The road to Stalingrad: Stalin's war with Germany [Hardcover]

John Erickson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1984

The first of two volumes in John Erickson's history of the Soviet-German war.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Erickson was an Honorary Fellow in Defence Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He was a leading authority on the Soviet-German War and lectured on Soviet-German affairs at the universities of Oxfod, --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 594 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; 1st pr of this edition (1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865317445
• ISBN-13: 978-0865317444
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,199,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily the best book on the topic, June 7, 2007

By 

M. Budimirovic (Ottawa, ON) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Road to Stalingrad (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)

John Erickson's 2-part history of the Soviet-German war in 1941-1945 is the definitive English-language publication on the topic. 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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Word of Warning - Not for the Layman!, November 16, 2010

By 

C. Kelleher "cmkelleher" (new york, ny United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Road to Stalingrad (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)

If you are looking for a general overview or even a general military history of the Great Patriotic War, this is not for you. Erickson was writing for military professionals who are intimately familiar with the political and military course of the War in the East and who sought a then-groundbreaking synthesis of Soviet military records that Erickson gained access to in the 70s.

This means that the level of writing is both dry and technical. General Oublensky transfers several regiments to support General Borisov's front reserve formation. General Dimitriov decides to order an elevated alert level for rear area anti-air defense despite Stalin's directives to avoid provocation. General Bulgarov requests new models of paper clips to support bulkier document files in Third Shock Army's records center. Etcetera etcetera. Most readers who do not themselves do this for a living will not find this edifying. Even battles are described in mostly arid bland institutional language that could well have been used to describe how one branch of a cosmetics company sold more shampoo than a competitor did. Erickson is clear and complete, but offers little insight and less elegance.

Erickson also does not bother with biographies or background. If you don't know Zhukov's and Stalin's earlier lives or careers, you will not find them here. if you want to know about the history of the Soviet Army in the 20s and 30s, you will not find it here. If you do not know why the T-34 was better than the Panzer Mk IV, you will not learn that info here.

You also will not find virtually any maps. You will need a separate atlas, online research, or a photographic memory to figure out where the various actions described are occurring. Vol II has a few ugly poorly done maps, Vol I none at all.

Finally, Erickson has more or less adopted the institutional perspective of the archives he used and the view of his Soviet military hosts. Everything that went wrong with the Soviet Army was Stalin's fault, not the fault of the political or economic system underpinning that Army. Basically Khrushchev's view circa 1960, this perspective has seen more than a little criticism in recent decades.

So what was/is the big fuss about these books? Erickson was the first English language historian to be granted significant access to the Soviet military archives. The view he presents contradicts and corrects what was the standard Western view from the 50s to the 70s, which was that the Russians won through quantity, and / or that Germany was defeated mainly by Hitler's stupid mistakes and the Russian winter. Erickson (quite rightly) presents in his unglamorous tedious way an important contrary theory; mainly that the Soviet Army won by tactical and strategic excellence, by superior resource management, and by the competence and experience of its generals. This is undoubtedly closer to the truth than the defensive self-justifications for failure presented by German generals in their memoirs after the war that was the initial source of the Western view of the conflict. Truth is ultimately vital, and Erickson's efforts, flawed as they were, did more to reveal and propagate this significant historical truth than any works on the subject before or since.

By way of comparison, as we can all agree the Model T was a brilliant historical paradigm changer, few of us would want to drive around in one today. Same deal here. The research presented by Erickson has been assimilated, amplified, and synthesized with other sources by a more modern generation of historians. These successors are also generally more readable, provide better background material, and even have lots of maps. Those wishing a general history of the conflict can look to Overy's "Russia's War". A superlative military history of the conflict can be found in Glantz's "When Titans Clashed". And further access to the newest generation of Soviet records can be found in "Absolute War" by Chris Bellamy. All of these, especially Glantz, are both better written and offer a full synthesis of Erickson's material in less mind-numbing picayune detail. All of them provide better background and biographical info on key figures in the war. They all have better maps. And finally, they all focus on other more modern sources from German and SSR sources above and beyond the archives used by Erickson. They are all considerably briefer as well - Overy and Glantz clock in at less than 350 pages, and Bellamy is at about 800 pages.

Who need to read Erickson? Graduate students writing theses on related subjects, officers in training seeking in-depth analysis of staff and command systems in the Eastern theater, completists, insomniacs Most other readers can bypass these weighty tomes and read the other surveys mentioned above. That option will take less time, will give a more complete "horizontal" picture of the conflict, and will have a lesser chance of boring you to sleep than these historically significant though clunky shelf holders.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best!, March 9, 2010

By 

Craig D. Johnstone (Christchurch, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Road to Stalingrad (Cassell Military Paperbacks) (Paperback)

I had this book in my WW2 library for a while, before finally picking it up and sitting down with it. I can't believe how much detail the author obtained, well before the Soviet Archives were opened up in 1991. His knowledge of commanders, division strengths, dates, battle plans, intrigues, etc, is unsurpassed in any book I have read. This has got to be one of the most definite books written about the war on the Eastern European Front. The only criticism I would raise is that is seems to be Soviet-Centric. This could be due to the fact that most of the fighting was done in Russia and its republics. However, I can hardly fault anything to be honest and would recommend it highly. Craig