Russia at War: 1941-1945
by Alexander Werth
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alexander WerthEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-12
ISBN: 0786707224
Number of pages: 1136
Publisher: Basic Books
Book Reviews of Russia at War: 1941-1945
Book Review: The War of the Century, or rather of all time...
Summary: 5 Stars
I would certainly concur with William Shirer, the author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that "Russia at War" is "magnificent... the best book we probably shall ever have in English on Russia at War." The book was first published in 1964; Alexander Werth was a war correspondent who "got up close to the action" and was fluent both in German, as well as Russian, having been born in St. Petersburg. He was relatively free to travel throughout the county, and to speak directly to Russians of all social strata, and all ranks in the armed forces. The book is over a 1000 pages, and thus not for the casual "fun read" crowd. It is not primarily a military history, replete with unit designations and movements. Instead Werth tends to deal with the military action with the broader brush; he also deals with the political motivation of the leadership on both sides, as well as the global perspectives on the war. As the author says in the introduction: "This book, therefore, is much less a military story of the war than its human story and, to a lesser extent, its political story." He goes on to list an impressive group of contacts that gave him a good cross-section of Russian opinion.
He commences in 1939, with the Finnish-Russian war, and the conflict in the West after the invasion of Poland. Naturally there was much political maneuvering to avoid the Russo-German aspect of WW II, and when it finally came, although it had been much anticipated, it was startling how unprepared the Soviet forces were. Werth quotes the novelist Simonov: "It seemed that everyone had been expecting the war for a long time and yet, at the last moment, it came like a bolt out of the blue; it was apparently impossible to prepare oneself in advance for such an enormous misfortune." The Russians had 600,000 soldiers captured in the Kiev encirclement alone; only three in every one hundred would survive the war. Perhaps due to the fighting in the Balkans the Germans invaded later than planned; in June instead of May, and although General Heinz Guderian famously stood on a hill and could see the spires of the Kremlin, divisions of Asiatic Soviet troops threw the Germans back, and Moscow never fell. The agony of Leningrad, however, was more severe, although it never fell, perhaps a million people starved to death during the 900 day siege, which was covered in depth in Harrison Salisbury's book. Werth says the psychological turning point of the war was the epic battle for Stalingrad, where the German 6th Army was surrounded by a counterattack of over a million men. Werth was on the battlefield there, before the Russians had the chance to collect all the Germans, and noted an emaciated German soldier squatting over a cesspool, and the skeletons of horses devoid of meat, and wished that Hitler "smirking at he stood on the steps of the Madeleine in Paris" could see what had become of his army. The author says that the military turning point was the Battle of Kursk, in the summer of 1943, when 3000 Russian and German tanks slugged it out. I was at Kursk in 1990, and what struck me most was how very little the place was commemorated, as compared to Normandy.
After Kursk, Werth follows the Soviet forces to the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. Along the way the casualties and "payback" were horrendous. He covers well the Russian partisans, who fought behind Germans lines, and endured savage reprisals. His coverage of the reasons why the Soviets stopped on the Vistula River, while the Polish partisans rose in Warsaw, and were slaughtered, was balanced. Other controversial aspects of the war Werth presented with the facts of the time, such as the Katyn forest massacre, where the elite of the Polish officer corps were executed. There were reasons and facts that supported the theory that the Germans did it, likewise for the Soviets. We now know that it was the Soviets, in an effort to control the post-war Polish government.
Other reviewers have criticized Werth's pro-Soviet reporting. To some degree I suppose these criticisms as true, but I tend to see the issue of Werth's empathy for a people enduring one of the worst calamities of all time. Between 20 and 30 million Russians died in "The Great Patriotic War," the ramifications in today's world still abound, and this is the sine qua non account of this tragedy.
Summary of Russia at War: 1941-1945
In this widely acclaimed history of a country at war, Alexander Werth unfolds in startling human terms the story of the Russian people and their leaders in the Soviet conflict with the Nazis from the disasters of the Second World War to the beginnings of the Cold War. Himself an eyewitness to the shattering historical drama he vividly records, Werth offers an intensely detailed chronicle of the events that exceeded in savagery and hatred any other on Russian soil. From the hardships of the citizenry to the sweep of massive military operations to the corridors of diplomacy, this modern classic captures every aspect of the grim but heroic Soviet-German war that turned Russia into the most powerful nation in the Old World.
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