Customer Reviews

Fighting for the Soviet Motherland: Recollections from the Eastern Front

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Col. Loza is a Hero of the Soviet Union. He commanded Lend Lease Matildas and Shermans during the Great Patriotic War. James Gebhardt is a US veteran whose military background and command of the Russian language has enabled him to produce the most accessible book on the Eastern Front I have read. The clear explanations of Russian military terms and slang are worth the price of the book by themselves. Col. Loza explains his experience in all aspects and in depth. If you have questions about food, Lend Lease,tactical orginization, Soviet medal laws, or tank useage, this is the place to start.

This book is written from a very interesting perspective--by a Soviet officer commanding British Matildas and US Shermans in the Red Army. Loza covers many very interesting facets of the fighting on the Russian front from a Russian perspective:
--what the Russian tankers liked & disliked about their British and US tanks;
--being ordered to fire on Russian infantry that was pulling back without orders;
--female Russian anti-tank gunners;
--armored advance through Mongolia in Summer 1945; etc.

Although this book has alot of fresh, interesting information, I only gave it four stars because:
--generally I don't think that the book is very well written;
--I didn't like the organization very much--the book is essentially a collection of stand-alone chapters on discrete topics or engagements; there is no narrative flow and the book is not intended as a coherent chronological account of the author's experiences in the war. Indeed, many of the accounts are jumbled chronologically for some reason. Finally, while many of the included accounts were quite interesting, as described above, some of the others, such as "Graves Registration" and "Home Leave" polices were less so (at least to me); and
--perhaps understandably as a participant of the war, the author does not come across as an objective commenator on the Red Army.

Fighting For the Soviet Motherland: Recollections from the Eastern Front
By Dmitriy Loza, Hero of the Soviet Union
Edited and Translated by James F. Gebhardt
Isbn 0-8032-2929-I


This book is a collection of 31 short essays arranged in an extremely loose chronological order of the Great Patriotic War, which began for the Soviets June 22, 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Americans know this as World War II. The book picks up after the battle of Moscow (December of 1941). It is a Soviet tanker's memoir of the Eastern Front, as the Soviets are counter-attacking and pushing the German army west. To the victors go the spoils so goes the old saying, but also to the victors go the historic version of the story. The contributor of these essays was Colonel Dmitriy Loza, translated and edited by James Gebhardt. It is about Colonel Loza and other Soviet Army veterans. Dmitriy Loza entered the Red Army in 1940, graduated from Saratov Tank School in 1942, and was then assigned to a unit equipped with British Matilda tanks. He was seriously wounded in September 1943; he was assigned to an American Sherman M4A2 tank upon his recovery.
Loza's explanations of cause and effect make for an interesting view of history. In the essay "Spalling" he stated that at the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union was forced to relocate defense industries to the East to keep them out of the hands of the Germans. The factories that produced the T-34s tanks could not get enough quality metal to ensure the toughness of the armor plate. Because Soviet tanks were needed to stop the Germans, the government ordered the factories to continue producing the faulty tanks with the brittle armor. The armor plate was just strong enough to keep German solid shot out, but caused pieces the tank's armor inside to fragment. This spray of armor was microscopic to several millimeters in diameter, and at high velocity, it injured the crew. The eye wounds confounded the doctors; they had no experience in surgical procedures or instruments to handle the problem. SMERSH (an anti spy division of NKVD) initially concluded that that the spalling was evidence of sabotage in the factory production line. The problem with spalling ended in 1943 with the introduction of the Sherman tank. The soldiers' eye injuries initiated the Soviets development of microsurgery. Some of the other essays that I found interesting: Flamethrower Tanks, Shooting the Moon (yes!), Friendly Fire, Lyuba the Tank Killer, Ammunition Resupply, Terrible Weapon, A Peasant Family's Courageous Deed.
The translator of this book did an admirable but not perfect job; twenty-two pages of notes help the reader better understand the finer details. There are a few maps, though not enough for my liking. The book's essays as I stated earlier are not always in chronological order and that makes it difficult to follow. The essays vary in quality, from extremely interesting to rather "technically overloaded" dull. The book contains four appendixes which include the military oath of the Workers-Peasants' Red Army and Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR which was also known as the 1942 Joseph Stalin's "not one step backward" order. If you are interested in World War II, you will find this book gives you a unique perspective into Red Army. The book I used for this review was loaned by the University of Georgia, Main Library.