REVIEW:
"The 25 Essential World War II Sites – European Theater" by Chuck Thompson (San Francisco: Greenline, 2nd edition 2007), 258 pages.
Primarily aimed at war buff travellers, the sites covered by this book also take in many places of interest to less martially-minded dark tourists. In particular, a few
Holocaust sites such as
Auschwitz are also covered, as well as more ideological Nazi sites such as, especially,
Nuremberg. Very valuable are also the city chapters for
Berlin,
Paris,
London etc. – but much of the book is really concerned rather with
battlefield sites than more decidedly dark places (see
beyond dark tourism). Still, these sections too offer inspiration as to visiting less well-known and rather cool and special places such as the Industrial Workers Museum in Vemork,
Norway (a site associated with the rudimentary German atomic weapons programme), which I would reckon not many dark tourists are familiar with.
The individual entries are typically rather short but to the point, including a synopsis of the main things to see together with ratings of the sites' quality and/or relevance to
WWII expressed in 1-5 star ratings (thus very similar to the
star system used here in addition to the
darkometer ratings), which are in the vast majority of cases very justly allocated (both in positive and negative terms). Practical details such as addresses, opening times and admission charges are also supplied – but of course these are especially prone to being out of date by now.
So, while some of the mere battlefield sites can happily be ignored by the more targeted dark tourists, the book is a treasure tome of information about a wider scope of sites that may well be tempting to not just
WWII-
history tourists. It was certainly thanks to Chuck Thompson's books that I learned about the existence of quite a few of these sites (see also
his other book on the
Pacific WWII sites).