Customer Reviews

Stalin's War of Extermination, 1941-1945: Planning, Realization and Documentation

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Let me just speak for a moment about the concept of books like this. Each time I look for a book in the genre of revisionism, which doesn't really exist in my mind anymore than reverse racism does, I see that people are polarized on the topic, particularly when it comes to WWII.

In my opinion, you have to be willing to revisit topics concerning world war II. With the fall of the Soviet Union, tons of information that was previously kept from the world has come into view and should be brought to light. People always say that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but if history is just used as propaganda and not studied with the full consideration of all the facts, then I submit that there is not much that can be learned.

This book does a lot to debunk the myth of German aggressivenes and megalomania. Hitler was very fearful of a Russo-French Alliance even before the outset of the war. Even a non-aggression pact did not allay his fears and this book proves that he was right to attack Russia as a defensive means. This allowed him to choose the battlefield rather than having it chosen for him.

He truly believed that the Anglo people had a lot to fear from bolshevism and the post war events (see Cold War and Iron Curtain) may have proved him right. Think what would have happened if there was no nuclear threat (see MAD), I can assure you that the Russians would no doubt have attempted to control Europe.

A must read for anyone interested in real history, Stalin's War of Extermination is based on newly released Soviet documents.
You think Socialism is not so bad? Read this book. This book documents the total power the Soviet Government had over their own people and how Russians were murdered by the tens of millions by their own government.
Stalin's two big tools were "brutal terror" and "shameless propaganda." Soviet soldiers were forbidden to surrender in battle because the Soviets feared that those who did surrender would join the Germans in their supposed campaign to destroy Communism in Russia. Thus all Soviet soldiers who had been captured for any reason were murdered by the NKVD upon their return. Even millions of Russian civilians in areas which were overrun by German forces and then later recaptured by Soviet Armies were killed or sent to the Gulag.
All this was nothing to Stalin who had starved 7 to 9 million Ukranian farmers to death during the government induced famine of 1932-33 (p. 197) and who had purged millions of other Soviet citizens and soldiers.
Hand in hand with this terror went endless propaganda. For example, Soviet murders of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest were blamed on the Germans; a lie that was continued up until 1992 when Boris Yeltsin finally released the documents showing the guilt of the Soviet government. (p. 209) To back up these lies "witnesses" were produced.
Author Joachim Hoffman sums the situation up well by stating, "Anyone who did not believe the propaganda experienced the terror." (p. 331)
Think you can rest easy now that Soviet Communism has "collapsed?" Think again. Author Hoffman touches on the complicity of the West with Soviet genocide and crimes against humanity. For example, France and England declared war on Germany supposedly because of Germany's invasion of Poland. Yet when the Soviet Union also attacked Poland two weeks later and overran the eastern half of the country no one even seemed to notice.
The US fought on the same side as "Uncle Joe" Stalin in World War II, a war which had as its main result the enslavement of half a billion people in eastern Europe under Soviet Communism. That is what our soldiers fought and died for.
Now look at the US policy toward China today, also a totalitarian Communist country. We are busy sending our manufacturing capacity to China to be worked by slave labor and administered by the same people who butchered the pro-democracy students in Tienaman Square. As the saying goes, "Those who do not study history are forced to repeat it." Read this book to see the real face of Communism.
There are those who call names and scream about this and other books "making excuses for the Nazis". Be warned that reading this book, particularly the sections about master Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenberg, may cause you to see such name-callers in a different, and very unflattering, light.
Jim McPherson

As a WW II history buff I had never come across any data on the USSR except for the meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt. I have now changed my perspective after reading this book. Although not
a primer anyone with a basic knowledge of WW II names and places is a suitable audience. This is not an accounting of the battles or any other detail. I had never known Stalin as the monster that he was. At times I found myself rooting for the Germans. Not because they were the good guys but because Stalin and company
were so much worse. What the Communist leaders did to their own military men to get them to fight is nearly unbelievable.
You will also learn their mass murdering and butchering started long before the Germans. Read and you decide.

This book is a great read. It removes once and for all any hint of legitimacy left from the Soviet propaganda of the period. Those who view Stalin`s regime as liberators will be forced to re-examine their myopic views when faced by the barbaric atrocities committed by the Soviets against the German people and even against their own Russian soldiers if they showed any restraint. Lays to rest once and for all the distorted, one sided view of war on the Eastern Front. A well documented and scholarly work-

Dry at times (like a textbook), but makes a very convincing case that Hitler attacked Stalin just days before Stalin's attack against Germany was to begin - and likely not end just with Germany, but all of Europe under Communism. What I thought was just German propaganda (preventative war) was probably closer to the truth than the Soviet propaganda we were fed throughout the 20th century.

By 1941, Stalin (due to gargantuan US aid) had over 10 times as many tanks, aircraft and artillery as Germany - high speed tanks and ground attack aircraft designed for a lightning suprise attack. Stalin was about to have Hitler for lunch, when Hitler found out and had Stalin for breakfast June 22, 1941 - annihilating Stalin's forward deployed armies and air forces. However, Hitler had no idea of the vast resources in equipment, manpower and productive capacity Stalin had at his disposal. Once Japan was busy fighting the USA in the Pacific, Stalin moved his fresh Siberian divisions to the German front - sealing Hitler's (and Europe's) fate.

Highly recommended.

When a credentialed scholar attacks a familiar topic with abundant knowledge and, above all, fresh research, a reader, who is interested in the given topic, should take notice.
This is the case with Prof. Joachim Hoffmann's latest book, which is based on new research and archive material out of both Germany and Russia.
It has been customary and "boilerplated" to regard the German
war against the USSR beginning in June 1941 as a purely black- and-white situation--the German side being unmitigatedly evil and aggressive, the Soviet side being by comparison innocent and defensive. However, new data indicates quite the opposite: That Stalin had his own aggressive plans against Germanywell before June 1941 and, indeed, against Europe as a whole, which he viewed as ripe for Soviet-style "revolution" (because of the strife of war and suffering) and for sovietization (in Sovietese, "liberation").
In realizing that Stalin did harbor such aggressive plans, which he planned to realize by late 1941 or in 1942, does not, of course, exonerate Hitler for his wholesale invasion of Soviet Russia of June 22, 1941. Yet, it at least puts it in a different perspective than omne gets from the usual inferences drawn by traditional histories on the war. Moreover, the totally inhuman way (even for war) in which Stalin waged his (allegedly) "defensive" war against Germany, and the Soviet expansionism that accompanied Red Army seizures and sovietization of territory in eastern, central, and southeastern Europe that it captured during World War II (thus proving Stalin's asggressiveness) are facts that are mostly ignored in run-of-the-mill histories of the period, or even in some contemporary histories (such as those of Gorodetsky, Glantz, et al.).
This, in fact, is the most outstanding feature of Hoffmann's
well-documented book--namely, that it is not run-of-the-mill
history but is, instead, a judicious, resourceful exploration and disclosure of Stalin's aggressive war of extermination waged determinedly from 1941 to 1945.

While not forgiving the horrible crimes committed by certain criminals in the German Armed forces this book tells the true story of our "Beloved" ally Joseph Stalin. Stalin was a monster just waiting to pounce on all of Europe like he did to Finland except Hitler beat him to the punch and ironically saved Europe.(Just look at what the Communist did to all of their other conquest!) The atrocities that the Communist regime perpetrated against the Armed forces of Germany and innocent civilians are a chapter of history that the victors conveniently choose not to remember. Anybody that truly has an open mind will see why we had to spend billions of dollars defending against these criminals in the 50+ years after the end of the war.

Another piece in the missing history of World War Two. Basically this book goes on to destroy the myths held and propagated by left-wingers that the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was peace loving and had no intention of military operations on foreign soil. It also absolutely destroys the myths of the "Great Patriotic War," "Mass Heroism," and "Soviet Patriotism" by the Soviet peoples. The book begins with the declaration by Stalin a war of aggression he intends to wage against the capitalists Germany and Western Europe. It details the propaganda and above all the absolute terror used by the Soviets against there own unwilling soldiers in order to fight the Germans. Basically the Red Army soldier had two choices, either face the Germans or get a bullet in the back of the neck by the NKVD and severe consequences for his relatives. The author lays out all the propaganda used to incite extreme hatred of everything German, to criminalize the Wehrmacht, blame Soviet crimes on the Germans, and to dehumanize the Germans into vermin. The book also covers the Soviet mistreatment of POW's, both German, Axis, and repatriated Red Army soldiers. How the Soviets ordered that all prisoners of war should be shot, and that surrendering to the enemy is a crime. The most disturbing is the chapters covering the events of Soviet occupation of German soil starting in the fall of 1944. The actions taken by the Red Army soldiers upon the "liberated" German civilian population, murder, arson, rape, and looting, is beyond belief. I highly encourage anyone to read this book, especially those students of history like myself.

Not a very lavishly produced volume: there are some documents reproduced in the back, but no photographs. The index incidentally is names only, possibly all men: Berlin, Moscow, Stalingrad aren't indexed.

Deals solely with the war between Germany and the USSR, of course including Poland and Ukraine among other territories. It's essentially descriptive, largely drawn from Bundesarchiv-Militaerarchiv documentation in Freiburg. Russian books are credited, though they are not listed in Cyrillic text; possibly they were translated into German. Most of the book deals with atrocities of this 'most cruel war in history': Stalin's teatment of his own officers, Stalin's henchmen's treatment of their own soldiers, Russian soldiers' behaviour, German reprisals, Ukrainian loss of life, various irregulars and partisans... In the book they're arranged chronologically and by location - victims in for example Kiev. Some of the book deals with propaganda and mythology; for example, Babi Yar was more or less made up in 1970. Ilya Ehrenberg figures a great deal.

There are enormous informational gaps, notably on the military strength of the Soviet Union, which of course was kept very secret indeed, as was all the financing and building of factories by various large combines from the west. Another gap is a full consideration of deaths: Hoffmann states that all serious researchers put the USSR deaths at about 40 million; is so, Stalingrad's deaths were small beer.

The main argument of the book is simply that war was inevitable, and Stalin's plans included conquering Europe, though I'm uncertain whether Hoffmann strictly speaking means this - for one thing, it's unlikely that Stalin's intentions were known by anyone. Hitler's attack is treated as unavoidable, and indeed justified, and only just in time. One aspect of the war is the huge number of Russians - about 5 million - who surrendered to the Germans, despite the certainty of being killed if released back to Russia. Very likely if Hitler had e.g. allied with Ukrainians, as well as some Russians, the thing could have been less disastrous.

This book is a valuable counter to the infantile pro-war juvenilia of official historians in the west. There's a special note to the effect that the book passed official German censorship requirements.

The British Propaganda Ministry circulated a memo to the Church of England and the BBC on february 29, 1944, which stated:

"We know how the Red Army behaved in Poland in 1920 and in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Galicia and Bessarabia only recently. We must therefore take into account how the Red Army will certainly behave when it overruns Central Europe. [...] Experience has shown that the best distraction is atrocity propaganda directed against the enemy. Unfortunately [!] the public is no longer so suspectible as in the days of the `Corpse Factory', and the `Mutilated Belgium Babies', and the `Crucified Canadians' [as in WW I]. Your cooperation is therefore earnestly sought to distract public attention from the doings of the Red Army by your wholehearted support of various charges against the Germans and Japanese which have been and will be put into circulation by the Ministry'.