Book Review for 1945 by AK Productions

First, off, sorry I have not posted in awhile. Holidays +  Getting married = Not a ton of time for modeling and gaming. But, I decided some book reviews might be in order. So, we're going to start with a book by AK Productions that will be of some interest to the Battlegroup: Fall of the Reich player, especially those building a German army. (Note: I have an electronic version of the book from Google Books, sadly, dead tree versions are hard to come by and expensive).

Title: 1945 - German Colors
Publisher: AK Productions
Date and Place of Copyright: Madrid, 2012
Details: 76 pages, with 180 color renderings

Cover Image taken from Amazon.com

So, one would think, why the special attention on the German army in 1945, right? I mean it's the same three color camo, right? Dunkelgelb with Olivegrun and Rottbrun, right? Um, not quite, as it turns out.

So, what are the big surprises to a guy like me? Well, I'd been using the Panzer Colors series and the Squadron Signal series books (Blitzkrieg, D-Day to Berlin and Eastern Front) as my go-tos. None of them as it turns out, do much to cover the German Army in 1945. So this book fills a real need.

For example, how many of us knew out there that the Germans after September of 1944, that the Germans decided to use the red-brown oxide primer as the base color for their AFV, or that the Dunkelgelb had changed formulas, (and wound up being two versions!), and thus, shades (yes, I am a bit of a rivet counter when it comes to paint schemes). The Greens and Browns are well have multiple shades, and well, there was also all sorts of older paints being broken out...and yep, the German vehicles look different.

Taken from Sunward Hobbies.com

As you can see the renderings are very well done, and while each render only gets about a sentence or two, it does do a good job of describing the image, and where and when this particular vehicle was seen.

Yes, they've got some items for the 1946 Paper Panzers as they call them, but it doesn't detract from the historicals section at all, and even some ideas for burnt out vehicles (yep, wrecks done in detail!). I also like the fact they covered older vehicles that were brought out from training detachments.

It's got quite the breath and depth of images and places to choose from for your German army for 1945.

Sadly, it's only really available in the electronic realm, but a good tablet should be able to render the images very nicely.

I would say, if you're doing a Fall of the Reich German army, I would get this book, as it's got a lot of inspiration in it's pages.

I give it 4 out of 5 tanks, if you can get the dead tree version of this book for an affordable price, do so!