Customer Reviews

The Road to Berlin (Stalin's War with Germany Volume II) (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

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

 

 

John Erickson's 2-part history of the Soviet-German war in 1941-1945 is the definitive English-language publication on the topic, and this is the second volume. Because the Second World War was basically won and lost on the Eastern Front, and because conquest of the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe was Hitler's primary motivation for going to war in the first place, this book is a must-read for anyone truly interested in military history or the history of the 20th Century in general.

There is a lack of maps in the book, so I would suggest to the reader that they invest in a WWII atlas of some sort if they really want to follow what is happening. And the book is mostly told form the Soviet perspective, but that is not such a bad thing as there are far more English-language books about the Third Reich anyway. But there is nothing else written in English that comes close to Erickson's history in terms of overall balance and exhaustive, well-documented research.

Mr Erickson, who died in 2002, was a world renown historian that specialized in Russian-Soviet history. He wrote a dozen books, many papers and covered the war on TV documentaries. His whole life was devoted to the study of this country and its people.
Besides giving detailed coverage of the military aspects of the war, Mr Erickson also covers the political in this second volume. Stalin, Zhukov, Timoshenko, Rokossovsky and many other generals are covered, showing their strengths and weaknesses. Churchill, FDR, Tito and others are given their due respects. And of course Hitler and the key German generals are also discussed and analyzed.
The book begins with Operation Uranus and travels through the end of the war and beyond. If you want to read about the war from the Russian perspective there is no better book to read. It should be the foundation of your collection for all serious students of the war.
Mr Erickson's book closes with a huge Reference section, a Bibliography and Index. There are few maps and no photos in this book but he has published "Hitler versus Stalin" which is a large photo book with hundreds of pictures of the the war and the civilians caught up in it. I highly recommend this two volume set.

The second volume in John Erickson's brilliant study of the Soviet Union at War, "The Road to Berlin" is every bit as informative and educational as the first. Like that first volume, this work is not for the casual military history buff. Rather this is an intensely detailed, meticulously researched look at Stalin, his generals, and the Soviet Union expelling the German invader and then taking the war to his soil. Particularly informative are the chapters dealing with Stalin's playing off Zhukov and Koniev in the drive for Berlin. This move could have backfired as had the Russian Czarist high command's decision to play Rennenkampf and Samsonov off against each other in August, 1914. Stalin, the arch-manipulator, used their rivalry to get just what he wanted. And always lay the threat of the gulag or death for generals who failed their leader. This is a wonderful work of history for the serious historian.

This is one of the must-read works on the most important area of confrontation in the European Theater of WWII. The flow of information in highly-detailed form is dazzling, and the bibliography, encompassing books and other materials in some 8-9 languages (most in Russian, a very difficult tongue to master) runs some 40 pages. Just doing the study of the Russo-German war strikes me as a life-consuming enterprise. For those who seriously want to comprehend the most significant part of the greatest human drama ever, this book must be read, probably over and over again. Five stars is a paltry rating for it.

This is a book with two fatal flaws. It describes battles and campaigns from the end of Stalingrad to the taking of Berlin. It does this with only 16 very poor maps. This is fatal flaw No. 1. The maps have no topicologic features ( mountains, rivers,swamps, etc are missing) and frequently have few of the major targets delineated. Even worse, in a number of cases, there are no maps at all describing major actions.
Fatal flaw No. 2 mirrors Fatal Flaw No.1. The text introduces armies, divisions, corps almost in passing. It has no lists of critical units and commanders. This, plus the lack of maps makes following a particular endeavor extremely difficult.
The book does have interesting information on Allied conferences; on the Russian treatment of Poland and other Eastern European nations. Its analyses of Stalin is excellent, painting a picture of him as cynical, machiavellian, but amazingly competent; expecially compared to both Churchill and Roosevelt.
Would I but this book again? No. Would I borrow it?
Maybe. Large tracts of it, expescially compared to masterworks like Shelby Foote's histories of the Civil War are incredibly dull and untractable. Too bad,because clearly Erickson had a world of information.
One last thing: there is little analyses, no portrait of the Russian or German soldiers who bore the brunt of the European war.

i do not give it 5 star because of the ponderosity of the book
but it is very complete and well documented