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

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

Book Description
Fifty years after the end of World War II, historians now are coming to the consensus that Russia played the decisive role in the defeat of Hitler. At least 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished at home and on the battlefield in the bloodiest struggle of our century. Using material available only since the end of the Cold War, the author writes: "The conflict was fought on such a gigantic scale and with such an intensity of feeling that conventional historical discourse seems ill-equipped to convey either very satisfactorily. Little, perhaps nothing, of the experience of most Western readers and historians will have prepared them for what they will find in the history of Russia's war."

"A penetrating and compassionate book." (New York Times Book Review)

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 phenomenon to watch and understand. This is a carefully crafted and well-documented narrative that deserves your studious attention. For any serious student of the second world war, this book is a must-read. Enjoy!


Balanced and readable account of the Soviet WWII experience   September 19, 1998
michael.gruenenfelder@email.com (St. Gallen, Switzerland)
35 out of 40 found this review helpful

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!


Highly uneven   February 17, 2001
23 out of 25 found this review helpful

One can't help but compare this book with David Glantz's and Jonathan House's "When Titans Clashed". Both of these works are fairly new, based on newly available material, and attepmpt to capture the Soviet experience in WW2 in one volume (which is hopeless, the conflict was too large for that). The main difference is that where Glantz's book focuses on the military aspects, Overy spends more time on the political and human side of the story.

Apparently, Overy did not spend any time in the archives. You will not find any documents or references to them in this book. It's based mostly on secondary sources. The entire narrative seems to rely too much on various memoirs and biographies, which makes the point of view rather skewed in favor of those players whose memoirs Overy had read.

The resulting quality of the work is uneven. Overy does use new research extensively and dispels many myths. For example, Soviet casualty figures and the number of GULAG's prisoners come from reliable sources based on declassified archival data. On the other hand, Overy puts too much stock in works of dubious revisionists like Boris Sokolov, who provided an alternative view on Soviet casualties and significance of Lend Lease. Where Overy's sources pre-date the opening of Russian archives, old incorrect stereotypes abound.

The books is full of minor and not so minor errors. At first glance it seems there is a mistake every 3-4 pages. For example, Overy claimed that the main attack in Op. Bagration was to come from the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian fronts, when in fact the main blow was delivered by the 1st Belorussian front. There are numerous other military mistakes. There are also many errors related to politics. For some reason he assumed that there was no Soviet partisan movement in Ukraine because the nationalist partisans did not let them penetrate (p. 150). In fact, nationalist guerillas controlled only a small portion of the Western Ukraine, the rest was controlled by Soviet partisans. Then there is also a matter of him consistently calling Lvov a Polish city -- I don't think Ukrainians will appreciate that.

Overy also allows himself to theorize about the differences between Russian and Western societies. His conclusions are too simplistic.

Other minor details: Maps are too few and with some errors. Photos are of low quality (too dark) and with errors in their captions (e.g. a procession of supposed Ukrainians with a banner written in Belorussian). Many Russian last names are misspelled.

In short, if you're interested in military aspects of history, this book is not for you. "When Titans Clashed" is a lot better than this. I'm giving it 3 stars only because it does contain some new and valuable information not available to regular readers of military periodicals.


All There, but Something's Missing   August 15, 2000
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

In his introduction to Russia's War the author notes: "In twenty years' time it may be possible at last to write something approaching a definitive history. Current writing has a provisional air to it, and this book is no exception." Therein lies the problem for the reader wishing to devote one books worth of reading time to arguably one of the most important historical events of the last hundred years. Where should one start?

Overy himself recognizes the contributions of John Erickson and David Glantz, "who have done more than any other Western scholars to communicate to the non-Russian world the fruits of Soviet and post-Soviet research". Knowing this I assembled the following list of candidates: Russia's War (1997) by Overy, When Titans Clashed (1995) by Glantz and House, The Road to Stalingrad (1975) and The Road to Berlin (1983) by Erickson, and the classic Russia at War 1941-1945 (1964) by Alexander Werth (who was a correspondent in the Soviet Union from 1941-1948). While I was considering my decision I encountered an exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books between Anthony Beevor, author of Stalingrad, and a reviewer over the accuracy of his book in light of recent work by Glantz. In the end I chose Russia's War. If there was no definitive work at least I wanted the book that had access to the latest sources.

First the positive. Overy is very good at bringing recent evidence to controversial and muddied (often by Stalinist and Soviet propaganda) issues. An example is the effect of Lend Lease. For years its importance was denied. Overy notes a bugged conversation of Marshall Zhukov recorded in 1963 but released in 1993. Here, according to Overy, Zhukov "endorsed" the view that without Lend Lease the Soviet Union 'could not have continued the war'. He is also good at identifying where there are holes in the evidence, making possible only tentative conclusions or future mysteries to be solved.

Another strength is the scope of the book. The coverage is vast. He literally seems to deal with everything. Particularly valuable are the last chapter, The Cult of Personality: Stalin and the Legacy of the War, and the epilogue, Russia's War: Myth and Reality. By continuing the story past 1945, after having started the story during Civil War, Overy situates Russia's War in the middle of our historical consciousness and it is here that I begin to have a problem.

One of the reason I would recommend that everyone study this war is its shear horror and the magnitude of that horror. There are certainly heroic actions and temporary heroes but in the end everyone is doomed: the fascists and the communists, the losers and the winners, the guilty and the innocent. Most of all it is the ordinary people: the Poles, the Jews, the Ukrainians, the other Nationalities, the Germans. the Russians. There was no place to hide. After the war, Stalin actually purged the generals who won the war.

All this is included. But I can't help feeling that something is missing. The wealth of information often seems like it is being presented by an accountant. The human element seems lost. Perhaps it's unfair to ask this of the author when he's done so much. Perhaps I've just become numb. Secondly, there was one survivor: Stalin. Though detailing many of individual events of his reign of terror, Overy refuses to connect the dots. Stalin's presence looms so large that the book could have been called Stalin's War or Stalin's Russia, yet we are left to draw our own conclusions, search for our own meaning.

Overall this is a good book. I don't know if there is a better one available. I will certainly use its fine notes and bibliography as a reference. But I will continue to look at the other candidates on my list for greater understanding and to see if it's possible for a non-fiction work on this subject to do what I have asked it to do. I will also turn to Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Written by 1960 and finally published in the Soviet Union in 1988, Overy calls it "one of the greatest novels on war in any language". Maybe here I will find what seems to be missing.


Decent Account of Russia's Effort During WW2   April 17, 1999
Aussie Reader (Canberra, Australia)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful

This book offers the reader a decent and non-bias account of Russia's wartime effort during the Second World War. Although not as detailed as John Erickson's two volume account of the Soviet military effort its a lot more easier to understand and follow. Also you aren't left with the impression that the book was full of Russian propaganda. It tells the story as it really was, showing both the good and the bad side of the Russian leadership and its role in trying to stem the German onslaught into Mother Russia. I think that we tend to forget the effort and loss of life that Russia bore during WW2 although the author does not dismiss the West's aid to Russia during the War. The book offers a nice balance between two the camps (East & West).It was a nice compliment to the TV series which is currently showing in Australia. Well worth the time to sit down and read.