Victims of Yalta [Paperback]

Nikolai Tolstoy (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Corgi; Revised edition (March 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552110302
• ISBN-13: 978-0552110303
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,090,712 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Unknown Story: Not a Light Read, but great history, May 31, 2001

By 

THOMAS J ADKINS (Broomfield, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Victims of Yalta (Hardcover)

Victims of Yalta (also called The Secret Betrayal) is not light reading. It is long, scholarly, detailed. I just wanted to get that out upfront. If you like any of the following, this is a good book for you: * political intrigue * World War II * Cold War * Russian History * military history

What Tolstoy (distant relative of the famous late Count) does is tell the whole story of the fascinating, and sorrowful, situation that the Soviet peoples found themselves, 1941-45. Caught between the brutal racist nazis (Hitler), and their own paranoid communist regime (Stalin), these people are faced repeatedly with life or death choices.

While the majority of the book deals with the military men, note that many hundreds of thousands of civilians were also effected. The German army took during the course of WW2, about 5.7 MILLION soviet prisoners. Of those, something on order of 3 MILLION died. Initially, if the prisoners weren't shot out of hand (political commissars and jews), they were often herded into makeshift prisons and left to their own devices. Sometimes these were literally barbed wire enclosures of open steppe. The POWs died by the tens of thousands in the first year.

But the Germans, having suffered 750,000 casualties in the first 5 months of the war with USSR, were in desperate need of manpower. One source was the willing Soviet volunteers. At first, Hitler flat forbade any Soviet from carrying arms, but "hiwis" (helpers) in German units were ignored. Tens of thousands drove trucks, polished boots, cooked meals, etc. Often, when faced with the horrible conditions in German POW camps, these men would accept the words of the German officers come to seek recruits. Some joined simply out of self-preservation, others to fight communism. Though organized formations were forbidden, over time, as the war continued chewing up German manhood, units were organized. At first, this was only of the minorities - esp. the Baltics (Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians). The USSR was made up of over 150 ethnic groups, so many of the prisoners taken were of non-Russian heritage, even non-Slavic background. Soon, Georgian, Armenian, Azeri, "Cossack", Turkic, Tatar/Tartar and other Legions were formed. Most served in rear areas, fighting partisans and doing support functions.

As the German army began to lose, and fell back from the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad, then Kursk and Kharkov, Hitler ordered the units moved west. He never trusted them, and feared a mass desertion or their rebellion. Those units were thus moved to Netherlands, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, etc. Generally, they were security troops, fighting partisans, or acting in garrison capacity. Many were on the Atlantic Wall - awaiting the West's invasion. But they had no grudge with the Americans, British, and Canadians. They wanted (generally) to fight communism - Stalin - but they didn't want to fight _for_ Germany. Their morale plummeted - but what could they do?

The most interesting stories to me are of the British attempts to get Soviet Govt to acknowledge the existence of large numbers of Soviets in German uniform - and thus get a Soviet answer as to what they should do with these men.

Another interesting - and horrible - story surrounds the Cossacks, and their forcible return to the Soviets by the British in Austria, right after the end of the war. These men moved their whole families with them, and formed into units in the German army, finally ending up as the 15th SS Cavalry Corps, fighting Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, and the Red Army, in Yugoslavia. Suicide was one alternative for these men.

Like I said, not a light read, but a very interesting story - Tolstoy covers all aspects - from the high leaders (like Churchill and Eden in Britain), to the bureaucrats and military leaders charged with carrying out the tasks assigned, regardless of personal views, and of course to the Soviet citizens themselves.