After World War II, large military vehicles were scattered across the European countryside. Large, difficult to move, and now without a use, they've settled in as monuments and tributes to the battles that passed. Understandably, by the end of the war the battlefields were littered with debris, the most obvious being knocked out tanks and other armored vehicles. Tanks—big lumps of metal—were usually sold for scrap but museums acquired examples and many others were used as battlefield memorials. These survivors of the battles of World War II reflect in many ways the numbers built on both sides: there are many M4 Shermans,T-34s, Tigers, Panthers, Cromwells, Churchills, Somuas and Char-Bs. Each survivor, either on a memorial plinth or in a museum, has a story to tell—from the T-34 pulled out of an Estonian bog to the Tiger I at Vimoutiers to the badly damaged Panther at Houffalize. Some, like the multitude of M4s in France, show the path of the Allied armies as they too back Europe from the Axis powers. Each one of these armored titans are a testament to heroism and they commemorate American heroism during the battle of the Bulge or French 2e DB’s Bourg La Reine outside Phalsbourg and Champagne part of the force that destroyed the German 112th Panzer Brigade at Dompaire. There are equally as many T-34s in the east: from Berlin’s Tiergarten to Gdansk or Studzianki Pancerne in Poland; there are examples in Finland and Bosnia, and many in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—from Moscow to Sevastopol, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) to Leningrad. Other Russian tanks to seen include KV-1s, KV-85s, IS-2s, BT-7s, Su-76s, and any others. Survivors: Battlefield Relics of World War II looks in detail at a number of these vehicles, telling their stories as to why they have survived and why they are placed where we can see them today. It also identifies the locations of many other World War II armored vehicles. While the majority of these locations are in continental Europe—east and west—one or two are in Britain and the United States. Appendices provide maps and a gazetteer showing the locations of the tanks with suggested itineraries so that the reader can organize trips to visit the vehicles of the Normandy landings, the race across France and the Low Countries, the battle of the Bulge, the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad, the battle of Kharkov, siege of Berlin, and other major campaigns.




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