by Gordon Williamson, colour plates by Vladimir Vuksic
Osprey Publishing Ltd, ISBN 1-84176-416-7, 64 pages
This book deals with some of the lesser-known units of the Wehrmacht, the Feldgendarmerie and Feldjaegers. The Feldgendarmerie were straightforward military policemen, at the beginning largely recruited from the German police forces and responsible for all the usual military police functions – traffic control, prisoner escort, etc. The Feldjaegers were recruited from decorated combat veterans and played a wider role. They added to the normal MP duties the forming of ad hoc battle groups, by rounding up stragglers and anyone else who happened to be available, and were also empowered to hold field courts martial and carry out their own sentences.
There were also less savoury units, including the Security Police and the Einsatzgruppen. These were involved in the rounding up of Jews and other “undesirables” and I will not comment further on them. The various SS “volunteer” units are covered in this book too, such as Florian Geyer and Hanschar, and even the Kaminski Brigade is included. Some were genuine combat units with a good reputation, but others seem to have been more interested in looting and murder. There’s even a sequence of photographs taken for a unit commander showing some of these scum in “action”, a salutary sight for anyone who thinks the Holocaust never took place.
Despite this darker side, the book is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to model German MPs correctly. Their uniforms and badges are shown in the photographs and plates, and were more varied than one might imagine. Recommended, with reservations about the coverage of the killer units though at least their inclusion allows modellers to identify them when looking at photographs in other books.
