UPDATE: Storm Over East Prussia

After a delay due to the refurbishing of my new house, the first two scenarios in this series are more or less ready! Good to be designing again! I hope to finish this series before the end of the year. It will cover battles from Lituania (Memel) to the fall of Königsberg in 1945. Most scenarios will be "Tiger-heavy"; so check back regularly for the last updates!

Coming Up - German WW2 Sketches

Hans Liska (1907-1984) is one of the most well-known WWII Axis illustrators, who served with the German Armed Forces during the war.

In 1942 and 1943 two albums were published with Hans Liska's sketches and color illustrations "to please the frontline soldiers and the workers of the weapon factories" in Germany. Definitely, his art lived up to the expectations of his peers, and propaganda clichés left the well-recognizable footprints all over his painting and drawings. Today the originals of both albums are a rarity.

However, at the same time artist was also able to create something more valuable than NSDAP-commissioned propaganda poster for the crumbling wall of the neighborhood bakery in bombed-up German provincial town. Liska convincingly demonstrates that he has an eye for the real war drama, with all its pain, suffering, desperation, hard work, endurance, sense of duty, and courage for yet one more push to the utmost, which all participants are likely to share, no matter under what colors they fought and died.

Check the fort in the near future for - some of - his sketches!

Upcoming: The Pacific DVD/BlueRay Boxset!!

From 2 November the DVD- and Blueray boxsets of the great series The Pacific will be in shops all over the world.

In my opinion the Band of Brothers series was magnificent and the Pacific is no less so.If you are interested in getting a feeling of what the war in the Pacific was about and want to know what the boys had to go through this one is worth a BIG recommendation!

Storm Over Eastprussia - upcoming new series

As I've let you know, I'm working on a new series about the battles for Eastprussia. Right now I'm studying quite a few books about these battles and some related battles in the near vicinity.
If you're interested, here are the links to the books I'm currently reading on the subject!

The Pacific

Companion Book To HBO-Miniseries

In this companion to the HBO(r) miniseries-executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman-Hugh Ambrose reveals the intertwined odysseys of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy carrier pilot during World War II.

Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August of 1945, five men connected by happenstance fought the key battles of the war against Japan. From the debacle in Bataan, to the miracle at Midway and the relentless vortex of Guadalcanal, their solemn oaths to their country later led one to the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot and the others to the coral strongholds of Peleliu, the black terraces of Iwo Jima and the killing fields of Okinawa, until at last the survivors enjoyed a triumphant, yet uneasy, return home.

In The Pacific, Hugh Ambrose focuses on the real-life stories of the five men who put their lives on the line for our country. To deepen the story revealed in the miniseries and go beyond it, the book dares to chart a great ocean of enmity known as The Pacific and the brave men who fought. Some considered war a profession, others enlisted as citizen soldiers. Each man served in a different part of the war, but their respective duties required every ounce of their courage and their strength to defeat an enemy who preferred suicide to surrender. The medals for valor which were pinned on three of them came at a shocking price-a price paid in full by all.


About the Author
Hugh Ambrose is a noted historian and was a consultant on the documentary Price for Peace, for which Steven Spielberg and Stephen Ambrose were the Executive Producers. He was a consultant to his father on his books, and is also serving as a historical consultant on HBO(r)'s The Pacific miniseries. Ambrose is also the former vice president of the national World War II Museum and has led battlefield tours through Europe and along the Pacific Rim.

Just as the series is in my opinion of great historic wealth, showing not only inportant battlefield scenes but more so the personal accounts of ordinary guys who were ripped out of their everyday lives to be dropped in the middle of raw and senseless slaughter, this book gives you an even deeper look into the persons who defined the events in the Pacific. A MUST READ!

The Kindly Ones...

A great book by Jonathan Littell. Here's a review by The New Yorker:

Littell opens his Second World War novel, told through the recollections of a German officer named Max Aue, with a breakdown of how many Germans, Soviets, and Jews died, minute by minute, in the conflict. As Aue travels to Stalingrad, Auschwitz, and Hungary to report on morale and efficiency, long sections of bureaucratic analysis alternate with moments of mind-numbing sadism. Aue, a caricature of moral failure (he fantasizes at length about sodomizing his twin sister), encounters a cast of unintentionally comic characters, such as an obese and flatulent proponent of the Final Solution, who surrounds himself with Teutonic beauties. The Holocaust is recast as an extended bout of office politics, with German officials quarrelling over who is responsible for prisoners hygiene. As the novel draws to a violent close, its story seems nearly as senseless as the horrors it depicts.