Ian Baxter is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth-century military history. He has written more than forty books including Poland – The Eighteen Day Victory March, Panzers in North Africa, The Ardennes Offensive, The Western Campaign, The 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitlerjugend, The Waffen-SS on the Western Front, The Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front, The Red Army at Stalingrad, Elite German Forces of World War II, Armoured Warfare, German Tanks of War, Blitzkrieg, Panzer-Divisions at War, Hitler’s Panzers, German Armoured Vehicles of World War Two, Last Two Years of the Waffen-SS at War, German Soldier Uniforms and Insignia, German Guns of the Third Reich, Defeat to Retreat: The Last Years of the German Army at War 1943–1945, Operation Bagration – the destruction of Army Group Centre, German Guns of the Third Reich, Rommel and the Afrika Korps, U-Boat War, and most recently The Sixth Army, the Road to Stalingrad, German Mountain Troops, and Himmler’s Nazi Concentration Camp Guards. He has also written over 100 articles including ‘Last Days of Hitler’, ‘Wolf’s Lair’, ‘Story of the VI and V2 Rocket Programme’, ‘Secret Aircraft of World War Two’, ‘Rommel At Tobruk’, ‘Hitler’s War with his Generals’, ‘Secret British Plans to Assassinate Hitler’, ‘SS At Arnhem’, ‘Hitlerjugend’, ‘Battle Of Caen 1944’, ‘Gebirgsjäger at War’, ‘Panzer Crews’, ‘Hitlerjugend Guerrillas’, ‘Last Battles in the East’, ‘Battle of Berlin’ and many more. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film Production Companys worldwide, and lectures to various schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.
Many of the photographs in this volume showing the liberation of Belsen were obtained with the kind permission of the Imperial War Museum in London. The photographs were taken by the British Army Film and Photographic Unit and prove beyond any reasonable doubt the pain and horror that was inflicted on the inmates of the camp.
Other photographs in this book were collected over a period of years by the author showing SS guards, notably the infamous ‘Totenkopf’ (Death’s Head) while training or on duty. Imagery by the Germans relating to the operations of Belsen is almost non-existent and unpublished material very scarce. The author has striven throughout to show in photographic form, at least to some degree, the life of the SS soldier while operating inside and outside the concentration camp. To maintain a balance, photographs from the Imperial War Museum have been used showing extensively the liberation and what the British found upon entering the camp.