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Product Description
In "Russia's War: 1941-1945", Richard Overy re-creates the Soviet Union's apocalyptic struggle against Nazi Germany, from the point of view both of the troops and of the ordinary civilians. In the course of human history there has probably been no more terrible place than Eastern Europe in 1941-45. Estimates of total Soviet military and civilian deaths in the period now stand at more than 25 million. Yet without the Soviet war effort, it is unlikely that Germany could have ever been defeated. Drawing on a recent wealth of evidence to account for the Soviet Union's remarkable victory against invading forces, Richard Overy's "Russia's War" is a fascinating account of the epic struggle that turned the tide of the Second World War. "Masterly...a vivid account". (Robert Service, "Independent"). "A dramatic and exciting tale...His set-piece descriptions of such visions of Hell as Stalingrad, the 900-day siege of Leningrad and the crucial battle of Kursk are as fascinating as they are horrifying". (Alan Judd, "Sunday Times"). "Overy is a first-class military historian...Now, we have an authoritative British account that understands both sides, without illusions". (Norman Stone, "Spectator"). "Excellent...Overy tackles this huge, complex and multifaceted story with the vital gifts of clarity and brevity". (Antony Beevor, "Literary Review"). Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. His books include "Why the Allies Won", "Russia's War", "The Battle of Britain", "The Morbid Age" and "The Dictators", which won the Wolfson and the Hessell Tiltman Prizes for history in 2005.
Amazon.com Review
As German armies stampeded through the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Nazi politicians and Western statesmen alike predicted the USSR's collapse. In Russia's War, a balanced and acute portrayal of a combat theater that claimed more than 40 million Soviet lives, Richard Overy tells the story of how Stalin and his commanders held off defeat and engineered the most significant military achievement of the Second World War: the destruction of the Wehrmacht.
Russia's War is far from a tale of triumph, as the Russian capacity for resourceful creativity, desperate courage, and raw endurance was matched, if not exceeded, by the brutal oppression of the Soviet system. Overy argues, however, that victory was the result of precisely this uneasy combination. Drawing from extensive archival sources made available in the wake of glasnost, he revises both our conception of the Red Army as a horde that overwhelmed the Germans and the accepted wisdom that Hitler's defeat was the result of strategic bungling and a logistical overreach of the Nazi forces. Perhaps his most poignant contribution is the discussion of the crisis that recent disclosures have provoked in the Russian understanding of the conflict. What was once viewed by the Soviets as the "Great Patriotic War" has become "a crucible of miserable and incomprehensible revelations." In spite of these confusions, Russia's War commences to find significance in a contest that repeatedly disquiets and humbles the historical imagination. --James Highfill
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