Propaganda Kompanien: PK War Reporters of the Third Reich

This book discusses the use of German Propaganda Companies in WWII. These units produceded news stories, photos, films and radio broadcasts and were responsible to three audiences: soldiers in the field, domestic audiences and "enemy" audiences. They were also responsible for censorship. Overall, PKs did the combined jobs of Public Affairs, PSYOPS and OPSEC... all of which come under the umbrella of Information Operations in modern doctrine.This book has some excellent photos of PKs in action, examples of many of the print products produced by them and some good information about equipment, manning and doctrine used by the units. On the downside the book has typos, some translations from French to English are not done correctly, its organization is problematic and it seems to jump around quite a bit.One photo on page 65 is mis-captioned: it describes an interview of a soldier, going into some technical detail of the microphone and hookup. It is, in fact, a photo of the grave of a war reporter. At times, it seems as if the author is about to tell you something but it never goes anywhere... for example, on page 68 in a box the author writes that a man responsible for the organization of Luftwaffe PKs disappeared in 1963. Disappeared? In an avalanche? According to pension records? Because a UFO picked him up? The text never explains.Some of the text is still in French, where either the translator missed it or where the wrong text was laid out. Also, the text is repetitions at times: the book explains what a bottle microphone is in at least three places.I did enjoy the book as it is the only one I've come across in English which really explains what these units did. I wish the book would have perhaps been organized just by campaign or perhaps in chronological order by service. It would have been better to show some of the printed products associated with specific PKs. Still, I learned far more than I knew before.

This book is about the very exciting subject of German Propagandakompanie (PK) in WW2. There are not many books written on the subject and preciously few in English.This book has some great photos, both regarding quality and subjects. Even some in color that looks fantastic. Text wise the book suffers from a very bad translation from what I figure is a French text from the beginning. Overall the impression I found was that the translation and layout was somewhat rushed. Several repetitions of paragraphs of text are found in the book. There are even some French word still untranslated (Engagment à l'Est on page 82 instead of Engagment in the East on page 88). The contents page doesn't have any page references. I also think the title could be a little more explanatory as the book end abruptly after Stalingrad 1942/43. Overall a rushed book with potential that requires a lot more time in the oven.

If you want to see rare photographs this is a very interesting book. However, the captioning of many of the photographs is very poor and is sometimes repeated verbatim.But the biggest problem is that Amazon advertise this as having 300 pages. It only has 176 pages, and this does not justify the Amazon price.

Alles hat bestens geklappt!