Concord Publications - a (qualified) thumbs-up......

I guess quite a few people on here are familiar with those A4-sized softback Concord pictorial books. There seem to be dozens of titles from this slightly mysterious Hong-Kong based company. Over the years I've picked up odd titles from fairs and secondhand bookshops and just recently I got them all together......for the Eastern Front alone I have ; -

Soldat - 1 & 2
Battles Of Smolensk and Roslavl
Siege Of Sevastopol
Stalingrad Inferno
Operation Little Saturn
Battle In The East
Fighting Withdrawal

They all have the same format with varying authors ; a couple of pages introduction, then masses of b&w photos and a few colour profiles ( some by good artists such as Ron Volstad ). The very odd thing is - none of them say where the photos come from. Very odd. However, I'd say that 98% of the Eastern Front ones are new to me and in fact look like quality enlargements of photos from personal collections.

Anyhow, I just browsed through the above titles and they are very useful indeed for the militaria collector and equipment buff : plenty of detailed photos of Zeltbahns, weapons, Feldfernsprechers, mess equipment and the like in daily contemporary use. Unlike the similar 'Images of War' series from another publisher ( in which I've found many caption errors ) the Concord titles appear to be very well-researched and thorough.

I like 'em - and in fact I've just ordered a couple more Eastern Front titles off Amazon to add to the above.......

 

their " Panther at war " was/is excellent ..I haven't seen a copy for under £20 anywhere !

 

good idea to add on my Christmas list.

 

Rather like their 'German Armoured Units At Arnhem' which became near-mythical with s/hand prices going stratospheric......

 

I can't remember all the details but the author of that book does not speak highly of Concord. He says he will never deal with them again

 

If a publisher's based in Hong Kong, it's difficult to bang on the door if your royalty cheque doesn't arrive......

Anyhow, two more just arrived : -

Barbarossa
White Hell

Some of the photos in the first one are more familiar, but altogether they make a very browsable compendium of contemporary photos of German field equipment in use.