Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War

Excellent reading

Very well written with much previosly unkown facts this is one of best books on ww 2 eastern front, combines first hand accounts with history, and new information from russian perspective------- rjp

Uhggggg

THIS BOOK WILL NOT DOWNLOAD

Fine study of the Soviet war effort

Chris Bellamy, Professor of Military Science and Doctrine at Cranfield University, has written a thorough history of the war on the Eastern front. He judges that the Soviet Union's war with Finland "did achieve some territorial expansion, which may have saved Leningrad in 1941."

Hitler's Chief of Staff, Colonel-General Franz Halder, called Soviet deployments in June 1941 'purely defensive'. Right up to the invasion, the British government thought that Germany was just using military pressure to intimidate the Soviet Union, and it expected more German demands, or an ultimatum, not an invasion.

It was, as Bellamy points out, 'a totally unprovoked and unconditional attack'. Molotov said, "Our cause is just. The enemy will be beaten. Victory will be with us." In the first days, "German accounts are unanimous about the unexpected strength and savagery of the Soviet resistance across most of the front." As Halder said, the Red Army "simply do not know when they have been defeated."

Bellamy applauds Stalin's key decision to shift 2,593 industrial enterprises east, 'probably his most crucial decision' and emphasises, "The hard definition of intellect. Priorities." He refutes Khrushchev's lies about Stalin's behaviour after the invasion, and details his demanding work schedule, commenting, "if anyone deserved a break, it was Stalin. But, it transpired, the country could not do without him."

Germany's first great defeat was the Battle of Britain in 1940. The Battle of Smolensk July 1941 fatally delayed the German advance. Germany's first great defeat on land was the Battle of Moscow, September 1941-April 1942. Bellamy rates the Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad, Operation Uranus, in November 1942, as 'the greatest encirclement of all time'. He observes that Operation Bagration, in June 1944, "underlined a cardinal principle of war. The enemy's main forces must be the main objective. And the enemy's main force had been destroyed."

Bellamy praises "the Russians' record of resilience, fighting spirit, tactical ingenuity and innovation, and operational and strategic leadership." He notes, "Without the tight political and security control exercised through and by the NKVD, neither Leningrad nor the whole country might have survived."

He writes, "the socialist victory in the 1945 general election owed something to the upsurge of pro-Russian, and therefore, at that time, pro-communist - certainly socialist - feeling among the British people during the war. After all, the British people had faced the Germans alone for a year in 1940-41, and the Russians had held them and knocked them back, pretty well alone, apart from the limited support the western Allies could send, in 1941-2."

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.