britain’s last supreme naval fleet. A good introduction to the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet, the most powerful naval force of its day, and a key factor in the eventual Allied victory in the First World War by imposing the distant naval blockade on Germany. Looks at the background to its development, the ships themselves, their guns, armour etc, how the fleet was organised and how it performed during the First World War, demonstrating the vital role the fleet played in the eventual Entente victory. (Read Full Review)

Soviet Motor Torpedo Boats of World War II, Przemyslaw Budzbon. Looks at the Soviet motor torpedo boats of the Second World War, developed originally from the British Coastal Motor Boats of the First World War. Produced in large numbers, the early designs were unseaworthy and prone to corrode, while later wooden boats were produced in limited numbers. Covers their design, and their wartime achievements (Read Full Review)

A Photographic History of London’s Ceremonial Regiments, Ben Skipper. A very visual examination of the regiments of the Household Division, currently the Househould Cavalry Regiment, Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards, looking at their entire histories, which in several cases go back to the seventeenth century, emphasising that they are all high class combat units as well as having a ceremonial role. The impressive collecton of photographs support that, with a mix of watertime pictures showing them in their combat role and more colourful pictures of their ceremonial duties (Read Full Review)

Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America, Russell Shorto. A fascinating study of the events that led to the English capture of New Amsterdam in 1664, the year before war broke out with the Dutch, looking at the background to the capture in England, the Netherlands and North America, the lives of the key figures on each side, and how what could have become a brief but bloody conflict instead saw a peaceful transfer of the Dutch colony, a rarity in clashes between the two powers (Read Full Review)

Opening the Gates of Hell – Operation Barbarossa, June-July 1941, Richard Hargreaves. A very detailed examination of the first couple of weeks of Operation Barbarossa, the period that saw the biggest German advances across the widest front, but also appalling atrocities committed by both sides and by local nationalists. Starts with a very atmospheric couple of chapters on the immediate days before the conflict and the first day of the fighting, showing how varied people’s expectations were in June 1941, before moving onto detailed accounts of the fighting, seen from both sides, and of the many atrocities committed across the front (Read Full Review)

Theirs the Strife – The Forgotten Battles of British Second Army and Armeegruppe Blumentritt, April 1945, John Russell. Looks at the short but bitter battles between the advancing British and a mixed bag of German forces including a naval infantry battalion and troops from a Waffen-SS training unit, on the lines of the Weser and Aller rivers. Covers a period of about two weeks, which saw the British make steady progress against unexpectedly determined resistance, before breaking through the Aller lines. Good material on the opposing forces as well as detailed accounts of the main battles of this short campaign (Read Full Review)

Nemesis – Medieval England’s Greatest Enemy, Catherine Hanley. Looks at the reign of one of the most successful Medieval French monarchs, Philip Augustus, through the lens of his relationship with the four English kings of his reign – Henry II, Richard I, John and Henry III – and how he was able to take advantage of their frequent family arguments to transform the balance of power in France. An excellent study of the reign of Philip Augustus that demonstrates clearly how he was able to effectively destroy the Angevin Empire in France, leaving Henry III with only the core of Aquitaine (Read Full Review)

Fearless – The Diary of an 18 Year Old at War in the Falklands, Kevin J. Porter. An excellent account of the Falklands War, combining the wartime diary of the author with his own more detailed memories and reflections. Porter served with the signals team on the amphibious warfare ship HMS Fearless, a key part of the task force and command ship for the Commodore Amphibious Warfare and 3 Commando Brigade, putting him at the heart of the battle. We get a detailed account of the fierce battles in Falklands Sound. Major incidents such as the attack on HMS Plymouth are documented by extracts from other diaries, filling gaps in Porter’s original work. We finish with Porter’s post war experiences, which went from an immediate high on the task force’s return to Britain and his return to home at Millom, to the disasterous impact of his prolonged post-war binge on his naval career, and his later career as a hypnotherapist (Read Full Review)

The Athenian Army 507-322 BC, Nicholas Sekunda. Looks at the Athenian army from its famous peak during the Persian Wars, through the costly wars against Sparta and on to the final breaking of Athenian military power by the Macedonians. Demonstrates that the Athenian army was always more complex than just a hoplite only force, with cavalry, mounted archers and light infantry all playing a part. Also shows how the nature of the Athenian army changed during these two centuries of near constant warfare, and how robust the system was, able to bounce back quite quickly after defeats to the city’s local rivals. (Read Full Review)

Soviet Tanks at Kursk 1943, William E. Hiestand. Looks at the role of Soviet armour in the battle of Kursk, the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front. Covers the way Soviet armoured forces were organised, their tactical doctrine (and why they were generally less effective than the Germans), looks at the Soviet tanks and self propelled guns and lend-lease vehicles that were used and then moves onto the battle itself, where the Soviets lost more tanks (many during counter-attacks), but the outnumbered Germans were unable to make a breakthrough before their focus had to move elsewhere. A good examination of the Soviet use of armour at this battle (Read Full Review)

Allied Tanks at El Alamein 1942, William E. Hiestand. Looks at the second battle of El Alamein, which emerges as a clear turning point in British armoured warfare, with the tanks that would serve for the rest of the war (Sherman and Churchill) fighting alongside the older tanks used in the desert, and a clear improvement in British armoured tactics (if not quite getting things right), which combined with the long range of the Sherman’s 75mm gun to effectively destroy Rommel’s armoured forces and start an Axis retreat that didn’t end until Tunisia (Read Full Review)

Beutepanzers of World War II – Captured Tanks and AFVs in German service, Steven J. Zaloga. Looks at the fate of the very large number of armoured fighting vehicles captured by the Germans during the Second World War, revealing that little use was made of most of them, but with sizable sections on the use of French and Italian vehicles, which were captured in much larger numbers and with their industrial base intact, allowing them to be maintained and used for police and security work as well as being converted into self propelled guns (Read Full Review)

Operation Steinbock 1944 – The Luftwaffe’s disastrous last Blitz over England, Chris Goss. Looks at the Luftwaffe’s last attempt to carry out a major bombing campaign over Britain, in the first half of 1944, carried out in response to a direct order from Hitler, and which had little impact in Britain, but did critically weaken the German bomber force in the months before the D-Day landings (Read Full Review)

Japanese Combined Fleet – 1942-43, Guadalcanal to the Solomons Campaign, Mark Stille. Looks at perhaps the most intensive period of surface naval warfare of the Second World War, the prolonged series of battles around Guadalcanal and in the Solomon Islands, which saw the Japanese win many of the night battles, taking advantage of their excellent torpedoes, but suffer heavy losses that eventually forced them to withdraw from Guadalcanal and degraded their abilities for the rest of the war (Read Full Review)

Defectors from the Reich: The Double Agent and the Adventurer, David Tremain. Looks at two men who defected from Nazi Germany to Britain, focusing on how their cases were handled by the British intelligence services, using a vast array of contemporary documents to build up a picture of the rather complex world of the defector. First looks at a Swiss adventurer who sailed solo to West Africa where he defected, then a German SS officer who defected in 1944 for dubious reasons. Very heavy on sources, so shows how these men were dealt with by the British, but could do with more supporting text (Read Full Review)

Birdman of Auschwitz: The Life of Günther Niethammer, Nicholas Milton. Looks at the career of one of the more unusual men to serve as a guard at Auschwitz, a famous ornithologist and author of the authoratitive guide to German birds of his period, completed during his time in the SS. Focuses on how an apparently decent man could appear cope with the horrors of what was going on around him, in this case by apparently ignoring them and focusing instead as much as possible on his study of birds (although also putting in requests to leave Auschwitz) (Read Full Review)

‘Rosy’ Wemyss Admiral of the Fleet, John Johnson-Allen. Looks at the life of one of the less familiar senior British Admirals of the First World War, responsible for many of the successes at Gallipoli, working with the Arab Revolt and who ended the war as First Sea Lord and helped to negotiate the armistice that ended the First World War, after a peacetime career that included leisurely state visits and time setting up the naval college at Osborne on the Isle of Wight (Read Full Review)

US Army Ford M8 and M20 Armored Cars, Didier Andres. Looks in detail at the development and structure of these two closely related light armored cars, which entered service in 1943. Covers the development in great detail, as well as individual components, from the radios to the guns, and includes photographic surveys of early, mid and late production vehicles, showing how they changed over time. Finishes with a good selection of photographs from the front, showing how the M8 and M20 were actually used (Read Full Review)

RMS Queen Mary – 101 Questions & Answers about the Great Transatlantic Liner, David Ellery. An interesting approach to the history of the great liner, organised mainly into 101 questions with fairly short answers, covering her construction, peacetime and wartime careers and her time in retirement at Long Beach. Includes her wartime service as a troopship, where she carried nearly one million soldiers around the world, relying on her great speed to avoid the enemy. (Read Full Review)

Mediterranean Sweep, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. Looks at the long and costly air campaign in Italy, which lasted for almost two years, and ended with one of the most succesful air interdiction campaigns, dramatically cutting the amount of supplies the Axis armies in northern Italy were receiving. Shows how this campaign, taking advantage of lessons learnt in North Africa and Sicily, was able to help the Allies avoid defeats at Salerno and Anzio, and eventually helped win a total victory(Read Full Review)

Hitler Strikes North – The Nazi Invasion of Norway and Denmark, 9 April 1940, Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani. Looks at the Nazi invasions of Norway and Denmark with an emphasis on the German plans and the Norwegian defenses, including detailed information on what defenses were available at each location that was attacked, how they were manned and how effective they were. Shows how the Norwegian government and military were caught short when the Germans attacked, what damage they could have done if all of their coastal defences were fully manned, and the impact of the loss of all major Norwegian cities on the very first day of the invasion. An excellent single volume history of this campaign (Read Full Review)