Take Budapest! (Will be out soon)

[Kamen Nevenkin]

Will be out this Summer:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Take-Buda ... 2607928079

[Harry64]

Fine, fine Kamen,

after the brilliant "Fire Brigades" a new long-awaited book from you.

Please tell me, as facebook is not my home, is it in hardcover and how many pages have it?

Is it the new title for this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Entrapment-Oper ... 102&sr=1-1

or are these two different titles?

Greets

Harry

[picea]

That looks really good!
I hope I'm not missing something on that site not having facebook account.
How's it going with "Into The Enemy's Den", do you work on it along with this book?

[Michate]

Glad to hear about the prospect of another book by Mr. Nevenkin.

What about "Entrapment" and "Into the Enemy's Den", unfortunately their release has been delayed several times, any scheduled dtaes for them?

[mars]

hi, I check "Take Budapest" at amazon, here is what I find:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Budapest-S ... 915&sr=1-1
Mr. Nevenkin. is this the same book? Why the name of the author is not you?

[Michael Kenny]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Budapest-S ... 915&sr=1-1

As the 'Dan Brown' listed as co-author is he of 'The Da Vinci Code' I suspect Amazon have made a mistake!
This Amazon link is better.

http://www.amazon.com/Take-Budapest-Str ... 075247703X

[mars]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Budapest-S ... 915&sr=1-1

As the 'Dan Brown' listed as co-author is he of 'The Da Vinci Code' I suspect Amazon have made a mistake!
This Amazon link is better.

http://www.amazon.com/Take-Budapest-Str ... 075247703X

Thank you, I noticed this book on amazon UK for sometime, but think it is written by other author, not decide to buy it since I am waiting for the "Entrapment", but then I heard a rumor from stonebooks that "Entrapment" is cancelled, it is a good news that "Take Budapest" by the same author will be available soon.

[Kamen Nevenkin]

After the sex change operation I decided to retain my name, so I'm definitely not Catherine Spence. There is no doubt that I'm not Dan Brown either - it is him who is impersonating me, because, apparently, he has ran out of creative ideas...

http://www.amazon.com/Take-Budapest-Str ... 075247703X

Regarding your other questions - I'll write a reply later on, now I have to call my shrink because after my sudden rise to stardom I'm struggling with some issues that are very common among celebrities like myself...

[Kamen Nevenkin]

OK now, seriously.

I began thinking about writing a book about the battle of Budapest while I was still finishing the "Fire Brigades" (this was probably in 2003...) So, when I finished the "Fire Brigades" in the spring of 2004 (it took JJF four years to publish it...) I started collecting materials for my next project. My intention was to produce a single volume covering the entire period from the end of Oct 44 till mid-Feb 45. As usual, I began with the opening phase of the struggle for Budapest - the attack of the Soviet 46th Army, end of October 44. The conventional knowledge says that the attack was launched because Stalin called Marshal Malinovsky and strictly ordered him to go over to the offensive on the very next day. I was about to subscribe to that myth, but then I came across a an article of a Soviet veteran (now a retired General), Mahmud Gareev, who clearly stated that the situation back then was much different and there were "circumstances". Having read that, I became extremely intrigued and went on a "journey" to find out by myself which those "circumstances" were since Gareev's interview was giving me neither details, nor a direction. It took me three years to build reliable connections with people who work in the Russian archives, but it was worth the effort: I obtained a considerable number of primary documents that turned the entire "phone call story" upside down. Gradually, the chapter took a life of its own and easily grew into a book of its own right. In the last couple of years I rewrote it three times and now I'm more or less satisfied with the end result. Sometimes I think it could be done a lot better, but there were some obstacles: the way the documents of the 46th Army had been written by the operations section of that army is awful, there is gap in the reports of the 2nd Mechanized Corps for the 1st half of Nov 44 and the German unit histories dealing with the period in question are pretty weak. Anyway, all who have read it say it is easy to follow and understand and mix very well first person accounts and operational documents. Well..will see !!!

The idea to write "Entrapment" came to me when I realized how much material would remain unused if I would keep focusing on the most popular stages of the Battle of Budapest: Operation Konrad and the siege of of the city (i.e. those that took place in 1945). There were plenty of primary and secondary sources dealing with the Dec 44 battles around Budapest at my disposal, and apparently, they were about to be left untouched, so I told Duncan Rogers from Helion that it would be a shame to not write a separate book about that very dramatic, but universally unknown phase of the Battle of Budapest (Dec 44), and he embraced the idea right away. The book project was launched without much hesitation: a manuscript was written (by me), photos were ordered from the archives, more than 30 maps and charts were produced in full color and then one of my researchers in an archive of one of the neighboring countries found an incredible set of documents dealing with that period of the battle (more than 1300 pages) so I wrote Duncan that we have to stop because I would rather kill myself than to miss the opportunity to explore and utilize them. I could not finish "Into the Enemy's Den" due to exactly the same reason - in the same archive approx. the same number of "East Prussian" documents were found. This was the shock of my life - I either had to pretend that I have never heard about those collections or to jump the gun and start from the scratch. The kid in me easily won the inner battle and my curiosity took upper hand. Now go figure how much 2500 pages of archival documents cost, save the research fees. Shortly afterwards I came to realization that I would need the respective number of Soviet documents to balance the picture. This brought their total number to about 4000 and above. This COSTS A LOT OF MONEY. But, on the other hand, the feeling that I got from accessing and exploring primary resources that no one had utilized before was (and still is) indescribable, Having found myself thorn between the choice of going the easy way vs going the Indiana Jones way, I, without much hesitation, decided in favor of the latter.

Neither of the books is canceled, they are just postponed. So far Duncan has made serious (financial) investments in both books and he simply can't afford to cancel them. Moreover, I'm in regular touch with him. The bad news is that neither of them will be published this year. On the plus side, when they will be out you'll get much more than it was initially planned and offered. In addition to 30+ maps and 40+ pictures originally selected/produced for "Entrapment", the book will include 100 more pictures that were found recently, plus about 30 more maps and charts. With "Into the Enemy's Den" the situation won't be much different - more than 500 new photos were found in the archives and the number of maps will be no less than 50. Let alone that both works will include so much new information that simply will erase everything that is published so far about the events described in them.

Here I want to use the opportunity to thank The History Press for their decision to publish and back up "Take Budapest". Believe me or not, no publisher wanted to turn it into a book. And it traveled like an orphan from publishing house to publishing house for nearly two years. The usual rejection comment was "We don't think that there will be a market for such a book", blah, blah, blah. At the same time, even the tiniest publishers were ready to sign with me immediately if I would have offered them a photo album. Sad, but true...

Well this is the latest news from the Front. Come visit Take Budapest Facebook page once and awhile - there will be regular updates and materials that sadly won't be included in the final cut of the book.

Have Fun guys!

[AndreasL]

Sad to hear that you havent checked who you are dealing with when it comes to publishing. Duncan is known to be slow. You should have choosen a REAL publisher instead

[Kamen Nevenkin]

David Glantz was so kind to write a foreword to my book. With the permission of my publisher, I post it in full below.

Yours,
Kamen

---------------------------------------------------

Foreword

to

Kamen Nevenkin, Take Budapest!: The Struggle for Hungary, Autumn 1944

Few military operations conducted during the Soviet-German War, 1941-1945 had more varied dimensions and significance than the Red Army’s offensive in Hungary, which began in October 1944, and the ensuing siege of Hungary’s capital, Budapest, on the Danube River. Militarily, this offensive, together with the siege of Budapest and German counteractions designed to restore its fortunes in the Danube basin, represented the culminating stage of offensive operations the Soviet Army began in August 1944 to drive Axis forces from the entire Balkans region. Politically, the offensive was a Soviet attempt to continue the dissolution of Hitler’s Axis alliance by driving Hungary from the war. Economically, the offensive began a five-month-long struggle for possession of Budapest and the nearby vital oilfields of the Lake Balaton region, which provided much of the fuel for the panzers and aircraft of Hitler’s Army and Luftwaffe. Underscoring the significance of this and other operations in Hungary and Austria, in early February 1945, Stalin’s Red Army would shift the focal point of its strategic offensive operations away from the approaches to Berlin and toward western Hungary and Vienna in the heart of the strategically vital Danube basin.

Nevenkin’s new book examines but one aspect of this five-month struggle, specifically, the Red Army’s attempts to reach and seize Budapest by a coup de main in late October and early November 1944. After accurately detailing both Hitler’s and Stalin’s fixation on Budapest, as well as their respective strategies for seizing or retaining the region, Nevenkin provides a riveting narrative of the ensuing combat during the Red Army’s initial drive to capture the city. He exploits a wide range of newly-available Russian archival materials and long-existing but only weakly exploited German unit records, juxtaposed against a host of old and new memoirs by commanders and private soldiers alike, to track the course of the offensive during late October and early November from both the German and the Soviet perspectives. Unlike previous accounts, where known German formations fought against ghostlike Russian masses, this study brings alive the actions of specific forces on specific days and the successes and frustrations experienced by each and their commanders and soldiers.

This is operational military history at its best, where commanders lead identifiable forces, successfully or unsuccessfully, on a recognizable battlefield of villages, towns, and open spaces. On this battlefield, as always, the customary fog of war rules, replete with examples of successes, failures, surprises, and inevitable human frustration. This lively narrative is backed up by clear and understandable maps so necessary to dispel the fog and explain to the reader what actually happened and why.

This reader hopes that this volume is only the first of many intended to lift the veil on all of the operations conducted in the Budapest region from their beginning to their end in March 1945.

David M. Glantz
Carlisle, Pennsylvania

[picea]

Thank you for keeping us updated, well written foreword

[Richard Hargreaves]

Many thanks for the insights Kamen - some mirror my own experiences.

With three books now under my belt, I've learned quite a few lessons. Chief among them.

1. Don't write a single word until all your research is done. You'll just end up re-writing sections, trying to squeeze in extra material belatedly. It wastes time and messes up your narrative.

2. Start at the beginning and finish at the end. Don't start writing chapters in the middle of the book then work forwards and backwards. It's slower and it's more likely to lead to mistakes and repetitions.

3. Maps and photographs matter. Spend time on them (and if you can source the latter from eBay and private sources, you can save a lot of money - repro rights can be hideously expensive).

Hopefully readers will be able to tell that my Breslau book is ten times better than Normandy (sadly it won't sell ten times as many copies...).

Wish I could help out with Budapest, but only have Festung an der Donau. Have shedloads on East Prussia though.

[Kamen Nevenkin]

It's official! The book is now announced on The History Press website: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/produc ... apest.aspx

and on amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0752 ... d_i=468294

[Marcus]

Best of luck with your new book.

/Marcus