Customer Reviews

War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans

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

 

 

I agree with Prof. Hill that this is a superb monograph. It is very well-written, and the research integrates exiting historiography with some very impressive research in German archives. The theme is the escalation of German reprisals against Soviet partisans, so yes: there is a lot about violence in this book. The main question is: what was the driving force in the escalation of German violence targeting civilians in occupied zones? Continuing the work begun by Omer Bartov ("barbarization of warfare" in the East) and Truman Anderson (reprisals policy and ethnicity), Shepherd traces the microhistory of a single unit: the German 221st Security Division's antipartisan campaign. His findings are an important contribution to our knowledge of how the Hitler-Stalin confrontation escalated into total war.
My only objection is that Dr. Shepherd did not draw from published or unpublished Soviet sources. This would have been a much better book if the author had followed the lead of Dieter Pohl and Truman Anderson, who have studied the German occupation as international history: drawing from interviews with locals, and blending these with documents from Soviet and German archives.

Sherpherd has written an excellent perspective of German military operations against insurgents on the Eastern Front. The case study of the 221st Sercurity Division in Shepherd's book were forced to rely on tactics that depended less on violent actions and more on propaganda and working with the local population due to the lack of manpower in the division. However the neighboring 203rd Security Division comitted more atrocities because it was closer to the front and had to compete with the SS in order to curry favor in the high command. The only weakness of Shepherd's book is that he leaves out perspectives by Soviet partisans and whether or not they support his view of the 221st Security Division. I would highly reccomend this book for anyone who wants a new view of conterinsurgency operations on the Eastern Front.

You would figure that a book published by Harvard must be very good, right? Wrong. This book shows its origins as a doctoral dissertation, it is basically a compilation of atrocity reports from a couple of German security units. There is no analysis, not really much argument at all. Simply repeating that the Nazis were ruthless, sometimes using that word six times on one page, is not an argument. Nor is it news. The one insight that I came away with is that shifting expectations of which side would win shaped the reactions of the Russian population. No use of Russian sources: a book on partisan warfare without the partisan point of view!

I think one of the previous reviewers labeled this a thesis. It reads like a thesis, but this scholarly work answers the question of why the Germans failed at occupation in the Soviet Union during World War II. First they were brutal to the inhabitants, then they relaxed a little, and then decided that what the hell, they might as well create a dead zone. This alienated most of the population to the Nazi cause, as well as provoke a backlash against the occupiers. Then they brutalized the citizens of the occupied areas, which caused them to flock to the Soviet cause.

This is a nice read about why the Nazis failed at occupation. Our soldier's officers should read this, as it relates it Afghanistan or Iraq war efforts. Only by understanding the mentality, do we understand clearly what needs to be done.

Dr Shepherd has reviewed my monograph, which has kept me from reviewing his book. I will not write a full review, but wish to point out the following in the light of the review by chitadel. Dr Shepherd's book is concerned with the nature of German activity against the partisans, and Dr Shepherd notes a range of factors contributing to the nature of German partisan warfare in the case study area, which might not facilitate the clear cut conclusions perhaps desired by one or two readers.

This book is written as a sop to some pentagon funded exercise for occupation 101. It has no Russian references and it is from the German point of view as understood by a cousin Ben. It is a tendentious repetitive book. It was painful for me to read through. I was hoping maybe the next section would be better but no such luck.

I would like to sell my copy but that would be torture (er abuse) for the next reader. It should be a candidate for book burning not because it is abusive but rather it is abusive for the time and money of the buyer. In short a mercy book burning where it could save a few hapless readers their time and money.

raf