Robert J. Edwards

This is a tough book to classify or shelve. While the book's subtitle proclaims it to be "A History of German Armored Reconnaissance Units in World War II", it is both more and less than that. The book contains organizational and doctrinal information as well as detailed information about vehicles and uniforms. I think Shrike58 is correct in calling this work a compendium.

The author of this work, Robert Edwards, has a personal stake in this topic as he was a U.S. Army armor officer. U.S. Army armored cavalry formations are successors to these German armored formations, many of which were not fully armored as battalion-sized units. There's a lot to digest in the book's 518 pages. Starting with a foreward and some technical notes, Edwards provides five chapters of text. Chapter 1 discusses the development of armored reconnaissance units in the German army, while Chapter 2 details the specific organization of those units as the war progressed. Chapter 3 highlights the vehicles of the units while Chapter 4 dives into the details about what these soldiers wore as well as their distinctive insignia. Chapter 5 completes the text by tracking the various reconnaissance formations from their formation to their surrender or destruction and includes lists of their commanders and major award winners. The book's single appendix contains a table of rank equivalents--as three of World War II German armed services contained armored reconnaissance formations, their members naturally held ranks unique to each service. The book also contains endnotes and bibliography.

To put this book together, Edward exploits his fluency in German, taking advantage of a job posting in Europe to research at the Bundesarchive military archives at Freiburg. However there are plenty of gaps in Freiburg's holdings, and the effect of those missing records is evident in those parts of the book dependent upon a narrative--namely Chapters 1 and 2. However, these chapters benefit from the brief combat action narratives that the author inserts periodically. Chapter 3, detailing the vehicles of the armored reconnaissance forces, uses James Bradford's drawings, which are not considered as accurate as those of Hilary Doyle in the Panzer Tracts series. Interestingly, Edwards cites Panzer Tracts as some of his sources--perhaps he could not get permission to use Doyle's drawings for this book. I would like to have seen more details about the motorcycles used by the motorcycle infantry units that eventually became part of the armored reconnaissance formations. Chapter 4 is clearly based upon the author's previous work on German World War II uniforms, but such a complex topic is ill-served by such a brief rendering. Chapter 5 is difficult to follow. Edwards arranged the chapter in numerical order of formations, but the information for each formation is not arranged well and is difficult to follow.

This book looks like an assemblage of related topics that could not stand on their own in a single volume. However, it is a useful collection of information if only for a small audience. The modeling community is best placed to take advantage of what this book offers. The combination of vehicle and uniform details, the combat narratives, and the many photographs, most coming from private soldiers' collections, offer the modeler rich resources for modeling projects. My understanding of these reconnaissance formations has improved. However, I suspect that insufficient historical material survived the war to support a definitive account.… (mehr)

While billed as a "history" of German recon units this work is better described as a "compendium," as it contains everything from German memos on tactical doctrine to images of memorabilia that can be associated with Wehrmacht armored-car units. With this being the case one should probably have a good background in the German military of the Interwar period to get the most out it. Bob Citino's "The Path to Blitzkrieg" would be particularly useful, since Citino spends quality time dealing with the efforts to do something useful with the horse cavalry units the Versailles treaty had saddled the German army with.… (mehr)