Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945
by Richard Overy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard OveryEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-08-01
ISBN: 0140271694
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945
Book Review: Refreshing
Summary: 5 Stars
Russia won the II World War. It engaged 80% of German military and inflicted 80% of casualties on the overall German force. It significantly expanded its territory. It created the Eastern Block. Most importantly, it came a long way from an isolated international pariah and emerged a major military force. For decades ahead it secured a high moral ground in the histories of the war.
Its success is especially impressive since it came unexpected to all. By the beginning of the war with Germany, Russia had an inexperienced, recently purged army, where ideology played much greater role than professionalism. Its extensive military did not achieve in quality what it did in quantity. Its economy was considered backward and incapable to adjust quickly. A significant part of its population hated Moscow and later collaborated with the Axis.
Yet above the victory, for the Russian people the war was a tragedy. The author stays with the conservative estimate of 25 million Russians dead. For generations of Russian people, the War was a sacred topic, the symbol of righteous sacrifice. For them, accepting the recently publicized conclusions that some aspects of the war were much less than heroic and many Russian deaths might have been unjustified, is a tall order. The central character of the book's drama, Stalin, for all his ability to master detail, was a terrible military strategist. His main desire for a military campaign was to be on the offensive. Against military advice, he ordered numerous attacks in the first year of the war, which led to numerous "bayonet charges" against German machine guns. In the spring of '42, he ordered an attack on Kharkov, which led to the encirclement of 3 armies. All this perhaps cost Russians hundreds of thousands of lives. Stalin misjudged Hitler's resolve to strike. In 1941 he mistakenly thought Hitler would direct his main forces towards the Russian South, when in fact the main strike was towards Moscow. In the spring of 1942, Stalin guessed that Hitler would try to reach Moscow, whereas now the German generals were after the oil- and grain- rich Russian South. Stalin appears most insightful when, starting with the battle of Stalingrad, he abstained from imposing his will and let the professional military commanders be in charge. Given all this, the author's conclusion of the important positive role Stalin played in the war is surprising.
The undisputed mass heroism of Soviet people during the war is tainted by the government's methods of pushing its people into the battle. A Russian commander knew that unless he clearly stayed in front of his troops on the battlefield, according to the Order 270 of August 1941, issued just 2 months after the start of the conflict, he could be demoted to a private or shot on the spot. This led to a mass loss of commanding officers, who were easily spotted and taken out by the enemy. According to the same order, prisoners of war were equated to "malevolent deserters", to be killed on the spot, their families subject to arrest (for commanders) or to be taken off the state assistance programs (for lower ranks). The NKVD troops, terrorizing the military, were joined briefly in the second half of 1942 by zagradotryady (created to shoot anyone who failed to go forward). One can only guess at how many instances of desperate heroism were provoked by these measures.
The author clearly disputes position of such researchers as Victor Suvorov, who maintained that Russia was planning its own war of aggression, and Hitler just beat it to the start. And yet he shows Russia's position in the conflict as much more than clear-cut. Russia started military collaboration with Germany in 1921 and helped it remilitarize. It served as Germany's accomplice in breaking the Treaty of Versailles. It chose to align itself with Germany in 1939 and was helping it with significant commodity shipments up until the German attack on Russian border. Without a doubt, the major Western powers, especially Britain and France, have to bear their part of responsibility for letting Germany blatantly break the Treaty of Versailles and remilitarize, for Rhineland, Anschluss and Sudetenland. But no country in the world has more actively helped Germany to build up its military might than Russia itself.
Up until the beginning of the conflict between the two countries, Russia was Germany's ally. It supplied refueling bases for German ships, its icebreakers to clear arctic waters for German merchant raiders, its weather reports for German air force during the Battle of Britain. What's more, Stalin's position even back in 1939 was to let Germany fight the "capitalists" and then, maybe use Red Army to "help" the local socialist revolutions in Europe. Stalin's regime was by far bloodier than Hitler's. On the other hand, millions of Soviet people were dying in the war. Western, especially Churchill's, aversion of lending a helping hand to Stalin, by opening the second front in Europe, in this complex circumstance should have been given more light.
The book is opinionated and well written. A pleasure.
Summary of Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945
"Russia's War" is the epic account of the greatest military encounter in human history. In a vivid, often shocking narrative, Richard Overy describes the astounding events of 1941-45 in which the Soviet Union, after initial catastrophes, destroyed Hitler's Third Reich and shaped European history for the next half Century.As German armies stampeded through the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Nazi politicians and Western statesmen alike predicted the USSR's collapse. In Russia's War, a balanced and acute portrayal of a combat theater that claimed more than 40 million Soviet lives, Richard Overy tells the story of how Stalin and his commanders held off defeat and engineered the most significant military achievement of the Second World War: the destruction of the Wehrmacht.
Russia's War is far from a tale of triumph, as the Russian capacity for resourceful creativity, desperate courage, and raw endurance was matched, if not exceeded, by the brutal oppression of the Soviet system. Overy argues, however, that victory was the result of precisely this uneasy combination. Drawing from extensive archival sources made available in the wake of glasnost, he revises both our conception of the Red Army as a horde that overwhelmed the Germans and the accepted wisdom that Hitler's defeat was the result of strategic bungling and a logistical overreach of the Nazi forces. Perhaps his most poignant contribution is the discussion of the crisis that recent disclosures have provoked in the Russian understanding of the conflict. What was once viewed by the Soviets as the "Great Patriotic War" has become "a crucible of miserable and incomprehensible revelations." In spite of these confusions, Russia's War commences to find significance in a contest that repeatedly disquiets and humbles the historical imagination. --James Highfill
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