Colossal conflict | ROAD TO STALINGRAD (Stalin's War with Germany)

Easily the best book on the topic | ROAD TO STALINGRAD (Stalin's War with Germany) | John Erickson

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	• ROAD TO STALINGRAD (Stalin's War with Germany) John Erickson Cassell, 2004 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very good detail of the Soviet side

The edition I just finished is the original 1975 Harper & Row, apparently not revised since. The book is very good in its detail of the Soviet primary sources available at that date to the author, and his mastery of Slavonic languages was a great aid to him in conversations and other research in the USSR. It is also good in providing a semblance of Red Army order-of-battle and leadership, i.e. up to a point.

Much of the detail is perhaps a bit more than the reader may want - down to divisional, brigade, regiment, etc. level actions and movements - but a major flaw is the complete lack of ANY maps whatsoever (at least in this edition I read from), so the reader is doing a mental juggling act in visualizing the movements of corps, armies, fronts, and so forth.

The author frequently cites the diminution of Red Army units through casualties and attrition but only rarely points out the same for German units. One is left with an overall (and very false) impression that the Soviets are fighting from a terrible disadventage while the Nazis have relatively fresh and full-strength formations. In truth, the German units were just as ragged and undermanned/underequipped for most of the war and did NOT have much in the way of fresh formations and huge production to draw from, ever. Even at the very start of the 1941 invasion the Germans were up against a massive Soviet superiority in everything but quality of leadership - Erickson must surely have known this but he does not mention it at all.

Erickson continually cites the severe shortages for Red Army units and fronts of ammunition, troops, tanks, lorries, etc., and these shortages are cited by Red Army officers as a major reason for the many catastrophes they suffered at the hands of the Wehrmacht. Actually the USSR was producing HUGE quantities of war materiel of all types and their manpower pool was almost inexhaustible; the problem was their misuse and misallocation/misdeployment of these needs, i.e. incompetence.

One may note the exact same sets of excuses used by the Czar's army during World War One. Even then they had huge production etc. but incompetently handled it all. Erickson could have understood that but he didn't write about that parallel. A good study of the WW1 excuses was done by Norman Stone in his THE EASTERN FRONT 1914-1917.

I highly recommend Paul Carell's HITLER MOVES EAST and its sequel SCORCHED EARTH as the best available study from the German side. His HME reads like an exciting epic. Also very good is Clark's BARBAROSSA - a major thesis in his work is demonstrating how weak the Germans actually were in the 1941 invasion and onwards, far weaker than the Soviets. Seaton I haven't read (yet). And then there are all the various memoirs, e.g. by Guderian, Manstein, et al.

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Colossal conflict

The Road to Stalingrad:

The last 2 chapters of this book are by far the best (they constitute over 120 pages). Prior, I feel, the author has a hard time distinguishing the trees in the forest and the forest from the trees. These chapters are filled with endless sentences like "the 4th Airborne corps to use his 7th and 8th Brigades..", "the escape eastwards for 3rd, 10th and now 13th Army was.." and on and on. This approach makes for a very dry dissertation of the largest military conflict in recent history. Nevertheless Erickson does not glorify and glamourize the Red Army. Stalin's Russia was not only unprepared for this colossal conflict with the German armies, it was incompetently led. Stalin had killed off his officer corps by the end of the 1930's and was self-quarantined in the Kremlin listening only to advisors who told him what he wanted to hear. Erickson is correct when he describes Stalin as the `top' leader in the Soviet Union. Erickson's description of Stalin and the decision-making process is interesting if concise. It is only in the last 2 chapters that battle scenes are well painted by Erickson and one feels the horror and Dante's inferno that existed in Stalingrad. Why the German armies became entrapped in this cauldron of total destructiveness is unknowable, but it lead to their first major defeat in the Second World War (aside from their aborted invasion of Britain).
Also do not read this book for a picture of life for civilians either in the German or Soviet zone. There is no mention of the Einsazt-gruppen killing squads who butchered entire villages and Jewish life through-out German-occupied Soviet territory. This is `military history', but when it does step out of that zone it is interesting and Erickson offers insights into both protagonists. Some maps would have been helpful (there were none in my edition). This book does not have the `Soviet patriotism' of Alexander Werth's `Russia at War' and is better for it.

The Road to Berlin:

`The Road to Berlin' is much like the first volume - The Road to Stalingrad; but the events, if possible, even over-shadow those of the first book - like the battle of Kursk, the annexation of Eastern Europe under the Soviet yoke and the fall off Berlin. Orchestrating all of this is the figure of Stalin.
But much like the first volume there is a blur of details - military groupings and geographical minutiae. Is it necessary to list all the Guard units, divisions, battalions... that took forth on the assault on the Baltic States? Words like `hammer', `break through' abound.
Yet there are many rewards, Erickson writes entirely from the Soviet perspective with no glorification of their overall role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. There are gems of dialogue between Stalin and his generals vividly illustrating the brutality of the regime. Once it became apparent that the Nazis were to be expunged from the Soviet Union the next step was to occupy as much land as possible in Eastern Europe. With production in full swing by 1944 and an army numbering some 5 million entering Eastern Europe - never mind the agreements at Yalta promising free elections in Poland or democratic self-determination for the countries liberated from Nazi domination. Erickson discusses this country-by-country. He also brings up the notorious Soviet stand-still in front Warsaw while the Nazis methodically routed and slaughtered Polish partisans. The Soviet army may have had to re-group, but they never told this to the Polish partisans.
Do not read this book for details of the liberation of the concentration and death camps - it merits only a few sentences and there is even less on the treatment of Soviet citizens in areas occupied by Germany. Also very little is said on the barbaric treatment meted out by Soviet troops once they entered `liberated zones'.

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Easily the best book on the topic

John Erickson's 2-part history of the Soviet-German war in 1941-1945 is the definitive English-language publication on the topic. Because the Second World War was basically won and lost on the Eastern Front, and because conquest of the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe was Hitler's primary motivation for going to war in the first place, this book is a must-read for anyone truly interested in military history or the history of the 20th Century in general.

There is a lack of maps in the book, so I would suggest to the reader that they invest in a WWII atlas of some sort if they really want to follow what is happening. And the book is mostly told form the Soviet perspective, but that is not such a bad thing as there are far more English-language books about the Third Reich anyway. But there is nothing else written in English that comes close to Erickson's history in terms of overall balance and exhaustive, well-documented research.

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lacks maps

Erickson's narrative is thoroughly researched from original Russian/Soviet sources. These include both documents and many surviving commanders. He wrote this book in 1973, just 30 years after the events chronicled, and several senior Soviet military men were still alive and willing to help him. Remember that the Cold War was still unfolding. The amount of cooperation he got in the Soviet Union was quite an achievement in itself. Something that might be unappreciated by a current reader, some 17 years after the Cold War ended.

That is really the distinguishing property of this book and its sequel. Many other texts on World War 2 that you might read were by American and British authors. Who had limited access to Soviet sources and might, unwittingly or otherwise, have failed to properly describe the heroic and dreadful sacrifices made by the Soviets.

But this book has a remarkable flaw. Not a single map. Which is really strange for a book on any war. Especially if the reader is unfamiliar with the geography of the Soviet Union. Erickson has a professional military background, so he would certainly have understood the need for maps. The sequel does have some maps.

Here's a suggestion to the author, if there will be a subsequent update to this book. No need to change a word in the narrative. But several maps are highly needed.

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It really is a masterpiece!

Very good. Highly recommend to everyone who wants to know the truth. John Erickson is a true historian. Bravo!

In THE ROAD TO STALINGRAD Professor Erickson takes us in detail from the inept command structures and strategic delusions of the pre-invasion Soviet Union, through the humiliations as her armies fell back on all fronts before the Barbarossa onslaught, until the tide turned at last at Stalingrad. Unsparingly he assesses the generals and political leaders, and analyses the confusions and wranglings within both Allied and Axis commands. The climax, the grinding battle for Stalingrad, leaves the Red Army poised for its majestic counter-offensive, Operation 'Uranus', discovering it had 'caught a tiger by the tail'.

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