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SUPERB 5 POUND 1968 GERMAN BOOK ON WORLD WAR II - PERHAPS THE BEST BOOK OF MANY, FANTASTIC PHOTO CONTENT

Der zweite Weltkrieg (The Second World War) is a fine, five (!) pound postwar German photo book on World War II pinted in an era when photos that included swastikas and SS runes were NOT edited out. The huge 688-page hardcover book starts with a short history leading up to World War II and then historic photos, captions and text about the German Wehrmacht invasions of Poland, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Holland, France, and the Soviet Union.

There is excellent coverage of the occupation of Paris as well as Italian forces in Greece, Luftwaffe aircraft and Nazi paratroopers over and on the island of Crete, partisans in Yugoslavia, Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps in action in North Africa.

Der zweite Weltkrieg was published by Bertelsmann Verlag of Gütersloh, Germany more than fifty years ago in 1968. While the book is in the German language, reading the German captions and even the text is an outstanding way for any average English, French, Italian or Spanish speaking collector or student to bone up on the German language, especially as it relates to the Third Reich and World War II.

This 53 year old example of Der zweite Weltkrieg is in very good used condition, with a tight spine and no unpleasant odor.

The original dust jacket shows wear and has some tape on the inside, but it has done a wonderful job of protecting the red linen hardcover which remains in very good condition.

Photos of the final years of the war show the results of Allied bombing raids in Nazi Germany, civilian casualties, V1 and V2 rockets, Mussolini’s rescue from Gran Sasso mountain, Monte Cassino in rubble, and Il Duce’s corpse hanging next to that of his mistress Clara Petacci in Milan.

Many of the photos in this huge book, some in color, are not found in other Third Reich or postwar photo books on World War II: the inside of a Nazi tank factory, U-Boot construction, the removal of the body of General von Fritsch from the battlefield in Poland (third photo from the top of this USMBOOKS web page), Wehrmacht soldiers enjoying French cafés on the Champs-Elysées, a soldier shielding his face from Leichengeruch (stinking corpses) on the Crimean peninsula, dead German tank crews in the Soviet Union, refueling Stukas in the field, teaching Wehrmacht field cooks before sending them to the front lines, DRK nurses at work, KdF entertainers at the front, as well as pictures taken on the home front, inside German armament industries and a rare one of thousands of German POWs walking in the center of the Reichsautobahn while American troops in vehicles and tanks are pouring into Germany (right).

There is even a rare photo of a French typesetter (in real French fasion smoking a cigarette) being watched by a German editor and an officer in Wehrmacht uniform with a Iron Cross medal ribbon, while getting the German language newspaper Deutsche Zeitung in Paris ready for printing (right)!

Photos of the invasion of the Soviet Union include battlefield images, wounded and dead soldiers, Stalingrad, Stukas, Gebirgsjäger on the Kaukasus, and General Paulus as a POW.

Coverage of the war in the Pacific starts with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and has photos of fighting in China, Burma, Indonesia, jungle warfare, the Japanese, Australian and American military.

There are photos of the D-Day invasion, captured and dead German soldiers in Normandy, General von Choltitz signing the surrender of Paris, the fate of male and female collaborators, Market-Garden Operation in Holland, the Battle of the Bulge, the bridge at Remagen, the advance of Russian forces through East Prussia, the battle for Berlin, US and Soviet soldiers meeting in Torgau, Nazi capitulation, American troops in Nuremberg in rubble, Soviet troops in Vienna and Prague and atomic bombs ending the war in the Pacific.

Der zweite Weltkrieg also has photo coverage of the immediate months after the end of the war in Germany. German evidence of the concentration camps, life of civilians in a country reduced to rubble, the capture of high-ranking Nazis and the Nürnberg War Trials.