Customer Reviews

Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This very well written history of the German assault into the Soviet Union and the ensuing war along the Eastern front represents a kind of landmark in being one of the earliest of the many histories of that conflict to emphasize the enormous contribution of the Russians to the Allied effort. It was considered controversial in its time because of its emphasis on Soviet strengths and attributes as central to the eventual result. Most other historians had argued that blame for losing the war belonged to Hitler, the Wehrmacht and the well-debated arguments and disagreements among the German General Staff regarding the specifics of the waging the total war Hitler had envisioned must be fought to annihilate the Russian army.

All the basics are here; the tragic misinterpretation of Soviet strength, especially as it applies to Soviet reserve and manpower resources, which were 300 percent higher than believed, the belief that by simply crushing the troops massed between the border and the Leningrad-Moscow-Crimea salient they would crush the communist government and send the country into anarchy, chaos, and ruin, and their own uniform arrogance in believing they could master and quickly dominate this gargantuan nation of several hundred million in a single season. Hitler and the German General Staff were shocked and amazed again and again by the tenacity, resourcefulness, and staying power of an army they had presumed to have already beaten in the opening weeks of the campaign. The author masterfully explains how the Russians, after losing two million men in a single two-month period could rally itself, reorganized, re-outfit, and send another two million into combat so quickly. This is truly one of the most maligned, misunderstood and mysterious aspects of the war in Europe.

Alan Clark has succeeded in this book, which was first published in 1965, in providing an entertaining, edifying, and accurate overview of what the Russians referred to as the "Great Patriotic War". He centers in on four aspects of the more than four year long struggle; first, on the futile and badly coordinated attack on Moscow in the early winter of 1941-42; second, the siege at Stalingrad, a Wehrmacht blunder of catastrophic proportions; third, the Kursk offensive in 1943, which was the largest and most dramatic tank battle in history; and finally, the great Soviet offensive beginning in 1944 that drove the Wehrmacht to its knees, sending it crawling back inch buy inch and yard by yard all the way to the ashes and ruins of a ravaged Berlin. My recommendation is to combine this excellent book with "When Titans Clashed", a more recent tome, which provides an amazing nuts and bolts perspective that is even more strictly written from the Soviet perspective. With the two books combined, you will have a much better understanding of the war along the Eastern front and better appreciated ho the Russians did so much to help win the European theater of the Second World War. Enjoy!

Alan Clark is a former Conservative British member of parliament who is now more famous for publishing a tell all series of diaries which are both witty and iconoclastic. Barbarossa is a book he wrote in the early sixties and is a history of the Nazi invasion of Russia.

The book is a good narrative history of the campaign and one can learn about the ebbs and flows of the military strength of both sides and the key events. The book is now a little dated and probably the best one volume history is When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army stopped Hitler by David Glanz.

The reason why it is dated relates to the partial opening of the former Soviet Archives which now allow for a better understanding of what happened. One example of this is the Mars operation, an attack which was launched on Army Group Centre by General Zhukov at the same time as operation Saturn the attack on the Sixth Army at Stalingrad. Operation Mars was a complete disaster. An initial penetration was cut off and the Soviets lost 200,000 men. After the war Zhukov covered up this failure for reasons of pure vanity. Clark in his history accepts the disinformation which was put out by Zhukov that it was a feint attack to prevent Army Group Centre reinforcing the Sixth Army.

Other material has led to modern historians having a better understanding of the Stalingrad campaigns and the Battle of Kursk. In the past there has been a considerable debate about whether Paulus should have broken out from the Stalingrad encirclement. Glanz has shown that this was not a realistic possibility as the Sixth Army was only supplied on a shoe string and had low stocks of ammunition and petrol prior to the Soviet attack.

Despite all of this Clarks book is interesting. As most people would be aware after the war the German Generals in their memoirs tried to deflect blame from themselves onto Hitler. Clark was one of the first writers to come to a more objective analysis of Hitler's role. (Although ironically this could be for the wrong reasons. In his diaries he confesses to being sympathetic to the Nazis.)

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.

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 introduction and as an overview. By the sweep of the narrative, by the elegance of the prose, by the power of the imagery and, above all, by the sheer humanity of tone, this marvellous history justifies Alan Clark's entire life. A wonderful book.

In "Barbarossa", Alan Clark illuminates an aspect is of WW II that is largely overlooked in America--the Eastern Front. In this work, Clark makes convincing arguments that the Russians could probably have defeated the Germans single-handedly and that Hitler was not the bumbling military fool that most people take him for.

Clark describes in great detail the various strategies adopted by both sides, but it is clear that he has more information on the German command decisions than on the Russians. This is due primarily to the fact that Russia had not unlocked many of its files at the time he wrote this book. Clark's main focus is on four events: The initial invasion and drive to Moscow, the drive and battle for Stalingrad, the Kursk salient operation, and the fall of Berlin. Throughout it all, Clark debunks the theory of that the German generals could have won the war if Hitler had let them. In fact, in several cases, Hitler made decisions that most likely saved the German army from disaster. The second most apparent theme is the resilence of the Russians. As a student of history, I was amazed by the Russian's ability to overcome one disaster after another and eventually build the most powerful army in the world has ever seen.

The one drawback of the book is Clark's attempts to deal with the social and political aspects of the war. In what is primarily a military history, these discussions seem oddly out of place and are a distraction, but they only constitute a small fraction of the book. Oh the whole however, it is an excellent book that flows well and illustrates the importance of this "forgotten" front.

Having read a great many military history books, nonfiction and nonfiction, I think Clark's account to be one of the better written ones - at least in terms of narrative style and accomplishment of purpose. Clark covers a lot of territory in a single volume, and does so without the assuming the reader wants or needs to know if the Red Army XXIII Guards Tank Corps was at 85% strength or 93%, or if the German XXXIX Mechanized Division had 35 operational tanks or only 29. This is a book that will be picked apart by purists or by those whining "well, it's hate-filled" because the author mentions German atrocities on the Eastern Front. I think it's relatively unbiased, and this is borne out by other reviewers who either claim that the author was "sympathetic" to the Nazi's or that the author wrote "another hate-filled" anti-German book. If you're looking for another "heroic German soldiers" epic or the far rarer "Russian" point-of-view work, look elsewhere. This book is far too middle of the road to be defined either way. It is however excellent reading for that inbetween reader who can then decide whether or not to get the so-called "up-to-date" books.

Paul W. Rose (pwrose3333@aol.com) from Chicago, IL, doesn't know what he's talking about. The author makes no claims that he'll tell the story from the individual soldier's point of view! He does, however, provide a great look at "the conflict" from the strategic level, which is exactly what he set out to do! And as far as not revising, the author clearly stated he had reviewed the new Soviet documents and found that his text still stood up i.e.it didn't need revision.

If you're a history novice maybe this book's not for you. If you're a WWII buff this book must be in your library!

Alan Clark's work was a very successful account of the most improtant and most brutal front of the WWII. Although he did leave out several important points and slighted a few significant battles, he captured the main scoreline of the confrontation very well. He also managed to misspell several myths that have been prevalent among many history professionals and amateurs. First of all, he was able to show that Hitler was not a hindrance to Wehrmacht's war effort in 1941 but, on the contrary, very helpful in helping prevent a desperate situation.
Bitter German Generals have for decades lamented that had they been allowed to storm toward Moscow they would have been successful in taking the city and ending the war in 1941. That is far from truth as Alan Clark shows. He points out that German tanks have been moving for two months without reprieve, the supply lines became longer and harder to maintain. The soldiers were getting tired, and what is even more alarming, the Russian resistance was stiffening (as Battle around Smolensk showed). Also, one should remember that forces facing German Army Group South were not destroyed unlike those facing the other two Army Groups. These forces were far to the West of the line of the advance of Army Group Center and could threaten to cut it off. Also, Alan Clark did well to misspell the notion that General Winter was the main reason for German failure to win the war in 1941.

Overall a very good reference by a very well versed and very knowledgeable author.

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!

Alan Clark's account is best understood as a political - vs. a military - account of the Russo-German war. Although skillfully written and in general a gripping read, Clark's "literary" style of writing may not be to everyone's liking. The focus of the work is on the strategic and political developments, primarily from a German perspective. The material on the Russian side of things does appear somewhat dated, probably because when the book was written (in the 60s) perestroika was but a mere twinkle in the eyes of a young Soviet.

The focus of the book explains the dearth of legible battle maps and the lengthy quotations from the Fuhrer's meeting transcripts. Only 4 battles (Moscow 41, Stalingrad, Kursk, Berlin) were discussed in any depth. The destruction of Army Group Center in 44 was breezily covered in a few pages, and the recapture of Ukraine (where the great German divisions were destroyed) received literally a few sentences. Even those battles covered were presented in such a way to frustrate the reader looking for factual references - one has to scour through the pages looking for German casualty numbers at Stalingrad, for instance.

Despite its flaws, I found the book interesting on two accounts. First, Clark argues that Hitler was an evil genius worthy of that sobriquet. His grasp of the military situation in the early days of the war was superb, and as Clark puts it, the great irony was that Hitler could not fully control his marshals when he was at his military best, and by the time he had reined in his generals, he had become so disenchanted with the officer corps that he lasped increasingly into fantasy. Second, Clark demonstrates the clear complicity of the German Army in numerous war crimes despite the German officers' pious protests that they were "professional soldiers" completely unlike Himmler's murderous thugs. The General Staff, for instance, recommended that instead of occupying Leningrad and feeding its population, it's better to fence off the city and starve the inhabitants to death. It even helpfully suggested that artillery be used to block off escape, since it's "doubtful whether infantry would shoot at women and children trying to break out".