War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin [Hardcover]

Laurence Rees (Author), Ian Kershaw (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000

Kershaw, Ian

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Labeling the Second World War battles between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia on the Eastern Front as the War of the Century is asking for trouble. What about the First World War, not to mention the other theaters of the 1939-45 conflict? Laurence Rees argues that the brutality of the fighting was unprecedented and that the outcome, with the annihilation of the German troops, was pivotal to the Allies' eventual victory. On both counts, he is absolutely right. The severe cold, hunger, shelling, and hand-to-hand street-fighting decimated both sides, and the casualties ran into the millions. And, yes, Germany never did recover neither physically nor mentally. The supposedly unbeatable one had been beaten. But does this make it a war of the century? To decontextualize the Eastern Front is to miss the bigger picture. This was not just a war between two competing ideologies--Communism and Nazism. The Russians, whatever their politics, were Britain's and America's allies; they may have had a separate private agenda in the war--what country didn't?--but they were on the right side and part of an overall allied effort. Moreover, Rees's position lets the Germans off the hook somewhat. It allows them to make the revisionist claim that they were fighting Communism--something that became a holy cause in the West in the postwar years. They weren't. They were Nazis fighting the Allies. End of story. Rees also goes on to make the somewhat bizarre claim that the German defeat unleashed the Holocaust against the Jews. This will come as a massive surprise to the millions of Jews who were persecuted in the 10 years prior to 1943. It is true that the death camps went into overdrive after the defeat in Russia, but this would almost certainly also have happened if the Germans had won. The result on the Eastern Front was immaterial. However, there is also much to recommend in War of the Century. The comparisons between Hitler's Nazi Germany and Stalin's state capitalist U.S.S.R. are well made. Repression and contempt for life existed on both sides. Rees has found much new material from the newly opened Soviet archives and has also turned up many eyewitnesses from both sides, and their accounts provide a compellingly readable narrative. For this alone, the book is worth reading. At times it feels as if Rees is being willfully controversial simply to be noticed. But he needn't have bothered, because there was a fascinating book there anyway. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

The Russo-German War of 1941-1945 was a one-of-a-kind death struggle between two ruthless dictatorships, as well as an ideological conflict that gave neither combatant any room for compromise, argues documentarian Rees. The text and often powerful illustrations (some in color) of this large-format book are drawn from the BBC's Timewatch series, which Rees edits. Drawing on recent scholarship and the newly opened Soviet archives, it amply demonstrates that the war's mutual barbarity remains fearsome--and the matter-of-factness with which former combatants on both sides discuss appalling acts is truly shocking, even after 50 years of horrors. On the German side, account after eyewitness account describe not only casual brutality, deliberate starving of prisoners, mass executions and the rest of an increasingly familiar list of horrors on the part of the Wehrmacht, but regular and large-scale rape--something previously well camouflaged by defenders of the "clean shield" myth of the German army. From the Russian perspective, the work emphasizes Stalin's war against his own people, with Russian guerrillas being deployed against secessionists and other "undesirables," often torturing and killing them. Rees juxtaposes the German extermination of Russian Jews with Stalin's deportation of ethnic groups like the Kalmyks, whose loyalty he suspected, to brutal labor camps where they starved--a plan forged by Soviet secret police chief Lavrenti Beria. Straightforward and nuanced in its telling--a rare combination--this account, with a foreword by Hitler historian Ian Kershaw, adds necessary dimension to Holocaust-era atrocities. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; First Edition edition (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565845994
• ISBN-13: 978-1565845992
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #610,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rating is meaningless, the reviewer does not rate books, July 5, 2000

By 

loe green - See all my reviews

This review is from: War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin (Hardcover)

This book is a valuable addition to the eastern front bibliography and, on account of it's readability and fluency, it may even be the choice of preference for quite a few readers. Indeed, after the excellently presented introductory chapter which provides readers with a penetrating view into the reasoning for Germany's willingnes for and confidence into waging this war, there follows a spellbinding narative from the mouths of dozens of first hand witnesses to the struggle, interviewed

by the author in his quest for this documentary. German and Russian officers and soldiers, peasants, civilians, NKVD and SMERSH operatives, men and women who lived through the horror, confusion, glory and brutality of this war help in bringing it to live together with the author's lucid and informative presentation. No other book on the subject comes close to giving readers the true feelings of horror, desperation, cold-bloodedness, hatred, sacrifice and defiance that uniquelly characterized this most brutal of conflicts. War of the Century succeeds in this superbly.

And yet, this is a book that actually has some difficulty in qualifying as an eastern front war history altogether. An eastern front book that devotes to the Kursk battle, possibly the biggest land battle in all history, the whole of one and a half lines ? Lend-lease not even mentioned ? The siege and holding out of Leningrad covered in three lines, the Crimean campaign, Budapest and Warsaw batlles towards the end of the war not even to be found as index entries ? Barely the names of a dozen commanding generals make it into this book and certainly the group of readers that is in for the greatest dissapointment is the military buffs. Campaign planning - for the few campaigns discussed - is rather cursory, discussion of equipment is exhausted in the comment that the T34 was the superior tank and one may actually go through the book without ever knowing that there were also Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks and other people involved in the fighting, voluntarily or not.

These are too glaring ommisions to have gone by unintentionally or unknowingly, and clearly the author's purpose is not to present the readers with a comprehensive history of the eastern conflict. What separated this conflict from all others in the second world war, or in any other war for that matter, was it's indescribably brutal nature, carried on by a nation waging a war of conquest of space and of annihilation of another nation, which it considered both as inferior and also as politically dangerous, and this nation's struggle for survival, based to a considerable extent upon conditions created by the most brutal application of terror and annihilation by the regime against those it considered as a potential hindrance to it's total war effort. This point, though mentioned and discussed in all books covering the subject, is nowhere to be made as clearly and vividly as in this book, and one cannot even begin to learn and study the eastern front war without having fully understand what the character of this conflict was.

Considering comprehensive histories of the eastern front war one is constantly being reminded that we're still a long way from what might be considered a "definite" study of this conflict. The reason is clearly the lack of existing or declassified material from the Soviet era, that would shed light on the events leading to the Soviet military decisions that are mostly being speculated of. Also, perhaps the most interesting topic of all, the organizing of the Soviet war economy is almost nowhere to be found discussed at length. The transformation of a nation considered at the eve of war as a technological nonentity incapable of withstanding Germany's onslaught for more than two months, into a production machine that outperformed Germany's production from 1943 onwards ( with the Germans having increased their production too, despite the bombing ), is clearly worth studying.

Having concluded this review, I would like to append a brief comment on the editorial found at the top of this page.

By the time of the Allied landings in Sicily, in July 1943, the first military action resulting in a diversion of forces by the Germans from the eastern front to the west ( actually the diversion of home reserves there ), the death count on the eastern front had already equalled the total death count of the first world war. By that time also, the German offensive had been exhausted and the war had entered the phase of continuous Russian advancements which, by the time of Normandy, had already bring the Soviets close to the Polish borders. And though of course no one is to disregard the effects of lend lease and the allied bombing, it is clear that "discontextualizing" this conflict from the Nazis vs Allies "big picture" is not as farfetched as some would like to suggest. Describing the eastern front as merely another war theater like North Africa or Burma, does both injustice to the effort involved and to the study of the character of the conflict.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Overview Of Campaign Along The Eastern Front!, January 28, 2001

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin (Hardcover)

In the last decade or so there have been a number of excellent works emanating from historians regarding the nature of the conflict between the German and Soviet forces during Operation Barbarossa. This provocative, entertaining, and very well written history based on the popular BBC series and written by by Laurence Rees of the German assault into the Soviet Union and the ensuing war along the Eastern front employs a wealth of information released from Soviet archives in the last ten years and emphasizes the enormous struggle in terms of the fate of the Nazi state as well as the enormous contribution of the Russians to the Allied effort. Like a number of other recent works such as Richard Overy's "Russia's War", Glantz and Houses' "When Titans Clashed", and Alan Clark's classic "Barbarossa" it emphasizes Soviet strengths and attributes as central to the eventual result. Unlike earlier efforts that argued that blame for losing the war belonged to the Germans, all of these books argued that one must recognize the massive strengths and military cunning of the Russians in winning this campaign, which he terms to be the "battle of the century".

Like the TV series it is based on, this book is a spellbinding read! All the basics found in the other recent works is here in spades; a tragic misinterpretation of Soviet strength by the German high command, especially of the Russian troop reserves and manpower resources, which were a whopping three times as large as believed, the curious notion that by simply crushing the troops massed between the border and the Leningrad-Moscow-Crimea salient the German forces would thereby crush the communist government and send the country into anarchy, chaos, and ruin, and the profound German arrogance in believing they could master and quickly dominate this gargantuan nation of several hundred million in a short savage campaign lasting only a single season. Hitler and the German General Staff were consistently shocked and amazed by the continuing tenacity, resourcefulness, and endurance of an army they had presumed to have already beaten in the opening weeks of the campaign. As in the other tomes, he marvels as to how the Russians, after losing two million men in a single two-month period could rally itself, reorganized, re-outfit, and send another two million into combat so quickly. In so doing, he treads on well-covered ground.

Yet he also broaches other aspects of the war between the Soviet forces and the Wehrmacht not so well covered in the other books, and this adds immeasurably to the value and entertaining qualities of the book. For example, he makes the curious argument that it was the defeat of the German forces at the hands of the Russians that led to the Holocaust. The argument is curious given the fact that the systematic murder of both the indigenous and German Jewish populations in both Poland and elsewhere (including within Germany itself) had already begun in earnest before the turn in fortunes along the Eastern front. Of course, it appears to be true that the particular manner in which the Nazis approached the issue of the extermination of the Jews and others was profoundly influenced by the exigent circumstances caused by the disastrous campaign along the Eastern front, it seems specious to argue that it would not have happened had the Germans been victorious.

In matter of fact, it was a central canon of Nazi ideology that the Jews were central to the Aryan struggle, and it was this rabid belief in the reputed world-wide Jewish conspiracy against the Aryan race that was motivating them to exterminate the Jewish population, not the Wehrmacht's impending defeat at the hands of the Soviets. The primary reason for proceeding with Operation Barbarossa in the first place was to systematically exterminate the indigenous population through a three-pronged operation involving murder, slavery and starvation and subsequent use of the conquered land for future German settlement. Therefore, although one must admit the particular character of the Holocaust was influenced by what was happening along the eastern front, one wonders as to the reasons for this misguided and wrong-headed line of argument.

Rees is absolutely correct, however, in arguing that the nature of the conflict was biblical in its magnitude, ferocity, and endurance. The climatic conditions, including the most severe winter fighting ever recorded, were unprecedented. The lack of supplies and the consequent hunger, hand to hand fighting, in which the Germans soldiers were aghast at the willingness of the Russians to fight with almost bestial ferocity, and the intense continuing artillery barrage used by both sides all support Rees contention that this was the battle of the century. My recommendation is that your read this along with the books mentioned above. Doing so will leave you with a much better understanding of the war along the Eastern front and better appreciated how the Russians did so much to help win the European theater of the Second World War. Enjoy!

4.0 out of 5 stars A need to reflect, April 1, 2007

By 

Ethics Watch - See all my reviews

This review is from: War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin (Hardcover)

At some 256 pages this is a slim volume for a subject that could very well fill a small library. Rees presents a view shared by myself that the war between Stalin and Hitler was the single greatest war this world has seen. Although others may argue against this fact the sheer numbers involved greatly outweigh any actions in the Western Front.Not only in terms of death and casualties but every other figure involved. Rees presents a picture of a ruthless Stalin which after the fall of communism is fully backed up by the release of many political and historical documents. Was he more ruthless than Hitler ? I would say yes his brutality extended to all ethnic races and was much vaster in scale than the Holocaust and lasted longer. Tens of millions died in purges and Gulags, systematic removal of ethnic groups, mass murder , induced famine and any other number of crimes against humanity. A Controversial view but it is closer to the truth than has been previously documented.