Barbarossa Campaign 1941: Hungarian Perspective, by Peter Mujzer

Length: 152 pages

This is the story of Hungary's involvement in the opening phase, Summer and Fall of 1941, of the Axis campaign in Russia. Mujzer starts by telling us the source of many of his pictures. The site fortepan.hu has many of the pictures he uses, as I've looked at it and can say there's a lot there, just be patient in searching.

Anyway, Mujzer talks about Hungary between the wars and how little preparedness there had been, between Allied observation and the Great Depression. They got much of their equipment from Italy and Germany, as well as some trucks from Britain and the U.S., and some license built tanks from Sweden. Hungary was brought into the war by an air raid on the town of Kassa, now Kosice in Slovakia, on 26 June, 1941. Their part in Barbarossa now was composed of their Fast Corps and border guards, and Air Force, being part of the invasion of Ukraine. Muzjer uses maps to show us the corridor they went on, ending up in October, 1941 at Izyum.

The text includes an account of Hungary's last cavalry charge at Nikolayev in August. The campaign wears out their vehicles and men, and the Germans allowed them to withdraw their force in November, 1941 to go home. Mujzer gives us three pages on the Hungarian Air Force's operations in this battle.

There are some color plates at the end for the tanks and two aircraft.

The biggest problem with this book is the bad translation into English of the original text. It's also sketchy in some details of individual actions. Overall, since there is so little in English about Hungary's part in the Eastern Front campaigns, it is worthy of a look.

3 stars out of 5.