Hans-Dieter Handrich

This is a massive book on the renowned German assault rifle (the worlds first), the Sturmgewehr. The book is truly massive in size. It is a large format book, 569 pages in length and nearly every page is double column, so each page contains a large amount of information. There are large numbers of pictures and blueprints/diagrams throughout the book. The author starts off by giving the reader some background to the Germans drive for a autoloading German rifle. The text then goes into the eventual development of the rifle that would become the Stg44. Much of the book is focused on technical aspects of the rifles that lead up to the Stg44. It is still fascinating to see how this weapon was originally developed, and the fact that the weapons department at the OKH had to overcome Hitler's unwillingness to order the full production of the weapon. In fact, Hitler even forbade further development of the weapon early on. The OKH wisely disobeyed Hitler, and continued development, and even field trials of the weapon. Hitler eventually gave in, and ok'd the full production, but by then they were dealing with a shortage of the new Kurze ammunition. The book goes on to describe the trials and tribulations of getting the weapon into the hands of the troops. What I was a little disappointed in, was that the book had very few first person accounts by soldiers in the field using the weapon. I wanted to hear a lot more about how the soldiers who used it, felt about the new weapon. Overall though, the book is definitely a gold mine of info on the Stg44. In fact, I am sure there is no other book out there that comes even remotely close to the amount of info on the Stg44 as this book does. I would highly recommend this book if you are interested in German WWII weaponry.… (more)