Book: Hitler's Soldiers

This is certainly not a triumpiantalist book, despite what you might think from a first glance at the title. It holds no bars in describing the dark psyche of a German Soldier (in all the various combination of the land soldier, from Landser to Panzer Commander and all shades in between). How they lived and died for the Third Reich, fighting on well past the point of hope. It dispels any illusion of nobility, any fictional occlusion of the truth of what is meant to fight for Germany in WWII, with the underlying guilt and stain of the regime. It describes the fighting, successes and failures but also the underlying "why" they fought. There are too many chilling home truths to attempt to list here, but the nature of the whole hearted commitment of the German Army to the Nazi State is plain to see. From 1934 the German Army incrementally sold its soul to the Nazi regime, to the point where the two in the end in 1945 the two were indistinguishable from each other. A fascinating and shocking read, along the lines of Ordinary Men (see below, the compunction to a "duty" made them fight - by oath to see the Fuhrer, as the embodiment of Germany):  

Chilling reading. 

Like many good books, once I have listened to them on Audible and cannot stop thinking about them. I inevitably buy a paper copy for reference. This book is both chilling for the haunting message it tells and very informational in the sense of detail and context it gives. Highly recommended!  

My Navwar Projects Review and "Get better soon Tony!"

I was reviewing the Navwar 1/3000 production line of ships (lots of WIP here). It is a naval wargamers collectors paradise for Pre-dreadnought, WW1, WW2 and a bit of (Falklands) modern. Here are a couple of my current active project streams (see below, firstly filling out the German WW2 destroyer and minor vessels  as we all have the Bismarck):  

The French Capitol ships (see below, because in that early war 1939-1940 period they played a big part in the numerous  "hunt the raider" groups - long before the interesting Vichy side of things started up): 

Imperial Japanese Navy in all its mighty glory (see below, a selection of their carrier force, the Pearl Harbour, Coral Sea and Midway "bad boys"): 

Just as scary as the CVs are the IJN Heavy Cruisers (see below, this is where the calculus of the 1922 Washington Treaty and subsequent treaties met its match against the minds of cunning naval architects and Civil Servants/Officials who measured tonnages wrongly [accidently]): 

Then there is the heavy tonnage f the renovated IJN WWI battlefleet, with later "big boy" additions of the Yamato and her sister ship the Mushashi (see below, but in the era of the carrier all this 'stuff' became scrap iron in a plane's cross-hairs or an expensive form of AA protection and 'bomb-soak' for the important CVs):  

I find out it fantastically good fun slowly collecting this stuff (for over twenty five years now), so I should give a shout out to Tony the owner of Navwar, as I heard he had a fall recently, but is on the mend. Get well soon mate and thank you for this awesome range of 1/3000 models.