Stalingrad to Kursk: Triumph of the Red Army

The account is detailed and includes a ton of documented and tabled information from first hand post-Soviet fall accounts post documents. It complements many other studies about the battles and fronts on that account and gives personal reflection on the decisions of the major belligerents. Two minor gripes about the accounts.

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Rokossovsky even though he talked about him almost as much as he did Stalin or Zhukov, possibly more. Then he moves back up to Kursk and finally touches on the push to Germany and Berlin. Oct 30, Ray rated it it was amazing Shelves: I really enjoyed this book, far more then I thought I was going to. It covered in quick detail the evolution of the Soviet Army from the period prior to Stalingrad to Kursk. What I enjoyed about this book is that it raised two objections to the stance held by other historians, in particular D.

These two issues were: That the Soviet army attack at Rzhez was a faint, a very bloody faint but a faint. In particular by looking at the allocation of staff effort and direction being given to I really enjoyed this book, far more then I thought I was going to.

Battle of Stalingrad

In particular by looking at the allocation of staff effort and direction being given to the Soviet staff a convincing case is made; and 2. The loss of Stalingrad and the forces in that city meant that the Germans lost there electronic codes and for all intents and purposes the Russians had "Ultra" for the rest of the war.

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I greatly enjoyed and have recommended this book to those seeking greater knowledge of the critical development of the eastern front. Important read on Russian-German war Book strong on strategy, but packed with too many badly defined stats, and not many personal stories. That said, it is worthwhile in conjunction with other, similar topic reads.

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The opening up of Soviet archives has shown a system that for some critics makes it almost indistinguishable from the totalitarian enemy it was fighting. This makes it more difficult to embrace the Soviet contribution to victory.

Battle of Stalingrad - Wikipedia

The ordinary Soviet people were not only numberless victims of war, but they failed to achieve any political reform as a result of their triumph. Yet it is their exceptional sacrifice that we should remember as we look back over 60 years. And in the end the peoples of eastern Europe were unquestionably better off under the new communist regimes than under German imperial domination. German plans by the middle of the war foresaw the deliberate starvation of at least 35 million people in the east as "useless eaters", and the genocidal destruction of the Jewish and Gypsy populations.

The eastern peoples were described in German documents as the "helots" of the new empire. This grotesque imperial fantasy was won or lost on the eastern front, and who can regret its defeat? The Soviet Union is not the only state to be written out of the victory story in the west. The Chinese people also lost an estimated 20 million as a result of Japanese aggression. Just as the Soviet armed forces held down the Germans, so the less effective but numerous Chinese armed forces kept the Japanese bogged down in Asia.

This is a record that is still almost unknown in the west, yet if Japan had achieved quick victory in China, large resources would have been released for an assault on the rear of the Soviet Union, or a larger military presence in the Pacific. In this case, too, western allied casualties would have been much greater without the stubborn resistance of their Asian ally. In the end, the western freedom to plan and execute a global strategy depended on the ability of the Soviet and Chinese forces to hold the main enemies at bay while western air forces bombed the Axis motherlands flat.

When victory is celebrated tomorrow, it is important that we pause to remember the almost 50 million Soviets and Chinese who perished to contain the imperial aggression of Germany and Japan.

Nor should we forget, when condemning Soviet repression in eastern Europe that allied airforces bombed German and Japanese cities up to the very end of the war, inflicting the deaths of more than , civilians and opening the nuclear age. After Britain and France re-imposed undemocratic imperial rule in Africa and south-east Asia. None of the victors has anything to feel smug about.

The pursuit of victory made all the allies do things they might never have imagined themselves doing. One question that almost certainly will not be asked as the world indulges in what is probably the last great bout of victory nostalgia is why those states that viewed themselves as the bearers of progress and the modern age descended between and into a hideous orgy of war, civil conflict, repression and genocide. Mercifully, marked a real break with that year crisis, but the nagging issues remain. If they could do it then, what are the restraints that prevent the developed world from once again plunging into the madness of mass war and state violence?

Perhaps is a lesson learned, but those restraints need to be well understood. Next time the millions of dead may not be for our allies alone to bear. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia appeared in paperback last month. Imagine for a moment that around half the population of Great Britain - men, women and children - died in the second world war.