{"id":56,"date":"2010-08-27T06:23:09","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T06:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/?p=56"},"modified":"2014-08-01T14:36:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T14:36:15","slug":"good-books-on-the-early-campaigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/?p=56","title":{"rendered":"Good books on the early ww2 campaigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

A forum post<\/a> on the Matrix forums triggered me to give a quick overview of the best and most informative books I have read on Case White,Yellow and Sealion. To be honest I did not only read books but also cross checked and found a lot of information on a plethora of websites and other games.<\/p>\n

But for getting a feel for a campaign there is nothing going above a good read. I found out a way I really like reading about a campaign is reading the relevant chapters in (auto)biographies of the higher commanders:
\n
\nManstein, Lost Victories
\nGuderian, Panzer Leader
\nVon Bock, War diary
\nFranz Halder, War diary<\/em><\/p>\n

All have big parts devoted to Case White and Yellow and some remarks about Sealion. If you like the subject matter and don’t have Manstein and Guderian yet I think you should really give them a try. They are both excellent reads and provide direct insight without a historian filtering and packaging information for you. Also both generals not only describe events but give excellent analysis.<\/p>\n

However the following books where also informative and some help in designing the scenarios for DC:Blitzkrieg:<\/p>\n

On Case White:
\n-Poland 1939, Birth of Blitzkrieg, Zaloga (osprey campaigns)
\n-The German Campaign in Poland, Kennedy (German report series)<\/em><\/p>\n

On Case Yellow:
\n-To lose a battle, Alistair Horne
\n-Mei 1940 De strijd op Nederlands grondgebied, Piet Kamphuis (not translated unfortunately)<\/em><\/p>\n

On Sealion:
\n-Invasion, Kenneth Macksey<\/em><\/p>\n

Also I read a lot of either horrible or uninformative works which I will not name. However tempting it might be. Except for one since it was the one and only book I could find on the Belgium army in Case Yellow. And if its the only book its the worst and the best book at the same time: De veldtocht van het Belgisch leger in 1940, de Fabribeckers (not translated either)<\/em>… how can a country of over 9 million people have only 1 book on this campaign? To be honest while doing research Belgium was my big shock. It was very hard to find any information on its army and experiences in Case Yellow. As a result of this almost half the Belgium generals depicted in DC:Blitzkrieg don’t even have a portrait picture. <\/p>\n

Drop me a line if you know some better sources on Belgium in Case Yellow, I could have missed some sources since I haven’t tapped French language sources.<\/p>\n

To conclude: If your looking for a good read but do not know where to start I hope my small list of books above will help you out.<\/p>\n

Blog Appendix<\/strong>
\nMy friend Eddy Sterckx went with me to an archive in Belgium and posted the following story earlier. I post it here to show how wastefully time inefficient field research can be.<\/p>\n

\nThought I\u2019d share a funny story here. Viktor Reijkersz, developer of
\nAdvanced Tactics, is working on a new game set in WW2 and was still
\nshort on biographical and other information regarding Belgian Corps
\ngenerals in May 1940 <\/p>\n

As he was attending a conference over here in the weekend anyway we
\nmade plans for doing some archive digging on Monday, yesterday. I had
\ncontacted the Army Historical Archives department by mail and phone
\nand we were all set. So yesterday morning we drove over to the army
\nbase, checked in at the Guard house and were promptly directed to the
\nwrong building. \u201coh, but you want to visit the archives ? that\u2019s in
\nthe *other* number 6 building\u201d – it probably never occurred to
\nBelgian army guys that having 2 buildings with the same number can be
\na tad confusing. Anyway, we got into that other #6 building, and yes,
\nit was the archive but a very friendly guy there explained that if we
\nwanted the *historical* archives we could find them in building 15. <\/p>\n

Once we found that and after signing in a second time a very helpful
\ncurator then immediately posed the 64K question : \u201cthe info you\u2019re
\nlooking for, is that of people born before or after 1890 ?\u201d \u2013 we go
\n\u201cuh, that\u2019s the kind of information we\u2019d like to find out here\u201c \u2013 he
\nthen continued by carefully explaining that if the person is born
\nbefore 1890 his service record is not in the historical archives but
\nin the Army museum across town and we must consult it there. In
\naddition : if the person is born between 1890 and 1900 we must consult
\nhis record here, but the file is actually at the museum and has to be
\nbrought here, but if he\u2019s born after 1900 he\u2019s got the files. <\/p>\n

Needless to say that after some quick checks we found that all Corps
\nlevel generals in 1940 were born before 1890 but the curator suggested
\nwe try the \u201cmedia archives\u201d as well \u2013 why the hell that is again a
\nseparate department I didn\u2019t even bother to ask \u2013 so I called the
\nmedia archives only to find out that in a reorganization they were now
\na part of the army pr department. So I call them and they explain to
\nme that the actual \u201cmedia archives\u201d are now in yet another army base \u2026
\n3 miles from my home. By then we were 100% sure that if we went there
\nwe would be told that they had moved to some other place so I made
\nanother couple of phone calls finally tracing down the guy responsible
\nfor the \u201cmedia archives\u201d. Yup \u2013 he had loads of stuff on May 1940 \u2013
\nmovies, radio broadcasts, army publications \u2026 \u2013 but uh, we wanted
\n*photos* – no, he didn\u2019t have those, they got moved to the Army
\nmuseum but he was working on it to get them back. And that Army museum
\nwas closed on Mondays. <\/p>\n

As I had predicted to Victor we had seen an amazing display of Belgian
\nArmy organization and efficiency that day and we surely weren\u2019t
\ndisappointed \u2013 if the Russians ever invade us there\u2019s no need to hide
\nthe army archives, they\u2019ll never be able to find them anyway. Kafka
\nwas an optimist who had never dealt with our bureaucracy :) <\/p>\n

Greetz,
\nEddy Sterckx\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A forum post on the Matrix forums triggered me to give a quick overview of the best and most informative books I have read on Case White,Yellow and Sealion. To be honest I did not only read books but also … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dcblitzkrieg","category-history-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":795,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrdesigns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}