Customer Reviews

The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin`s War with Germany, Volume One

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're studying Stalingrad or building up a credible military library, you really need this book, which stands alongside Antony Beevor's best-selling "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege" and Joel Hayward's definitive "Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitlers Defeat in the East 1942 - 1943". Make sure you have all three.

Erickson's book explains Soviet grand strategy, operational art, and tactics, and does so during a narrative that is gripping and informative. Yes, it is true that you need maps to help you locate the place names but check out the good maps in Hayward's book while you are reading Erickson's.

Erickson cut a trail with his meticulous use of Soviet russian-language archival documents. This gives the book real strenth and reliabilty.

Soviet sacrifices were as great as Soviet suffering. I would like to shake the hand of every Soviet commander Erickson mentions. Thank God for them is all I can say. THEY won World War II.

The books I mention in this book review are so far ahead of the rest that I would give them all six stars. You must get them. Erickson's companion volume, by the way, is about the period from Stalingrad to Berlin. It is also magnificent.

By the way, I once met Professor Erickson and I can affirm that he is a thoroughly nice gentleman. He signed his book for me and happily answered my dumb questions. Isn't it nice that at least some of our paramount scholars aren't ivory-tower types?

Ericksons Road to Stalingrad is masterly insofar as it documents in huge detail the unit to unit, army to army cross-currents from June 1941 until the battle for Stalingrad. At times when the author digresses to discuss the strategic concepts and preconceptions, he is authoritative. BUT, the paperback suffers enormously from the absence of maps....and it becomes virtually impossible to fathom who is where and how far apart different actions are. The book is written very much from the Russian point of view and there is little analysis of German methods or mentality. There are too few signposts in the text to aid the reader; eg at times the text jumps from one front or time to another with few clues that a flashback is occurring or that the action is now hundreds of miles different from previous paragraphs. Talk about the fog of war; here you can be in it and never leave your armchair.

This is an excellant book for those seeking detailed accounts of the war between the USSR and Germany. Mr. Erickson does a masterful job of detailing the Soviet failures at the beginning of the war through their successful defense of Moscow to the fall of the Crimea setting the stage for Germany's catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad. This account is largely from the Soviet perspective, but I do not believe that detracts from its value. The author displays little bias, he rather lets the facts speak for themselves. This has one weakness: as others have said, it has no maps. The lack of maps make it somewhat difficult to follow unless one has some idea of the geography of the USSR; even then, it is still difficult to follow at times. However, overall this is an excellent work for anyone seeking more detail about the Great Patriotic War.

Not in print for perhaps 10 years, this study has, since it's initial release in the seventies, been the quintisential work on the subject of the Russo-German war as viewed from the Russian side. Erickson is still the formost scholar in the world on the red army and it's war with Germany.

However, this is not a book for those not already familiar with the subject. It was written for scholars of Barbarossa, and so Erickson assumes the reader to posses considerable knowledge of the subject. It contains no maps or battle plans, and references are made in passing to events and topics which it is assumed the reader has knowledge. If you have the background, this is THE study on the topic.

This book is more of a study of Stalin and his fight to survive the immense crisis that resulted from Germany's invasion and lasted 4 long years. This book details who was in charge of what armies, thier political fate and affiliations and how long they remained in charge until scapegoated. This book does provide great insight into the 1930's purges of the Soviet military and wonderfully details the rush to production that the Soviet Union had to undergo to survive. But it does not provide a sense of size in regards to the fighting nor does it provide many details except when certain areas were lost or retaken, who was in command, and maybe how many tanks, guns, and men were available at the beginning of the fight. No battle casualties are provided, so if division has 800 men at the end of the fight, was it full strength at the beginning? By the end of this book, you'll tire of seeing unit designations, since they are virtually meaningless in the context of the text.

Overall, a wonder study of the way Stalin managed and fought the war from the Kremlin. Committees, organizations and offices springing from nowhere only to vanish again as Stalin maintained his grasp on the Soviet Union. This is not a great book in regards to the maturation of the Red Army strategies, equipment or tactics as it seems to only deal with these topics in a precursory way.

This is an outstanding account of the first year of the Russo-German war in general and the near destruction and triumphant regeneration of the Red Army in particular.

Most of the well-known work on this main theater of World War II leans toward using German sources. This is understandable in light of the difficulties involved in gaining access to Russian war records prior to 1989. I was staggered by Erickson's ability to get as much as he did from the Soviet archives and surviving commanders.

An earlier review of this book noted that it is not for newcomers to the study of the Great Patriotic War. I fully agree. I was, like the earlier reviewer, very puzzled by the abscence of maps in the book. Unless you know the general outlines of the Barbarossa campaign, the winter campaign before Moscow and the German summer campaigns that led to Stalingrad in 1942, you will get bogged down rather quickly.

This is an indispensible reference work on the Russo-German War. And in a paperback edition, it's a very good buy.

One of the most fascinating aspects about this book is that Erickson's study was so thorough, that even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this book still remains a definitive work on the Red Army during the Second World War. I agree with a another review that one must have some knowledge of the conflict before attempting to read this book as the author assumes that the reader has some knowledge of the conflict.. It serves not only as a study of the Red Army but also has interesting insights into the political, economic and socail situation of the Sviet Union during the Second World War.

I can't praise John highly enough. He is an excellent writer, and conveys the necessary elements of this conflict to the reader in a highly effective manner. Not only is this the best book in English of the Russian War, but also about Stalingrad too. In this book, John has a better treatment of the Stalingrad battle than any other book written specifically on that topic. John, keep writing, I'll keep buying.

Erickson's narrative is thoroughly researched from original Russian/Soviet sources. These include both documents and many surviving commanders. He wrote this book in 1973, just 30 years after the events chronicled, and several senior Soviet military men were still alive and willing to help him. Remember that the Cold War was still unfolding. The amount of cooperation he got in the Soviet Union was quite an achievement in itself. Something that might be unappreciated by a current reader, some 17 years after the Cold War ended.

That is really the distinguishing property of this book and its sequel. Many other texts on World War 2 that you might read were by American and British authors. Who had limited access to Soviet sources and might, unwittingly or otherwise, have failed to properly describe the heroic and dreadful sacrifices made by the Soviets.

But this book has a remarkable flaw. Not a single map. Which is really strange for a book on any war. Especially if the reader is unfamiliar with the geography of the Soviet Union. Erickson has a professional military background, so he would certainly have understood the need for maps. The sequel does have some maps.

Here's a suggestion to the author, if there will be a subsequent update to this book. No need to change a word in the narrative. But several maps are highly needed.

What is written is an excellent book. Full of information and detail. But there are no maps - not one. So the only way to follow the book is to have a map of Russia and at times you are going over the map once per paragraph.
If it had included maps showing the location of the troop movements discussed, it would be a great book. Without any maps it's painful to useless.