Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War | Chris Bellamy

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War | Chris Bellamy | Good for what it is

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Absolute War: Sovi...

	Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War Chris Bellamy Knopf, 2007 - 848 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The battle on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 was arguably the single most decisive factor of World War II, fixing the course of world history over the next half century. Now, drawing on sources newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, historian and journalist Chris Bellamy presents the first full account of this deadly conflict.

Bellamy outlines the lead-up to the war?in which the fragile alliance between Hitler and Stalin was unceremoniously broken?and takes us headlong into the hostilities. He presents a shocking picture of battle in which the traditional restraints of ?civilized? warfare were shed. He makes clear how the Soviets quickly rallied against Hitler, choosing homegrown despotism over foreign domination in a struggle that the Russian people call the Great Patriotic War.

Bellamy charts the early gains of the German army, whose advances into Soviet territory were brought to a halt in Moscow in the winter of 1941, and whose defeat was sealed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most merciless campaign of the bloodiest front. He shows how Soviet men?and women?joined to fight a war whose casualties were later steeply underestimated by their government, and how even the true death toll, at 27 million, does not take into account the millions of lives on both sides that lay shattered in the aftermath.

Finally, Bellamy examines the far-reaching consequences of the battle?s outcome?the reverberations of which are still felt today?and argues that the cost of victory was ultimately too much for the Soviet Union to bear.

A magisterial study, and an essential addition to our understanding of contemporary world history.

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explores unknown territory

Chris Bellamy's 'Absolute War' truly fills up a big 'white spot' in our knowledge of the Hitler/Stalin-conflict from 1941-'45: the workings of the Soviet-Russian leadership.

Up to now, we always had to deduct from German sources what happened at the other side of the front. Recently granted access to Russian archives doesn't make this necessary anymore.

I'll provide just one example: during the period from June 22 up to July 3, 1941, Stalin kept silent. Up to now, we always assumed that Stalin needed this period to recover mentally from his error in underestimating Hitler's determination to wipe out his Soviet-rule. Mr. Bellamy shows us quite the contrary: Stalin used these days to convert the Soviet-Russian society into a complete war-economy.

By the way, the Hitler/Stalin-conflict from 1941-'45 is that immense, that any writer cannot avoid to make a selection. As I pointed out above, Mr. Bellamy's choice is a very happy one.

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Good for what it is

This is an interesting book on the Second World War covering, and focusing, on the Eastern Front, largely from the Soviet perspective. The author, apparently a protege of the late John Ericson, is a university professor in England. Bellamy states, in the introduction to the book, that he's not going to try to cover the tactical aspects of the War in the East, largely because he thinks others have covered this ground pretty well. Instead, the author decides to concentrate on other aspects of the conflict, discussing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the state of the Army on the brink of the war, the various plans the Soviets had in 1941 and whether any of them involved attacking Germany, and other aspects he feels haven't been covered enough, or correctly.

The book does spend a lot of time discussing the operational, and especially strategic aspects of the war, but the author avoids discussing tactics pretty much at all. He also spends a lot of time discussing the first year and a half of the war, up until Stalingrad. He takes the position that the Soviets were more precarious politically, and economically, in 1942 than is generally realized, and that they were very close to collapse when the Axis armies outside Stalingrad crumbled and left the Sixth Army encircled. It's an interesting point of view, anyway.

The book is written in a breezy, conversational style that seems to be stylish now with books that are supposed to be scholarly. I don't know how well this will work in a book half a century from now. Right now, it's kind of jarring but I will say the book reads relatively fast. It does suffer from some annoying typos (Kluge giving way to himself as Army commander, Field Marshal "Kodl", and so forth) and the grammar is frankly odd, with incomplete sentences abounding in odd places. This is tough to read (for me anyway) because you don't know if you should be looking for a verb when you read a sentence. The book could have benefited from a strong editor, overseeing the way the prose was constructed and acting as a brake on the author's preference for fragmented sentences.

I generally enjoyed this book. I found much of the information interesting, and his arguments, while I didn't agree with everything he said, interesting. I would recommend this book to specialists, though of course you have to be aware of the shortcomings.

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This Can't Be Happening

If I didn't know better I could not imagine that human beings would do such things to each other. The shear individual horrors of German Nazism and Soviet Communism are more than matched by their combined viciousness in World War II. We Americans like to feel we are above such behavior but we are blinded to the one to two million we killed in Vietnam or the half million more Iraqis whose deaths can be laid at our feet. Nonetheless the Eastern Front truly defies comprehension. It is hard to imagine the fate of Ukrainians who suffered collectization, the NKVD, then relegated to subhumanity by the Germans only to be liberated by the Soviets and again purged.

Chris Bellemy's book brings the reality of human history back into perspective. But the style of Bellemy's book is more like a strategic study from a defense institute than a polished narrative from a literary historian. As such it is a bit hard to read. I had trouble following the progress of each battle. It didn't help that the maps were both complex and in such a small font that even with a magnifying glass I couldn't find places mentioned in the text and couldn't follow what was going on. Nevertheless I liked the book. It has been years since I have read other descriptions of the Eastern Front so I felt that Bellemy has added something to my knowledge. He points out when reinterpreting events based on new knowledge from the archives but I would have liked him to expand more on this. From previous histories I remember authors citing the hardships of the German's during the winter at Stalingrad. That did not seem to play a role for Bellemy. By the time of Stalingrad, had the Germans solved the problems of frostbite and frozen engines that had plagued them a year earlier at Moscow? Were they wearing socks in their boots? Were they simply outfought at Stalingrad. That seems to be the case.

For Bellemy, the Soviet victory was almost inevitable once they had reorganized after being thrown back to Moscow in 1941. Their economic capability would have overcome that of Germany. But it was in those unsure moments that a combination of NKVD repression keeping people from wavering, Russian dedication to the Motherland, and crucial Allied material which helped them avoid defeat. After that Germany had no chance. From the battle of Kurst onward the Russians outproduced and outfought the Germans. It is odd that the latter did not sue for peace. In his book on the Pentagon House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, James Carroll said that it was a casual use of language by Roosevelt at Teheran that introduced the policy of unconditional surrender which Carroll felt lengthened the war both in Europe and Asia. Bellemy points out that war for Stalin was unconditional, period. It was what Bellemy calls absolute war---no holds barred. That the spine of the Soviet peoples was stiffened by the NKVD is clear. The choice was being killed by the Germans or the secret police. The NKVD also made sure that any place the Soviets occupied was also cleared of opposition. So while the delay outside of Warsaw was in part due to overextended Soviet lines, Stalin made sure now one else would help the uprising, and elsewhere armed partisans were disarmed when Soviet troops arrived. Even the possibility of opposition was to be precluded. The wavering peoples of the Caucuses were shipped east even though they not longer posed a threat because of German withdrawals.

Once the Soviets got the hang of how to fight and the materials to do it, they consistently outfought the Germans. Whether it was artillery or tanks, the Soviets produced credible, even much superior weapons and used them better than the Germans. Did they win the war in Europe. Bellemy makes the case that they would have with or without the Allies. But the coast was horrendous. The Germans completely wiped out the Soviet Army two or more times and the losses in some battles, like Zhukov's entry into Berlin were unnecessary. Until the Soviet generals learned to fight (or was it maybe until Stalin and Voroshilov--who plays no part in Bellemy's--book got out of the way) Soviet offensive attacks on the advancing Germans were massacres. When Stalin allowed strategic retreat and defensive fighting the tables began to turn and the German's began to pay a higher price. As to Stalin's culpability for the destruction of the Soviet army at the outset of Barbarosa, Bellemy's explanation is unclear. Yes the planes were lined up on runways for the Germans to destroy. Yes there were warnings that Stalin ignored. But despite the purges of the Soviet Army in 1938, the Soviet Union was gearing up for war and Bellemy is convincing that Stalin did not mentally collapse after the attack. He organized the defense as poor as it was. After all the French were defeated in no time even though they had a large mobilized army, the Maginot line, and were prepared to fight. The German's overwhelmed them. Blitzkrieg worked. The Soviet Union was just too big, had too many people and was simply too Russian to be overwhelmed. The Japanese couldn't conquer China. There were simply not enough of them. That may have been true for Germany and Russia.

Thank you Mr. Bellemy for a new look into the Eastern Front. If the author is right and Putin is reclosing the archives "Absolute War," may be the only fresh history we will have on the subject for a long time.

Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

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reviews: page 1, 2

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