Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945

by Richard Overy

Book Overview

"A penetrating and compassionate book on the most gigantic military struggle in world history."--The New York Times Book Review

"An extraordinary tale... Overy's engrossing book provides extensive details of teh slaughter, brutality, bitterness and destruction on the massive front from the White Sea to the flank of Asia."--Chicago Tribune

The Russian war effort to defeat invading Axis powers, an effort that assembled...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140271694
• ISBN13: 9780140271690
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Russia's War

`Russia's War' is a riveting, fact-filled history of the Russian experience in WW2. British historian, Richard Overy takes the reader first through the pre-war years in Soviet Russia, and continues with a chronological account of the war on the eastern front. This is a military as well as a political history. Not only does he thoroughly describe all the major battles such as Barbarossa, Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin, but he also highlights the internal workings of the Soviet state from it's inception until the end of the war. The terror, collectivization, consolidation of power by Stalin and the Bolsheviks, the gulag system, the role of the NKVD, relations with the western allies, and the general plight of the average Russian under communism are all explained in detail. The book is ten years old, but the only implication would be to consider that new information is continuously being released from once secret Soviet archives, thus a few minor details could be subject to change. I've always taken for granted the fact that the Red Army was every bit as cruel as the Wehrmacht, and that the entire Soviet state was just as "bad" as the Nazi state. The NKVD in particular, was guilty of unspeakable atrocities-on their own people as well as their enemies-that make Abu Ghraib look like a day at Disneyland. There seems to be a significant group of people who resent this comparison though, and would have us believe that Stalin, and by extension the whole Bolshevik movement, was somehow morally superior to Hitler's invading armies. Richard Overy knows better. This is not to say that the intent of `Russia's War' is to demonize the Red Army in any way; in fact it is an excellent example of objective history that duly describes the positive and negative characteristics of the Soviet war machine. In regards to fighting ability and effectiveness, Overy actually gives much more credit to the Red Army than many previously have. He's skeptical of the conclusion that the Russian victory was merely a result of more plentiful resources and numerical superiority, and describes how the Red Army dramatically improved their tactical and strategic effectiveness as the war went on. This evolution, according to Overy, together with the well-known tenacity and fanatical resistance of the Russian soldier, is what won the war on the eastern front. That being said, the American Lend-Lease program is also described as a much bigger contributor than the Soviets admit. The book appropriately ends on the note of Stalin's legacy and his cult of personality. Although Overy praises his skill as political and military strategist, he describes the horrific consequences of his paranoid and vengeful mentality. Despite the brief glory and jubilation of the immediate post-war victory, the plight of the Russian people under Stalin became even worse after the war, as Stalin plunged the country into a "second dark age." Overy really captures the enormous sacrifice and suf

Eye-Opening Account For Non-Russians

About a year ago I read an excellent book by Mr. Overy, entitled "Why The Allies Won." I was very impressed by that book so I decided to take a chance on this one as well. I was not disappointed. Whereas the earlier book stepped back and gave a broader view of the European conflict, "Russia's War" zooms in on the life and death struggle between Germany and Russia. If you have already read a few books on the Eastern Front, this book is probably not for you....it is meant only to provide a general outline of the war in eastern Europe. However, if you haven't read much about WWII, or if your reading up until now has concentrated on the Western Front, you might just find this book to be an eye-opener. I consider myself to be a fairly well-read person, but I am a bit ashamed to admit I didn't know much about the 1941 attack on Leningrad. I knew there was a siege that lasted about 2 1/2 years, but I didn't know much else. Mr. Overy explains Hitler's intent wasn't something as mundane as just getting Leningrad to surrender. He wanted to wipe Leningrad from the face of the Earth. Peter The Great had made it his capital, and so it had great importance to the Russian people and also to Hitler. The start of the siege in 1941 is horrible to read about and not for the squeamish. The city was surrounded and, besides being pounded by German artillery several times a day, for all intents and purposes was cut off from the outside world. What the population of Leningrad went through in the winter of 1941-1942 is unbelievable. Many people starved or froze to death or became so weak that they succumbed to sicknesses that, in normal times, would not have been fatal. But the survivors carried on and finally managed to get supplies thru by finding a gap in the siege lines that involved crossing a large lake. Leningrad managed to hold on until Russian advances in 1944 finally broke the siege. Mr. Overy also tells about how the Russians dismantled entire factories in the western part of the country right after the German invasion in June 1941 and moved everything by rail to the east. Factories were reassembled and workers constructed crude huts to live in, or sometimes just dug holes in the ground and lived in those. With the tradeoff of pretty much not producing any consumer goods, the Russian workers under these conditions managed to outproduce the Germans militarily....numbers of planes, tanks, artillery pieces, etc. As difficult as this was to accomplish, it was essential if the Russians were going to survive as tremendous amounts of military hardware were destroyed during the initial German assault in 1941. The author also gives credit to the lend-lease program. Stalin gave this short shrift in public, but in private he admitted that Russia could not have survived without the large quantities of trucks, jeeps, fuel, telephones and telephone wire, etc. provided by her allies. The Russian military also learned from their early mistakes. They adapted strategy and tacti

Interesting Overview of Russia's Defeat of Nazi War Machine!

I am a confirmed fan of Overy's work, especially after reading his tome on "Why the Allies Won", in which he carefully examines the real reasons the Allies succeeded in a war that was much more closely contested than many observers appreciate. Here he concentrates on what has to be considered the most unlikely reversal of fortune in 20th century war history, the catastrophic yet also heroically successful defense, repulsion, and vanquishing of the Wehrmacht along a war front that was literally thousands of miles long. Against all odds, losing army after army in the prosecution of the war, with millions of combatants and non-combatants killed, woundeded, or captured from the moment of the opening salvos in the summer and fall of 1941, the Russians' capacity for absorbing unrelenting and murderous punishment at the hands of the brutal assaults of a supremely confident and well-equipped Nazi army stunned the world. By every account Hitler made exactly the right move at the right time; he had just whipped the French and British armies in western Europe without raising a sweat. Just months before the invasion the Russians had been stopped successfully and quite unexpectedly by a much smaller and more poorly equipped Finn army. Thus, no one expected the Russian army to be able to stop or stem the smashing successes of the Germans some 200 divisions strong as they literally flooded through Poland into Russia in Operation Barbarossa, destroying everything in sight. Yet, with unbelievable determination and equally incomprehensible losses, the Russians eventually began to halt the Wehrmacht advance. Finally, with newly established and quickly trained armies raised even as the Nazis drew near Moscow, Stalin and his armies began the long, tortuous, and painstaking turnaround that eventually helped to save the world. That they did so is without question an accurate summation of the situation. Throughout 1941, 1942, and 1943 the rest of the Allies were simply in no position to seriously challenge Hitler's stranglehold in Europe. It is clear that without the Soviet prosecution of the war along the Eastern front, an Allied invasion of Europe would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. The war would have been extended by years. Yet the story Overy tells here is not a simple story of unexpected Soviet courage and success in the face of unbelievable odds; it is also a tale that details decades of wanton brutality within Russia itself, a nation hampered by its own trail of wave upon wave of murderous progroms and purges. The antiquated Soviet army was so devastated by the systematic extermination of the upper echelons of the Officer core that almost no one with any combat experience remained in leadership positions by the time the German blitzkreig began. Under such circumstances, the ability of the Russians to stem the tide of battle and turn it to their advantage becomes a much more interesting and complicated ph

Balanced and readable account of the Soviet WWII experience

Richard Overy is a professor of modern history at King's College, London. His "Russia's War" is to my (limited) knowledge the first account of the second world war from a Soviet perspecive after the opening of Russian archives. The book is notable for three reasons:1. Overy's history finely balances detail and overview. He neither clutters the story with endless tales of carnage and missery nor is the brutal horror, unleashed by the Nazi aggressors as well as the Soviets' own regime, missing from the book. On the strategic level, Richard Overy manages to make the reader grasp the few really decisive campaigns in this long and complicated conflict.2. The key Soviet players come to live. It's not just Stalin (on whom he offers insights, which were new to me) or Georgi Zhukov but also the second tier of national and military leaders. The human side of the Soviet key players and the psychological climate in the Soviet Union comes back to life. He shows what Stalin, Zhukov and the others did to reverse the odds within 18 months.3. The book doesn't start on 22 June, 1941 and ends on 9 May, 1945. Richard Overy devotes a substantial part of the book to the civil war and the period leading up to the war in Europe. He dicusses to early problems of the regime in the Soviet Union, the foreign aggression against them (e.g. Poland's invasion of Soviet territory in 1920) and the terror of the Stalinist regime before the war which consumed the lives of many millions of Russians, Ukrainians and other nationalities. Also, he describes the immediate period after the war, when Ukrainian rebels continued a bloody campaign into the Fifties.Last but not least I would like to mention the moderate price. It's imperative reading for the professional historian as well as anybody interested in the subject. Very recommendable indeed!