this book opens with blackwood's great story: the wendigo. B is the master of the setting, noone can create the background and atmosphere like him. a very well written story from Brennan here. and Meloff's story is also an interesting read. derleth is at his best here. i don''t care that much for the guy, have never considered him to be HPL's great successor or anything, but he knows how to write, and i have always considered his story about Ithaqua to be his best contribution. the rest of the stories are well written. i don't think any of chaosium's anthologies contains of so much good writing than this. but good is not great. and the rest of the stories never turns out to be really good. the suspence killed by irrelevant writing going on for too long, mostly. sad. but the book is still wort reading

Lest my review seem capricious, the reader should be advised that Osprey's Men-at-Arms series claims on its own covers that its purpose is to describe, "the uniforms, equipment, history, and organization of the world's military forces, past and present." Unfortunately, the Men-at-Arms series seems to be deviating more and more from that mission statement in recent years and veering toward the exclusive interests of those interested only in uniforms and heraldry. Gordon Williamson's latest volume, The Hermann Göring Division, is far too focused on uniform issues at the expense of providing information on equipment, history or organization of that unit. Indeed, the author spends 20 pages on uniform-related issues and only 17 pages on the unit's history and organization. While the color plates are wonderful - as usual - the text and photographs are far too bland for such an interesting topic.

Williamson skims over the history of the Hermann Göring Division so rapidly that he misses vital facts. He spends only a single paragraph discussing the unit's participation in the Russian Campaign of 1941, but fails to notice that the unit (then a regiment-size battle group) was part of Guderian's panzer group in the final lunge toward Moscow. As for the unit's organization, Williamson provides outlines of the Hermann Göring formation in its regiment, brigade, division and corps-size incarnations, but none of these provide information about authorized or actual strengths. Other than the division commanders, only a handful of other HG formation leaders are mentioned. The discussion of the unit's equipment is practically non-existent; Williamson never discusses artillery, engineers, signals and supply troops. Did the panzer grenadier battalions have trucks or SPWs? While the size of the Men-at-Arms series is certainly a constraint, this author has made no effort to provide anything like unique information about the Hermann Göring division's strength or composition.

It is also odd that this author accepts as Gospel truth that the Hermann Göring Division was an "elite" unit. Yet was this unit really elite or merely the beneficiary of excellent propaganda? Readers should have been cautioned by the author - and were not - that the HG division was established to make the Luftwaffe and its boss look good. Nor does the fact that the troops in the HG division received so many more personal awards and decorations than soldiers in other German panzer divisions necessarily mean that the HG division was better or "elite." In order for a combat unit to be considered elite, it generally needs to have superior training, highly selective personnel recruiting and/or superior equipment. There is little or no evidence that the Hermann Göring Division had any of these benefits. The division began forming in October 1942, based on the original regimental battle group and the remnants of the 5th Fallschirmjäger regiment. The regular army provided tankers to form the HG division's panzer regiment. Much of the division was promptly committed to Tunisia in November 1942 and lost in that campaign. Where was the time for specialized or elite training? Two months after the end in Tunisia and barely into refitting, the re-born HG division had to face the Allied invasion of Sicily, followed by a year of continuous tough fighting in Italy. Not much time for special training while at Salerno, Anzio or Cassino. When the HG division was sent to the Russian front again in July 1944, Williamson notes that the unit still had some Pz III tanks (so much for better equipment!). Indeed, for much of the war the HG division had to make do with the older Pz IV tank as its mainstay and only received the better Panther tank in 1945 as the war was ending. After some initial success against the Russians near Warsaw, the German High Command then made the incredibly stupid decision to upgrade the Hermann Göring Division to corps status. Even before this point, the HG had been forced to induct conscripts into its ranks and this expansion further diluted whatever quality the unit had possessed. Most of the HG Corps, which was never anywhere near full strength, were isolated or destroyed in the heavy fighting around East Prussia in early 1945. Clearly, two factors that worked heavily against the HG unit(s) gaining elite status were constant, non-stop fighting and continuous expansion.

The original HG regimental battle group, which saw service in Scandinavia, France and Russia did enjoy more selectivity in personnel recruiting and had more time for ground combat training. Yet it must be remembered that after 1942, the Luftwaffe was constantly cannibalizing its rear echelons to form ground combat units and few of these men received extensive ground combat training. The eighteen Luftwaffe Field Divisions, formed from excess personnel, were all conspicuous failures in combat - so why should HG have been any different? It is clear that the Hermann Göring Division never held superior training, personnel or equipment to significantly distinguish it from any normal German panzer division. However what the HG division did posses was a high-level sponsor who could extol and exaggerate everything his namesake unit did in order to burnish his own diminishing reputation. There is no doubt that the HG division enjoyed some tactical success in Tunisia (but less than the not-elite 10th, 15th or 21st Panzer Divisions), Sicily, Italy and Poland, but the extent of these successes in comparison to other Wehrmacht units may have been exaggerated. Putting the Hermann Göring Division in the same league as the Grossdeutschland or SS Leibstandarte divisions is a mistake, since those units did enjoy superior equipment, personnel recruitment and had more time to train before combat. Historically, the Hermann Göring Division should probably be viewed as a "wanna-be" unit that was heavily promoted by its benefactor.