After The Battle, Issue 50

This issue commences with a From The Editor feature giving updates and readers’ contributions on stories from previous issues.  Topics related to include the Battle of the Bulge battlefields, the death of Himmler, Enigma, Pearl Harbor, Slapton Sands, wreck recovery in Malta plus many more.

The main feature in this issue is titled The Soviet Victory In Europe, May 1945 : May 1985.  This covers the last battles to be fought on Soviet territory and was written as a result of the After The Battle being invited to visit the Soviet Union to attend the Victory Parade on May 9^th 1985.  With such access and a guide provided by the Novosti Press Agency this allowed many opportunities for the team to produce their trademark “Then and Now” format of photographs.  A wealth of photographs from Minsk and Moscow are presented, many showing German prisoners being marched into captivity after their defeats.  An overview of the final fighting is given and the article concludes with coverage of the 1985 Victory Parade.

The following article, The Japanese Surrender, looks at the complexity of this process where the Pacific theatre of operations had no overall supreme but was divided up into separate commands.  A full compilation of all the formal Japanese surrenders is listed and the article is well illustrated with many photographs of these surrenders.

This issue concludes with a four-page article in the Readers’ Investigations format and titled Fallingbostel.  This was the site of a German barracks during the war and is now a barracks of the British Army.  The history is explored by a British army captain after items were discovered during excavation work at the barracks.

Another 54 pages of fascinating reading from this respected publication.  Well illustrated throughout with black and white photographs many following the familiar “Then and Now” theme.