Gerald R Kleinfeld

When the Third Reich went to war against the Soviet Union in 1941, they did not do so alone. Their campaign was a multinational effort to which several of Germany's allies contributed contingents of varying sizes. One of the most enthusiastic participants to this effort was Spain, which supplied a division of infantry. Officially incorporated into the German army as the 250th Infantry Division, it was called the Blue Division after the blue shirts the fascist Falangist volunteers sported. Its members served on the Eastern Front for over two years, until the need to distance his country from the increasing likelihood of Germany's defeat led Spain's leader, Francisco Franco, to order their withdraw in the autumn of 1943, though volunteers continued to serve in German units until the end of the war.

As an aspect of the larger European effort against the Soviet Union in the Second World War the Blue Division justifies a study that evaluates its contribution to the campaign within the context of Spain's informal engagement with the conflict. Unfortunately this is not what Gerald Kleinfeld and Lewis Tambs provide in this book. Instead of offering readers a systematic analysis that evaluates the combat performance of the division or considers their activities within the context of German-Spanish relations the two authors provide only a basic narrative of the unit's combat operations, one that romanticizes the Spaniards' effort and relies too much on national stereotypes to explain their behavior. While many readers will no doubt be entertained by the stories of guripas engaging snipers and bravely withstanding Soviet attacks it contains, overall the book disappoints as a history of the division's performance or an assessment of its role in the war, and is worth reading only for the lack of a better English-language book on the subject.… (meer)