Axis and Allies Books

Although not large in the number of pages, this book is ground-breaking in what it covers, and it covers it well. When the former Soviet archives started opening in the 1990s and into the 21st century, it finally became possible, albeit tedious, to look into details previously classified by the USSR on their WWII operational records. The author, with collaborators, has taken advantage of this and written a very readable, well-referenced narrative and dairy of the first 6 months of the 1941 airwar in the southern USSR as a part of the German Operation Barbarossa. There are good first person stories, claims and losses for the details and overall good history. This is to be followed by other volumes and we can only look forward to them.

It is really cool so CHECK IT OUT!! Especialy if you like axis and allies.

A well-thought-out adaptation of the classic Axis & Allies board game. Standard rules and units are slightly modified in some cases to nudge the game closer to historical accuaracy. Other rules create realistic geographical limits on movement and combat. Then there are the political considerations: Will Stalin let the Western Allies camp in his territory? Will the Japanese and Germans be truly able to co-operate like the Allies do? Another neat feature is you can pick and choose from the various rules in three rules sets to match your interests and create an unlimited variety of different opening moves.

This is an excellent enhancement to a great strategy game. There are a lot of new rules in this book, but if you phase them in a few new rules per game it works out great. Gibraltar controls naval movement out of the Mediterranean. Fighters are allowed to intercept and defend navies. Flight ranges are limited to one sea zone in combat, which makes carriers very valuable in the Pacific. German subs in the high seas (outside of the Baltic or the three Mediterranean sea zones) reduce the income of U.S. and Britain. American and British troops are not allowed in Russian territories as long as Russia is in the game... These are just some of the rules that make the game much more realistic. It's a great book! You'll never want to go back to the original rules.

I'm a huge Axis and Allies fan, and I was expecting some great new things to come out of this book. I got it, and I was sorely disappointed. For example, it talks about each country and what they produced such as Germany and subs, America and bombers, etc., and tells you that each country will get free units based on that at the end of each turn. A good idea, but everyone gets almost exactly the same thing! It makes no sense... It goes so far as to include a "Reduced Soviet Effectiveness" rule making all Russian units -1/-1! Infantry that hits on a 0 attacking? Yeah, that's a good one... Sure, the Soviet units were of a lower quality in the war, but they had masses and masses of them to make up for it, which doesn't happen in this game.

This book is frankly just not worth it. You can find thousands of new rules on the internet, and they won't cost you anything...

Enhanced Realism is the best game-expansion book I have ever purchased. This book creates such a level of realism it would amaze any World War II buff. I have played more than 500 games of Axis & Allies and this book will have me starting on another 500.

A new turn order in the game allows the US to start in a crushing manner, but Germany, following, then sends the Russians back on their heels. Limiting flight ranges over land and sea makes maintaining a fleet a lot easier and creates new naval stratagies. Artillery become a huge part of the game by being able to fire at all units. Factories are preplaced on the board now with limited unit placement, which becomes a huge challenge. Everyone will enjoy the extra units each country receives at the end of each turn - with all the pieces you can bring in, strategy and game variation will be immense. Still, I have no doubt that anyone not choosing to check out this book will miss out on hours of strategic challenges and fun. You will not regret buying this one.

This is an excellent introduction to a subject unjustly ignored by English-speaking historians; to date, it is still the only comprehensive account of Romania's military involvement in WW2 in English. Very well written and lavishly illustrated with maps and diagrams, it is invaluable for anyone interested in operations on the Eastern Front.

However, it does have a number of shortcomings. On the minor side, a short guide to Romanian pronunciation would have been useful, and there should have been uniformity in the usage of Romanian diacritics; as it is, they seem to have been used haphazardly. An appendix with summary biographical data on the Romanian officers mentioned in the text would also have been a valuable addition.

A more serious flaw is the absence of a detailed bibliography; but the single most important shortcoming is the lack of a critical apparatus. There are no footnotes or endnotes to indicate the sources of various statements, so there's no way to verify their accuracy, consider the context, or follow them further.

The book has been too long out of print. One hopes that a reprint is not too far off; but I suppose that a new edition, including attributions, is a little too much to hope for.

Although Romania's contribution to World War II, both on the Axis and Allied sides, was much greater than Italy's, it has received very little attention in the West. This is mainly because almost all Romanian action was on the Eastern Front, save for air actions against Western Allied planes raiding over Romanian oil-refining plants, and therefore got little attention from West-oriented historians. Axworthy has remedied this situation with this dry, thorough, careful overview of the Romanian experience in World War II. This is a valuable reference tool, but not for pleasure reading...hopefully, the change in circumstances in Eastern Europe will eventually bring out livelier memoirs of Romanian veterans before they all pass away.

This book is not just the only English-language book on its subject, but it stands comparison with the best English-language studies of any individual country's armed forces in WWII.

The book has ten chapters. Chapter 1 is a survey of Romania and its armed forces prior to the war. Chapters 2-6 each cover one annual campaign over 1941-45. Chapter 7 is on Romanian armour, Chapter 8 is on the Romanian aircraft industry, Chapter 9 is on Romanian air force operations and Chapter 10 is on Romanian naval operations.

The book is packed with unique research, maps, line drawings, charts, organigrams and photographs, virtually none of which are available elsewhere. There is also a most comprehensive index.

I hesitate to describe any WWII book as definitive or indispensable on its subject, but "Third Axis, Fourth Ally" comes as close as any. Indeed, I consider it one of the ten most important books on the Eastern Front in WWII, dealing, as it does, with the third most important participant and its armed forces.

For anyone interested in the military history of WWII, I recommend it most strongly.

P. A. S. Jefferson

"Barbarossa" is a collection of different essays born as the by-product of a conference held in 1991 at the Institute For International Studies of the University of Leeds. The subject of that meeting was Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi attack to the Soviet Union in 1941) and its consequence. While not a conference report, it is somewhat a collation of writing growing out of that meeting, the main "evolving factor" has been - of course - the collapse of the old Soviet Union, and all the opportunities and difficulties that the end of Cold War has presented to the Eastern Front historian.

This said, "Barbarossa" is a wildly uneven effort. On paper, the list of contributors is nothing short of superb: John Erickson, Gabriel Gorodetsky, John Chapman, Klaus-Jurgen Muller are among the writers. The topics covered are - too - a real treat for anyone into the subject: the book is divided in three sections: "Germany Turns East" (covering the prelude and the immeditate aftermath of Barbarossa), "Strained Alliances, Flawed Strategies" (on the complicate tangle of open or covered alliance coagulating after the Nazi attack began), and "Conflict, Compromise, Cost" (on the such controversial issues as Soviet losses, collaboration with the invaders and German war crimes). Unfortunately the quality of the material is not always brilliant and, alas, the Russian contribution is disappointing, being more concerned on then-current political issues (and rather generic "put the blame on Stalin") rather than historical research. The short essay by Dimitri Volkogonov (then a political adviser of Boris Yeltsin) is particularly lame. Some of the rest could have been better, and there's a distinct lack of uniformity in the editing of the text - some is laced with errors.

Anyway, I still give "Barbarossa" four stars, because it contains at least three gems. The first is Gabriel Gorodetsky's "Allied Strategy On The Wake Of Barbarossa", an analisys of the contradictory views held by western powers over the possibility of Soviet survival to the Nazi onslaught. Much of that material went into Gorodetsky recent masterpiece "The Grand Delusion", so I refer the readers to the latter volume.

The second piece of interest is John Chapman's "The Imperial Japanese Navy and the North-South Dilemma", a terrific insight on how the Japanese Navy: a) correctly forecasted a Nazi defeat as early as the second week of July 1941 and b) greatly influenced the Japanese diplomacy into a strategy bent on making their way out of the Russo-German conflict, and convicing Hitler of the reverse. This chapter is expecially well researched, and make a convicing case of Japanese total unwillingness to attack Stalin from the east.

The last great item is John Erickson's "Soviet War Losses - Calculation and Controversies", an overview of what we reasonably know about the scale of Soviet human cost on WWII. The numbers are presented in a concise and clear way, divided by period and single operation. It is interesting to know that, according to the most reliable sources, the final "KIA loss ratio" (Erickson calls it "dynamics of combatant losses") between Russian and Germans is not far for being 1 to 1, and the German efficency of inflicting total casualties on Soviets was around 1,5 to 1 - quoting Erickson "a far cry from the more hysterical assessment of Soviet ineptitude"). If you want to make your own opinion, the hard numbers are here.

The book (now out of print) is quite expensive, so make sure you're serious about the topic before you buy. However, a truly interesting document.

At first I was upset that they changed scale with these newer sets in the Axis and Allies game. I had bought some of the previous packs and the new vehicles are much bigger. However, I discovered that the new vehicles are full 15mm scale. The previous vehicles were smaller than 15mm, though the soldiers were 15mm. Now that I've gotten over the change, I love the new sets. They are much more compatible with other standard 15mm mini games, like "Flames of War" or Two Hour Wargames' "Nuts!". The quality is pretty good for prepainted miniatures. I will be buying a lot of these. Do be advised though that the airplanes are still a smaller scale than 15mm.

The varied sizes of the armored vehicles means that some vehicles fit in just fine with traditional HO scale armor, others are way too tiny alongside another. The infantry are just too small to notice any detail. You need to either read what's on the bottom of the base (not always easy) or keep the card handy to figure out just what infantry figure you have. There are 6mm figures that are easier to differentiate! Lastly, the rules are lame. You want playable rules, try mine (Bloody Tarawa/Bocage) in The Games of War. There are 39 sets of rules covering every period, and all more playable than these!The Games of War: A Treasury of Rules for Battles with Toy Soldiers, Ships and Planes

I have been a long time collector of Axis and Allies Miniatures and was looking for a less expensive alternative to fill gaps in my collection. 1939-1945 booster packs were NOT the solution, although less expensive the armored fighting vehicles are of a different scale. The tanks, and wheeled vehicles are quite detailed and the frequency of finding what you need are improved, but you can NOT use these miniatures with the minatures from the other expansions. For example a U.S. M4 Sherman from 1939-1945 booster is almost the same size as a German King Tiger from earlier expansion sets. Quite a disappointment, and I hope that Hasbro/Wizards does not continue with this in future expansions.