The 8th Waffen-SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer": An Illustrated History (Divisions of the Waffen-SS, 4)

Research history

GREAT BOOK, TELLS THE STORY WELL! ROGER

This a good basic book on SS CAV. DIV.FLORIAN GEYER..But as such,it doesn't show much in detail as I would like.Not enough info on anti partisan sweeps or villages burnt down.Just too clean.Also I understand the original was published in Italian.But I didn't appreciate Italian Maps in MY ENGLISH EDITION!!!!!!! Pictures are great.Captions are OK.

The book looks nice from the cover and has decent photos. The maps are in Italian, which makes selling a book in English script seem lazy. Maps do not have a scale; however, if they did, the scale would provide distances that make no sense. The abbreviations are a bit silly when it comes to military rank having a feel of a guessing game. The history of the Florian-Geyer is a novice read that does provide an overview to someone trying to understand the basics.

The text of this book is well-written and the English translations of the many German documents cited in the book is excellent. It is an easy book to read. This 160-page book provides an abbreviated history of the division from its roots in the riding schools of the 1930s to its actions in Poland in 1939, the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, reorganizations and later combat in Russia through its end in Budapest in 1945. I did not see very many new previously unpublished photos and many of the photos in the book suffered from low resolution and darkness. The notion of SS Cavalry gallantly charging across the plains of Russia to do battle with the enemy is a truly romantic concept. However, the truth concerning the SS-Kavellerie Brigade’s actions is far from the images of glory that have been created about this formation since the beginning of its actions. One has to drill deeply down from the code words in documents, SS propaganda and post-war revisionist writing to get at the truth. Unfortunately, the author appears to have limited his research to only those sources that provide a favorable image of the SS cavalry. This book completely overlooks the deliberate mass murder of tens of thousands of Jewish men, women and children in a manner akin to the Einsatzgruppen. One example is the murder of 7,000 – 8,000 Jews in the town of Pinsk in August 1941 by SS-Kavallerie Rgt.2. The Ritterkreuzträger Gustav Lombard reported that his SS-Kavallerie Rgt.1 executed 6,450 Jews and 411 Red Army men up to 11 August 1941. I don’t understand how a serious writer could overlook these atrocities while focusing on “anti-partisan” actions and battle with “looters”. However, the repeated references to partisans in this book and in German after-action reports can be better understood by taking note of this comment made by Gustav Lombard in September 1941 at a joint-service anti-partisan conference hosted by Herres Gruppe Mitte, “The Jew is the Partisan!” These crimes and many others are established by the extensive records of investigations and judicial action of the post-war German legal system against leading SS cavalry members maintained by the Bundesarchiv Aussenstelle, Ludwigsburg. There is no indication that the author consulted the records of that archive. The widespread atrocities and brutality committed by nearly all members of the SS cavalry, even cooks and clerks, during the early part of the war reflects so negatively on the on this unit’s membership to make them completely unworthy of any future glory. Yet, throughout the book the author constantly attempts to glorify these murderers with his prose. He even refers to the “Tragic End of Herman Fegelein”. What could be tragic about the death of a mass murderer? The effort that the author put into this book was clear, but it could have been so much better if a more objective approach had been taken and such excellent references as these being consulted, Pieper, Henning Fegelein’s Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare, 2014 Cüppers, M., Wegbereiter der Shoah: die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939 – 1945, 2005 I do not recommend this book because it lacks objectivity, appears to be poorly researched and does not present a complete story of the SS cavalry.

Well done focus on the oft ignored cavalry divisions. Lacks detail and combat reports for 1942-43 period. Only two real OBs and without numbers of staff within sub-units that one would hope for in a work that focuses on a single division.