This book, Waffen-SS Commanders: Augsberger to Kreutz, is the first of two volumes by Mark C Yerger providing biographies of the commanders who commanded the division sized (and above) units of the Waffen-SS.

Following an introduction (where Yerger speaks first of his thoughts on the post-war fate of the commanders and soldiers of the Waffen-SS and later of how the people covered in the book was selected), the book provides a list of the divisions and higher commands as well as a selection of tactical symbols before moving on to the actual biographies.

The length and depth of the biographies varies greatly, the ones on the well-known characters, such as Paul Hausser cover some twenty pages, but the ones on lesser known ones, such as Alfred Borchert, only cover two pages. The pre-war life of the commanders are covered briefly before moving on to their wartime careers which is covered in great detail and finally their postwar fate is covered on one or two lines. A very important part of all the biographies are the huge amount of photos, with something like half of the pages devoted to each commander is covered with large and high quality photos.

Also included in the biographies are order of battle diagrams on a selection of units and at the end of the book a list of the field post numbers of the Waffen-SS units per 1943.

The commanders covered in this book are:
Franz Augsberger
Adolf Ax
Erich von dem Bach (born vom dem Bach-Zelewski)
Otto Baum
Hellmuth Becker
Otto Binge
Wilhelm Bittrich
Georg Bochmann
Friedrich-Wilhelm Bock
Alfred Borchert
Kurt Brasack
Karl Brenner
Karl Burk
Lothar Debes
Leon Degrelle
Dr Eduard Deisenhofer
Carl-Maria Demelhuber
Josef Dietrich ("Sepp")
Helmuth Dörner
Theodor Eicke
Hermann Fegelein
Fritz Freitag
Karl Gesele
Herbert Gille
Curt von Gottberg
Josef Grassy
Werner Hahn
Desiderius Hampel
Peter Hansen
Heinz Harmel
Walter Harzer
Paul Hausser
Nikolaus Heilmann
Constantin Heldmann
Richard Herrmann
Friedrich Jeckeln
Otto Jungkunz
Hans Kempin
Georg Keppler
Matthias Kleinheisterkamp
Fritz Klingenberg
Hugo Kraas
Fritz Kraemer
Karl Kreutz

This book is excellent if you are looking for either a book with biographies of Waffen-SS commanders or a photo history of the Waffen-SS.

(Reviewed by Marcus Wendel)