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The road to Stalingrad: Stalin's war with Germany

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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.

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.

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

This is the definitive story of the first 18 months of the war. It actually gives a summary of political conditions of the two countries and its leaders before the war. The author qualifies the readiness of the two armies as well. It ends with the assault of Stalingrad and the entrapment of 6th Army but not the surrender of Paulus. The surrender begins his second volume.
The coverage of opening weeks of the war, as is the rest of the battles of Barbarossa: Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev etc has full coverage. Operation Typhoon is covered equally well. Besides the campaigns, German death squads, Russian partisan action, logistical problems, fuel shortages and much more is discussed. Zhukov's counter offensive at the gates of Moscow is also covered well. Moving into 1942, the Kharkov offensives and the start of Operation Blue are done well. Glantz's latest book on Stalingrad has the edge on tactical coverage but Erickson's section on Stalingrad is still noteworthy. Hitler and Stalin are discussed a lot. Their strengths and weaknesses, their obsessions are mentioned. The leading commanders of both sides are also discussed.
It would take pages to give justice to this book which is not available. Suffice it to say, Erickson gives you the important political and military coverage you need to have a deep understanding of the war, its leaders and its repercussions, especially from the Soviet side. Reading the author's two volumes will give you better understanding and appreciation when reading other books. Erickson's two books plus his photo book should be part of every war buff's core collection.

John Erickson's "The Road to Stalingrad" is a meticulously written, detail rich work of military history. This dense volume illuminates the tragedies and triumphs of Stalin's war machine from the outbreak of Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 until the victory of the Red Army at Stalingrad in early 1943. This is not a volume for the casual reader wishing to learn more about the Soviet experience in World War Two, but it and its sister volume proved essential when writing my Master's Thesis on the Nazi and Soviet command structures during the war. If you want a deep analysis of Stalin and his commanders at war, then check out this and the second volume, Erickson's "The Road to Berlin."

The edition I just finished is the original 1975 Harper & Row, apparently not revised since. The book is very good in its detail of the Soviet primary sources available at that date to the author, and his mastery of Slavonic languages was a great aid to him in conversations and other research in the USSR. It is also good in providing a semblance of Red Army order-of-battle and leadership, i.e. up to a point.

Much of the detail is perhaps a bit more than the reader may want - down to divisional, brigade, regiment, etc. level actions and movements - but a major flaw is the complete lack of ANY maps whatsoever (at least in this edition I read from), so the reader is doing a mental juggling act in visualizing the movements of corps, armies, fronts, and so forth.

The author frequently cites the diminution of Red Army units through casualties and attrition but only rarely points out the same for German units. One is left with an overall (and very false) impression that the Soviets are fighting from a terrible disadventage while the Nazis have relatively fresh and full-strength formations. In truth, the German units were just as ragged and undermanned/underequipped for most of the war and did NOT have much in the way of fresh formations and huge production to draw from, ever. Even at the very start of the 1941 invasion the Germans were up against a massive Soviet superiority in everything but quality of leadership - Erickson must surely have known this but he does not mention it at all.

Erickson continually cites the severe shortages for Red Army units and fronts of ammunition, troops, tanks, lorries, etc., and these shortages are cited by Red Army officers as a major reason for the many catastrophes they suffered at the hands of the Wehrmacht. Actually the USSR was producing HUGE quantities of war materiel of all types and their manpower pool was almost inexhaustible; the problem was their misuse and misallocation/misdeployment of these needs, i.e. incompetence.

One may note the exact same sets of excuses used by the Czar's army during World War One. Even then they had huge production etc. but incompetently handled it all. Erickson could have understood that but he didn't write about that parallel. A good study of the WW1 excuses was done by Norman Stone in his THE EASTERN FRONT 1914-1917.

I highly recommend Paul Carell's HITLER MOVES EAST and its sequel SCORCHED EARTH as the best available study from the German side. His HME reads like an exciting epic. Also very good is Clark's BARBAROSSA - a major thesis in his work is demonstrating how weak the Germans actually were in the 1941 invasion and onwards, far weaker than the Soviets. Seaton I haven't read (yet). And then there are all the various memoirs, e.g. by Guderian, Manstein, et al.

Erickson's two volumes set the standard for the history of the Eastern Front. However, volume 1, "Road to Stalingrad," has NO MAPS!

I do not know if other editions have this same defect, but I believe they do.

It is just inexcusable--it makes it very hard to follow some of the descriptions unless one has a map. The Cassell version of Erickson's second volume, "The Road to Berlin," does not suffer from this defect.