Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War
A history of the Eastern Front viewed primarily through the eyes of the Soviet Union. At the time of writing I am up to siege of Leningrad. This is a book that is in equal parts fascinating and depressing. It is very well written and the author in having access to previously hidden archives is at best overturning misconceptions about this conflict, or at least adding a gloss to the things we already knew (or suspected).
Comments
I have just finished the book and am - to say the least - a little exhausted. It is hard going, not through its literary style but simply the overwhelming amount of information and violence that the reader has to wade through. It is well worth the efort though.
I read Norman Stone's book a couple of months ago. I felt that on occassion Stone was trying to hard to overturn ideas and opinions regarding in particular the Third Reich. That said, it read easily and the information he has unearthed was like No Simple Victory, plentiful anf thought provoking.
Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, that's good idea. However, some of the pictures that can be found in the works of Beevor, Stone et al are mesmerising and horrifying in equal parts. I am not referring necessarily to the pictures from the concentration camps (although these are stomach churning enough), but more to pictures of 'everday' life under the conditions of war. There was a picture in particular on Beevor's 'Berlin' which struck me. It showed a young girl looking at a boy - not much older than the girl - as he was about to be taken into Societ custody. It was heartbreaking. A superb piece of reportage. It is this sort of thing that I would miss if listening to an audio book: I need to find a balance.
If the eastern front is of interest then I would also recommend the books 'Barbarossa' (Alan Clarke), Stalingrad (Anthony Beevor) and Berlin (Anthony Beevor).
There is no war, whenever or wherever fought that can be considered with anything other than horror, bit there is something peculiarly brutal about the Eastern Front that pushes it above the norm. The more war history I read, the bigger a pacifist I become.
Sorry for the waffle....
Davies says that the Allies lost 250,000 in Western Europe..... the Soviets lost 20 Million in the East.
I will definitely be looking for Beevor and Clarke.
I think that the figure of 20 million is generally accepted. However, Stalin being the paranoid evil git that he was contributed greatly to that number - we mustn't forget things like the Katyn massacre. Also, as Beevor and Clarke make clear, the tactics of the even good generals like Khukov was hampered by demands from Stalin. Units like the Smersh (I might have mispelt that) were positioned behind the attacking troops and ordered to shoot anybody that retreated. The full frontal assaults were always likely to figure highly in troop losses - a Napoleonic approach to war in the face of modern weaponry.
I must say it is really good to speak to somebody interested in this. We have been brought up on diet of the Western Allies (not, I hasten to add to diminish their contribution), but we have missed out a lot on what happened in the East (partly down to Soviet secrecy bordering on paranoia).
I think that this bias towards the west is a two-fold thing. Firstly we (the UK) spent a great deal of time rebuffing German advances (if I may be sold bold), allied with America, fighting a huge war on two fronts against implacable enemies.
Secondly, the Russians spent 50 or so years under a regime that refused to believe that anything of worth or benevolence could emanate from the Capitalists (read UK and America).
Even Churchill regarded the alliance with the Soviets as the lesser of two very deep and horrible evils.
Of course the upshot is that we are now only beginning to count the costs (to both sides) and as such are only just really learning from the experience.
I agree with Eddie Izzard when he says the numbers are simply mind-blowing. 20 million plus Soviet Dead. After Stalingrad somewhere in the region of 100,000 German soldiers taken prisoner of which something like 5,000 returned.
And, we haven't even considered the concentration camps and gulags.