Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45

This is one of the best books on military history I have ever read. The author masterfully and consicely describe the Eastern front. There is not a single wasted sentence. Every detail and idea is choosen so that it illuminates. Given the breadth of task, this book, amazingly enough, manages to give the reader a crystal clear idea of every aspect from 1941 to 1945. My only criticism is about the length of the book. It's too short!

I first read this splendid one-volume history of the Russo-German conflict of WW2 more than thirty years ago and its immediacy, masterful simplification of complex campaigns and operations, colourful evocations of heroism and cowardice and outright pathos have never left me. This is not a detailed history and the concentration is on a few major, but decisive, campaigns but these are covered with such verve that the reader is quite likely to be fascinated by the subject for the rest of their lives, and to seek out ever more thereafter. Though meticulous in his descriptions and evaluations, Clark is never a neutral observer - and this is probably what makes the book so totally unforgettable even down to individual episodes. His judgements on men can be devastating - his summary of the clownish ineptitude and outdated heroics of Budenny is as succinct and merciless as anything in Gibbon - and his accounts of epic-scale actions never fail to reflect the human cost. The image of hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners trudging towards starvation, slave labour and medical experiments after the great 1941encirclement battles in the Ukraine, and of isolated pockets fighting to the last man, as loudspeakers relayed the exhortations of Stalin, will stay with the reader forever. Clark's account of Stalingrad was powerful enough to send my wife and myself to the city itself within months of reading the book - a powerful and unforgettable experience. Clark did not just give us the feel the nightmare of street fighting across entire square miles of blazing ruins and factories, but he helped us visualise the abject misery of the Sixth Army's entombed survivors as, in the unlikely surroundings of a rebuilt department store's basement, we found the spot where von Paulus surrendered. Simultaneously, we were conscious that somewhere to the west that von Manstein's relief forces were stalled, supplies packed in trucks that included even British vehicles captured at Dunkirk eighteen months before. By such details is history brought alive. The section on Kursk could almost stand alone as a modern Illiad and description of the destruction of Army Group Centre, and of the final battles in Germany itself, conveys the full horror of what it means to be part of a hitherto coherent organism in terminal collapse. I came to this book again when my daughter asked me to recommend an introduction to the subject - and from her enthusiasm, three decades on, I sensed that in this book we probably have a timeless classic. Other books deal with the Great Patriotic War in greater detail - commander's accounts, of which the best is probably von Manstein's "Lost Victories", war-correspondent's accounts like Alexander Werth's "Russia at War" or Curzio Malapartre's searing "The Volga rises in Europe", modern reassessments of specific campaigns like Anthony Beevor's superb "Stalingrad" and popular histories like Harrison Salisbury's "The Thousand Days" - but none can equal this as an in

Depending on how you look at this book, it rates 5 stars because of what the book covers and analyzes, or it rates 3 stars as my fellow reviewer from Moscow, Russia, (down below) points out so nicely.Author Clark covers several major fronts during the German attack on Russia, and at the same time provides some excellent analysis on the battles and the infrastructure, both political and military, that supported them. The book is very readable and helps provide a clearer understanding of that piece of history from the attack on Soviet territory to the Soviets entering Berlin as Hitler took his life. Therefore the 5 stars.Although Alan Clark presents his reasoning for what he chose to report on, I, the reader, still felt a little left out. - I expected more of Moscow, on the one hand, and more analysis on the Russian political picture towards the end, on the other. In some cases, Clark would lead us somewhere, but then not follow through. Thus the 3 stars.Overall, however, this book is must reading to the World War II scholar. In keeping with where Clark leads us (to Stalingrad and Soviet commandos' street fighting), I would recommend reading Commandos from the Sea : Soviet Naval Spetsnaz in World War II (Naval Institute Special Warfare Series) by Iurii Strekhnin, et al - For a broader view of where Clark takes us in his detailed "Barbarossa" analysis, I would strongly suggest the reader pick up a copy of Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy.

Clark, the cavalier, Clark, the once and future Member of Parliament, and Clark, the Englishman are all evident in this comprehensive account of the greatest clash of armies in history. His central theses are: (i) that the German Generals ought to shoulder much of the blame - military and moral - rather than resort to the standard Wehrmacht excuse of blaming Hitler's tactical judgment; and (ii) that the Nazi atrocities - so well documented here - stemmed from a fatal flaw in the then German social fabric, rendering its people capable of descent from Christian values into paganism (at one stage he describes it as medievalism, then he corrects himself - this was "pre-Roman" brutality by comparison). These claims are prosecuted mercilessly through the text. The author, never descending into hero-worship, apologia, or kitsch "what ifs", maintains his dispassionate overall perspective while providing the gems of derision that have earned Clark his cavalier status (eg. Russia's "imbecile" Marshall Budenny; Germany's Paulus - of Stalingrad notoriety - "may have been a good staff officer; as a commander in the field he was slow witted to the point of stupidity"). Clark's command of the overall strategic picture (his depictions of Stalingrad and Kursk/Zitadelle are masterful) is complemented by tales of individual heroism on both sides; his sympathies are with the ordinary soldiers and civilians made to suffer; though he is keenly focussed on the broader moralities, eg. upon a failed 1943 coup, he comments, "The Devil's hand had protected Hitler... the purported existence of cosmic forces can be an irritating abstraction. Yet there are occasions where the eternal struggle between good and evil seems more than a convenient adjunct to a code of behaviour evloved by the priesthood for disciplining the lower classes and assumes a disquieting magnitude, which towers over the puny 'self determination' of mortal men." Ultimately he sees the war in terms of a clash between two totalitarian monarchs, both bent on destroying the nineteenth century philosophies of the West, both seeing the other's destruction as a precondition. In this light, the most valuable lesson is the enduring perseverence (and survival) of individual well.