Pros: Highly informed and revealing book about massive war.
Cons: None, really. This is excellent military history.
The Bottom Line: Absolute War is a worthy purchase for anyone interested in the War in the East in World War II. It is an informedof the war from the Soviet side.
buffoonery's Full Review: Chris Bellamy - Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the...
The Russo-German conflict in World War II was the most titanic military struggle ever seen and was the decisive theater of the war. This is not overstatement. The Soviets lost over 25 million people, the Germans millions more, and the war swept over thousands of miles. It made the American war in the Pacific against the Japanese look like a Little League game.
It is also probably the most written about campaign in the war. However, military historians for decades were cramped by the fact that they were unable to obtain many records from the Soviet side, which kept most of it records from the public eye. This changed after the Evil Empire's collapse in 1991, when its records opened up and a whole new cottage industry was opened up for historians. (Unfortunately, the Putin regime has gone back to the old ways). This allowed much better opportunities for writing about the war from the Soviet perspective.
Chris Bellamy's Absolute War is one of those new books, a quite fresh look at World War II from the Soviet side. Bellamy's eye is merciless. His review of Soviet policy toward the occupied territories and Stalin's prewar diplomacy is scathing in its criticism. At the same time, he is admiring of the vast improvements in Soviet military capabilities over the course of the war and is clear that the Germans, in the end, not only overwhelmed by superior resources but were outgeneraled.
The book can be divided roughly into three parts: 1) Actions before the war; 2) the years of defeat, 1941-1942; and 3) the years of victory, 1943-45. Much of the book contains rather standard discussions of the war's various campaigns and I won't discuss those at length. What I would like to discuss are some of the facts that he highlights that are either little known to the general reader or corrections to the accepted wisdom.
For example, while it is commonplace that the Nazis acted in a murderous fashion to their conquered areas (mass murder, anyone?), the Soviets weren't all that much better. For example, as soon as they crossed the border into Poland in September 1939, they immediately began rounding up anyone who might possibly be of harm to the new regime, including priests, intellectuals, and army officers. Some fourteen thousand of these were executed in 1940 (a fact that became highly embarrassing when the Germans revealed the graves of 4,000 dead Poles in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in 1943).
Another interesting discussion is the reforms that began arising out of the terrible Soviet performance against the Finns in 1939. That performance, of course, was made all the worse by Stalin's execution of the overwhelming number of his senior army officers in the late 1930's (which did no favors for his defense of the Soviet Union in 1941). However, poor performance was recognized and reforms instituted that began bearing fruit in 1943.
Two discussions are of particular interest. First, Bellamy debunks the argument that the Soviets were preparing to attack the Germans in summer 1941, an argument that has proved popular in recent years. Second, he is highly critical of recent assertions that Stalin took no actions during the first week of the war, but rather retired in depression to his dacha. He cites chapter and verse the meetings that Stalin held and the actions taken.
Also interesting is his discussion of American lend-lease assistance to the Soviet Union. Naturally, the Soviets had been wont to de-emphasize this effort, preferring to trumpet their own successes (which were many). But Bellamy is convincing in his argument that American aid (even though well less than 10% of total Soviet production in the war), especially in vehicles and rolling stock, made possible the mechanization of the Red Army and the piercing attacks that were made in the last half of the war. Ironically, it was this aid that helped the Soviets overrun much of Eastern Europe.
Bellamy's discussions of the campaigns are clear and informed. The book is has extensive maps and an excellent bibliography. For me, despite his occasional conversational style, this is the best single volume on the War in the East that I have ever read. Even though it may be occasionally either too technical or too detailed for the casual reader, I highly recommend Absolute War to anyone interested in this extraordinary conflict.
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