History Facts

amazon.com 09/10 (Doug Nash)
Superb Book covering one of the Eastern Front’s “Forgotten” Battles A lot of ink has been spilled covering some of the well-known decisive battles that took place on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 – epic confrontations such as the ones that took place before the gates of Moscow, inside and outside of Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad, Kursk, Operation Bagration and the Battle for Berlin – but not much on the myriad battles that took place between these events. One such ‘forgotten” battle involved the fighting for the Estonian city of Narva. The struggle for this city raged for nearly six months, from the first Red Army offensive that began on 3 February 1944 until it fell on 26 July. During this battle, thousands of men were killed and wounded on both sides – mainly Russians and Germans, of course – but also thousands of Europeans, including Estonians, Lithuanians, Dutch, Belgians, Danes and Norwegians, volunteers (for the most part) who fought in the ranks of the Waffen-SS... More of a classic siege than a fluid battle, the German defense of Narva withstood several all-out attempts by the Red Army to cross the Narva River and seize the two flanking fortresses of the Hermannsburg and Ivangorod and throw them out of Estonia...

Mr. Denton’s book reads like a blow-by-blow description of the battle, drawing the reader into the unfolding events almost as if he were standing in the German command post. Relying heavily on German war diaries kept in the Bundesarchiv-Militaerarchiv in Freiburg, Soviet war records stored in the TsAMO Central Military Archive in Podolsk, surviving veterans’ interviews and a wealth of post-war German and Soviet accounts, the author has done his homework well, interweaving the various stories in a seamless fashion. If the reader, whether a war-gamer or history buff, is looking for detail, this book has got it, with a plethora of notes and sources detailing numbers of men, tanks, artillery pieces, and aircraft used in each of the several main battles and supporting engagements that took place during the siege. He has thoughtfully provided an extremely useful set of appendices, that describe equivalent military ranks, Soviet and German orders of battle, troop losses, and military biographies of the key German and European leaders.

Rounding out the book is a superb set of maps that clearly and graphically portrays the action, painstakingly detailing the location and movement of the various units, both German and Soviet, as they grappled with one another during the six-month siege. They are some of the best that the reviewer has ever seen and compliment the text superbly. Also noteworthy is the section of the book dedicated to contemporary photographs, many of which were taken from newsreels and have not been seen in the west by most historians. Mr. Denton has also used ... photographs from the German and Russian archives, from German and European veterans....

The book itself is in the large 8” x 11” hardcover format and the text is easily readable without having to resort to a magnifying glass. Overall, a superb first effort and this reviewer, for one, is looking forward to Mr. Denton’s future efforts.