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Originally posted by Jukka Juutinen:
Chris, are you really going to use Wehrmacht equivalents for SS-ranks?

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Actually, I'm going to use an English translation of the German Wehrmacht ranks as I believe it is inappropriate to use a large number of German words in an English language book.

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This would be not only incorrect but also an example of dumbing down policy!

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The SS themselves also had their Wehrmacht rannks, so I am not sure how it is incorrect. As for dumbing down.....I seriously doubt if anyone is going to accuse my book of being an oversimplification of the battle.

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Note that a potential reader of your forthcoming book isnīt likely a beginner...

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I do not know what the background of the reader is going to be. For example, I did insert an introductory section in the book describing the Russian Civil War, the collectivization, and Stalin's purges. Now this may die in the editing...and I was on the verge of killing it myself as wasted verbage, when I discovered that a friend of mine who has a PhD was not aware of this part of Soviet history. It is pretty hard to explain how the Soviet Army operated during the battle if one does not understand the system they were operating in.

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..and thus unable to understand e.g. "SS-Brigadefuhrer".

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Which would be translated as "SS Brigade Leader". Needless to say, if I decide to use SS ranks, and decide that German (and Russian) should be minimized....then I will be using such phases as "Senoir Assualt Band Leader" to describe ranks. This is clearly not satisfactory. Therefore I am left with inserting German language ranks into the book (so it looks like something from Fedorowicz Publishing) or using their Wehrmacht rank equivilents. I chose the later.

There is a table in the first appendix that post comparative US, German, SS and Soviet ranks, so it will all be transparant.