Schiffer Publishing

The German National Railway in World War II

by  Janusz Piekalkiewicz (translation by Dr. Edward Force)

Reviewed By  Kip Rudge, IPMS# 40597

MSRP: $45.00 ISBN: 978-0-7643-3097-1 Website: www.schifferbooks.com If the Wehrmacht was the mailed fist of the Nazis, the German railroad system was the artery that provided their ability to punch. There is certainly no comparison between the amount of ink spent describing the fighting arms of the Nazis and the German rail system. Logistics just ain’t sexy. But it is every bit as important as the Panther tank, Focke-Wulf or U-Boat in the story of World War II. The history and operations of the German rail system -- which at one time extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Volga River and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Circle – has never been well served by historians. Janusz Pielkalkiewicz addresses that situation in the book’s foreword by stating that the administrator of the Reichsbahn, General Rudolph Gercke, had virtually every official Reichsbahn record destroyed. In addition, he destroyed his personal diaries before dying in an American POW camp in 1946. Given the Reichsbahn’s complicity in the Holocaust, this was not unexpected. Because of this, the true story of the Reichsbahn will probably never be known. This book presents a compendium of both photos and anecdotes of the war years. As a reference book, it lacks hard data. But it also lacks a cohesive organization to keep the reader from establishing context between what is written and the photos. So, if one is attempting to establish places and dates, this book just doesn’t lend itself to that. Piekalkiewicz does an admirable job of framing the enormous problems facing the Reichsbahn in the early war years as Germany expanded towards Asia and the aerial onslaught from 1944-45. The book does provide hundreds of photos of railroads in France, Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe. Good, clear photos printed large enough to make out details. The photos are captioned, but I question many of the captions. I cannot refute the captions, but in a series of photos the captions date as 1944, the German uniforms are distinctly early war. And other pictures dated 1941 or thereabouts, the soldiers involved are wearing 1943 tunics and feldmutzes. The German railroad system is truly the last frontier in the study of the German war machine. This book sheds a little light on that but still leaves me wanting. The definitive history of the Reichsbahn is still waiting to be written. However, this book does hold interest for the modeler and dioramist, as the photos provide fertile ground for both. Thanks to Schiffer Publishing for the review copy.