This is the first Then and Now book that I have read, and I am hooked. The period photographs and history are supplemented with after the battle photographs. The research that goes into finding these key places in photographs is amazing and really adds to the story with the human element of seeing the location years later and imagining the scene before you.

Casemate Publishers website describes this book as such,

On January 12, 1945 the Soviet Red Army unleashed its winter offensive, launching strong forces on either side of Warsaw, and within a couple of days crushed the German forces defending the line of the Vistula river and headed westwards. Leaving behind a few small pockets of enemy resistance and cities proclaimed ‘fortresses’, the First Byelorussian Front began a great dash across Poland. Within little over two weeks the Soviet forces reached the Oder river and established several bridgeheads on its western bank. The Oder was the last great river barring the way to Berlin, now just 60 kilometres away, and the Germans mobilised everything in a desperate effort to defend the river line and prevent a Soviet march on the capital. This book brings together three After the Battle stories documenting the advance on the Oder and the long-draw-out struggles for the bridgeheads over it:

• Issue 188: The Battle for Festung Posen, 1945
• Issue 184: The Oder Bridgeheads, 1945
• Issue 192: The Battle of Festung Küstrin

If this isn’t enough to draw a reader in, then the first few pages will do the trick. As mentioned above, this book is a compilation of three magazine articles for After the Battle by Polish author Tomasz Zgoda (born in Poland and lived in Poznan, and is also fluent in Polish, German and Russian). This book’s author, Daniel Taylor, does a great job of giving credit to Tomasz while writing, “Editing the work of another writer is a heavy responsibility. In this respect I hope I have achieved more of a sympathetic translation than a refinement of the text.”

Further on, he states,

One key area where the presentation has been changed is in the names used to explain locations. As originally presented, the text led with Polish names but the maps provided were chiefly of wartime, German provenance. The ability to quickly orientate the reader was judged paramount and so the test now leads with the German name to conform to the mapping whilst showing Polish equivalents in brackets. No disrespect is meant to the proud and historic Polish naming system but it was found that changes made after the war to both the road layout and administrative districts means that modern locales would have detracted from the overall narrative. The intention is that we give the reader the best possible understanding of events in Poland in early 1945.

As someone who visited Breslau/Wrocław Poland in the 1990s, I appreciate this distinction, especially when we bought a Breslau map and had to figure out the Polish equivalent. It is appropriate to note that Wrocław was Festung Breslau during the same time period the battles mentioned here fought further to the north.

In The Red Army Towards the Oder, Then and Now, each chapter starts with a brief history of the area covered, followed by a lot of photographs taken during the fighting, and during recent times, to complement the text. This book is composed of the following:

• Introduction
• The Soviet Dash to the Oder
• Part I: Festung Posen
  • German Siege Preparations
  • Alarm
  • Red Army at the Gates 22^nd to 25^th January
  • Soviet Substitution
  • The Southern and Western Districts 26^th January to 3^rd February
  • The Northern Districts 26^th January to 16^th February
  • The Eastern Districts 21^st January to 17^th February
  • Storming the Citadel
  • The Cost
• Part II: Defending the Oder
  • The Schwedt Bridgehead
  • Skorzeny
  • German Defences
  • The Red Army’s Arrival
  • Counter-Attack
  • Sonnernwende
  • Withdrawal
  • The Zehden Bridgehead
  • Buildup
  • The Gathering Storm
  • One Last Push
• Part III: Festung Küstrin
  • Last Days Before the Siege
  • First Contact
  • Stalemate
  • Fall of the Neustadt
  • Envelopment
  • Endgame
  • Die Arbechnung
  • The Beginning of the End
• Organisation Tables
• Glossary

A key to understanding this book are the maps, which as outlined above were German, and the location of the key areas in what is now Poland. The battles fought in this book were once a part of Poland, then seized by Prussia, then returned to Poland after the Second World War, along the Oder River which became the border again.

After the destruction of German Army Group Center during the Soviet Operation Bagration during the summer of 1944, the Red Army chased the defeated Germans as far as the weather and their supply lines lasted.The brief lull was shattered on 12 January 1945 with resumption of the Russian offensive. The Germans desperately defended along the Oder River, the last natural obstacle to Berlin, only over 60 km away. German Führer Adolf Hitler designated Festung (fortress) cities to be held to stop the Russian flood. These are the stories of the desperate battles for the bridgeheads to allow Soviet Marshall Zhukov to create a starting position for the final push on Berlin.

The fortress cities were chosen for their bridges and, in most cases, the fortifications already present, albeit obsolete as they were built for previous wars. The Germans were masters at defense and took a high toll on the Russian attackers.Both sides took heavy casualties, and the Russians were particularly vengeful in victory. Twice in this book documents the Soviet use of flamethrowers to kill wounded German soldiers. The Battle of Poznan also had Poles pressed into Soviet service as laborers and supporting the attack on the final outposts and citadel. German combatants included Wehrmacht, SS, Luftwaffe, Volkssturm units, Hilfswilliger (Hiwi – Eastern European auxiliary troops), Hungarians, and saw the creation of the 1.Marine-Division composing of Kriegsmarine units.

The wartime photographs are a collection from Russian and German combat photographers. The Schwedt Bridgehead was copiously photographed by SS Kriegsberichter (war reporter) Friedel Könnecke and contained a lot of images of SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and his special forces troops.The images are haunting and show the conditions the combatants fought.

This is a great book for modelers wanting to recreate any of the late war Eastern Front. The uniforms are hodge podge, weapons were varied, and the limited German armor fought against numerically superior Red Army armor. The photographs really convey the intensity of fighting, during the fighting, then the scars still present years later. From the temporary walls made of bricks and sheets to provide the German defenders concealment from Russian observation, to the damaged and destroyed buildings, mud, ice, and water, there are a lot of references to recreate a plethora of scenes. This book reflects the brutality of war on the Eastern Front.

I will be on the lookout for further After the Battle Then and Now books in the series.

Profuse thanks to Casemate and IPMS/USA for providing the review sample.