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The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew Nagorski
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
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Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 78248
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Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.54214731
ASIN: B0017ODW3K
Publication Date: September 18, 2007
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Product Description
The battle for Moscow was the biggest battle of World War II -- the biggest battle of all time. And yet it is far less known than Stalingrad, which involved about half the number of troops. From the time Hitler launched his assault on Moscow on September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, seven million troops were engaged in this titanic struggle. The combined losses of both sides -- those killed, taken prisoner or severely wounded -- were 2.5 million, of which nearly 2 million were on the Soviet side. But the Soviet capital narrowly survived, and for the first time the German Blitzkrieg ended in failure. This shattered Hitler's dream of a swift victory over the Soviet Union and radically changed the course of the war.The full story of this epic battle has never been told because it undermines the sanitized Soviet accounts of the war, which portray Stalin as a military genius and his people as heroically united against the German invader. Stalin's blunders, incompetence and brutality made it possible for German troops to approach the outskirts of Moscow. This triggered panic in the city -- with looting, strikes and outbreaks of previously unimaginable violence. About half the city's population fled. But Hitler's blunders would soon loom even larger: sending his troops to attack the Soviet Union without winter uniforms, insisting on an immediate German reign of terror and refusing to heed his generals' pleas that he allow them to attack Moscow as quickly as possible. In the end, Hitler's mistakes trumped Stalin's mistakes. Drawing on recently declassified documents from Soviet archives, including files of the dreaded NKVD; on accounts of survivors and of children of top Soviet military and government officials; and on reports of Western diplomats and correspondents, The Greatest Battle finally illuminates the full story of a clash between two systems based on sheer terror and relentless slaughter. Even as Moscow's fate hung in the balance, the United States and Britain were discovering how wily a partner Stalin would turn out to be in the fight against Hitler -- and how eager he was to push his demands for a postwar empire in Eastern Europe. In addition to chronicling the bloodshed, Andrew Nagorski takes the reader behind the scenes of the early negotiations between Hitler and Stalin, and then between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. This is a remarkable addition to the history of World War II.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 "Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it" September 28, 2007
Leonard Fleisig (Washington, D.C.)
70 out of 74 found this review helpful
Anton Chekhov was certainly prophetic when he wrote that line, perhaps no more so than in connection with the titanic clash between the USSR's Red Army and Germany's Wehrmacht in the opening months of the war on the east front in 1941/1942. Andrew Nagorski's "The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow that Changed the Course of World War II" is a compelling, well-written examination of an epic and bloody battle for survival.
Winston Churchill once wrote that "history is written by the victors". Nagorski takes the view here that sometimes history also is not written by the victors when that history doesn't serve the victor's purposes. At the outset of the "Greatest Battle" Nagorski points out that while much has been written of the battles of Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Kursk for example the battle that ended on the outskirts of Moscow has been subjected to far less scrutiny by historians. Nagorski suggests that a primary reason why Moscow has received less historical scrutiny is the fact that the victor, in this case Stalin's USSR, had little to gain by promoting a battle that would cast Stalin in a less favorable light than Stalingrad or Kursk. Documents locked in NKVD/KGB archives stayed locked well past Stalin's regime. However, since the fall of the USSR a great amount of previously uncovered records has led both Russian and western historians to take a new look at the battle for Moscow.
Nagorski has done an excellent job here in amassing a tremendous amount of research material and presenting it in a way that can be appreciated by readers with either a general or specific interest in the subject matter. One of the great strengths of the book is Nagorski's wide-ranging approach to the battle. He does not rely on the old chestnut that it was simply the winter that stopped Hitler's armies. Rather, Nagorski spends a good deal of time (productively) setting out a whole range of interconnected decisions that had an impact of the course of the battle. For example, we see how Stalin's horrific purge of the Red Army in 1937 and the army's disastrous campaign in the Russo-Finnish war helped lead Hitler to conclude that a war in the east would be nasty, brutal, short and victorious. At the same time Nagorski points out how a good showing by the USSR's soldiers against Japan in Mongolia in 1939, led by Georgy Zhukov, was most likely a factor in Japan's decision not to support the German invasion by attacking Russia in the east. This decision allowed the USSR to rush 250,000 Red Army soldiers from Siberia, equipped with winter clothing, to join in the defense of Moscow. As Nagorski points out their arrival was critical to successful defense of Moscow.
Nagorski also does a good job of weaving individual stories into his `big-picture' narrative. This adds a bit of real flavor to the story he is telling and also avoids the trap of writing solely from the actions of the large players on the stage. I would note, however, that "Greatest Battle" is not really what I would call a military history. You won't see an order of battle or a narrative detailing military strategy. This is not a criticism as much as it is a notice to readers that this is an excellent general overview of the first seven months of the war in the east and was not intended to be a military treatise in the style of the incomparable David Glantz.
Last, there are three books that would serve as an excellent complement to "Greatest Battle". Nagorski makes favorable mention of the writing of Vasily Grossman a wonderful journalist and writer. His book Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics)is a classic account of the great war as any I have read. Grossman's war reporting for the Red Army newspaper is mentioned by Nagorski often and can be found in - A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945. Last, Nagorski did an excellent job in connecting the fateful decisions made by Hitler, Stalin, and others. Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941really compelements what Nagorski has done so admirably in his Greatest Battle.
Highly recommended. L. Fleisig
 Grossly lacking November 22, 2007
Y. Mann (United States)
49 out of 67 found this review helpful
Having heard both good and bad about Nagorski's book I was interested to finally get to it. Sadly, from page one I knew I was going to be disappointed. To begin with generalizations are not a good way to start off a book, yet the author claims that "Stalin sent many of his troops into battle without guns, since he hadn't prepared the nation for the German onslaught." Source? None. How many is many? Where and when did this happen? While there would be a few examples of this throughout the book, as I'll point out later in this review, they are either taken out of context or not given enough context to conform to the author's initial revelation.
Nagorski makes a claim as to why the battle for Moscow was so important by invoking the casualties sustained during the battle, which, he says, ranged for 203 days. He then juxtaposes them with Stalingrad, claiming that the two sides lost 912,000 troops. The reality is that the Soviet side alone suffered over 1.1 million casualties during the Stalingrad defensive and offensive phase. Note that this does include sick and wounded as well as irrecoverable losses. This isn't to say that in the end the Battle for Moscow probably did consume more casualties, but why not then present the accurate numbers?
On page 9 we have the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact being brought up, apparently this was to signal the beginning of WWII. Somehow I don't recall Hitler actually wanting to go to war with either England or France over Poland. The basis for his supposition that Hitler and Stalin were "alike" and "mirrored" each other is a survivor of the war and a citizen of Moscow who served six years in a GULag camp, apparently Nagorski cannot find someone with more authority on the subject of two of the most deadly dictatorships and their leaders. The author talks about the similarities in both Hitler and Stalin's upbringing, specifically their authoritarian father's. Then quickly backtracks to say that most others probably grew up in the same type of environment yet turned out perfectly fine.
Once again one hears about the 'man-made' famine in Ukraine, no proof or sources or the fact that it affected other parts of the country aside from Ukraine, page 13. For an author who self-admittedly knew little to nothing about the battle for Moscow and had to take years to research it, he's quick to make a variety of ambiguous and generalized statements about issues he also knows little to nothing about. Nagorski parrots the idea that the Balkans were the cause of the delay when it came to Barbarossa, pgs. 24-25 (the invasion was also delayed because of the extra long rasputitsa, but we don't read about that here). He claims that Richard Sorge's predictions were "right on target", far from it in fact. If they were "right on target" Hitler would have attacked the Soviet Union on at least 3 different dates before June 22nd.
On page 37 we have the claim that the 41st infantry division, this is an error in and of itself since Red Army divisions were 'rifle' not 'infantry', contained 15,000 men, a quick glance through Alexei Isaev's book "Ot Dubno do Rostova" shows that the division, part of the 6th Rifle Corps, had 9,912 men. While Nagorski does provide endnotes he does a horrid job with them. It is, at this point, that I came to the realization that I will very rarely be able to use this work as a source when it comes to Nagorski's commentary and analysis. While the author gets the number of men in the Division wrong the following account of the division's commander and his interaction with an agent of the NKVD is quite fascinating. Even though there was an order to arrest the commander for shooting back at the invading Germans, which contradicted the first order that came out on June 22nd, the NKVD agent allowed the commander to go back into his dugout where he was visited by his aides as the fighting continued. Eventually, the commander would join the fight with his troops as the pretense for his arrest was dropped.
At last, we come to the source for the idea that Red Army troops were sent to attack without guns. A political officer from the 375th Regiment, a regiment that does not exist (after searching through the OoB for the Northwestern front, which the author says this unit belonged to, I searched through the Order of Battle of ALL Red Army Divisions which existed on June 1941, there was no such regiment, perhaps the author mixed it up with another, if anyone does know of its existence, please, leave a comment), says that he asked his commander to give them weapons, since they were fighting without guns...etc. If this was a real unit, I could try to look up it's table of organization and equipment and see how many weapons they had, but as this appears to be a 'phantom' unit, I can only do so much.
Another incident is related when a father, long after the war, would tell his son how his unit was given one weapon per ten men. Although it isn't clearly stated if they did any fighting, if they did it isn't mentioned where or when. 1941 was a chaotic year, many things were possible and this might have occurred, but the author does little to assure the reader that he's thoroughly researched each event he is writing about. An interesting account is given as Khrushchev calls in from Kiev saying that the factory workers want to fight but they need weapons, the response is that no weapons will be forthcoming as they have been sent to Leningrad. Rather, they should use home made weapons and anything else at their disposal. A story is related of when a volunteer of a unit is sent off to the front without a military ID, when captured by NKVD agents he has only his civilian and student ID which makes them assume he is a spy. After being interrogated and beaten he is sent to another NKVD officer who has the forethought to listen to him and check his story out, the end result being that he is released.
On page 70 the author, for some reason, mentions order No. 227, which was issued in the summer of 1942 before Stalingrad was besieged, why is this mentioned in a book that talks about the battle for Moscow in the winter of 1941/1942? Nagorski exaggerates what happened to POWs after they were liberated or escaped to their own lines saying those who managed to escape were lucky to be arrested and if they weren't lucky they were executed. Somehow he misses how millions of them were integrated back into the Red Army, sent to construction battalions, joined convoy troops, etc. Takes order 270, from August 16 1941, out of context and makes an error when paraphrasing it, he makes it seem as if the 1st part applies to all soldiers when in fact it only applied to officers and political workers.
Also, a rather ignorant error, is made when discussing an NKVD report dated October 10, 1941, which lists soldiers who were rounded up after escaping from the front. He insists that the majority, who were used to form new units, were used to create penal battalions. This is not possible since penal battalions were only created with order 227 in the summer of 1942. Also claims that GULag prisoners were put into penal battalions, this is untrue, they joined regular units.
A largely exaggerated number is given of Poles who were deported in the two year period of 1939-1941. I find it hard to fathom how the author can make the statement that "neither side had time to lay down mines" when searching a part of the battlefield with a Russian research group and explaining that children were dying after the war due to ordinance left in the woods and other areas. Was it that neither side had time when located in the vicinity which he was visiting? Was it that few mines were laid down in 1941? As I recall millions of mines were used throughout the Eastern Front. Perhaps context isn't an integral part of the research for this book.
On pages 217 and 218 the author talks about 400,000 troops being moved out from the Far East to help the Red Army fight the Germans, of whom 250,000 helped defend Moscow in late 1941 and early 1942. No real evidence is given, no units are listed, and no sources presented to back this assertion up. There were quite a few divisions moved from the Far East, that is the Far Eastern Front and the TransBaikal Front to the West, starting in June of 1941 (two divisions were ordered to move in June) and eventually 9 divisions participated in the Battle for Moscow up until October, some of which were tank divisions. The majority of those were alerted in October and arrived at the front in November. I think the numbers given are in fact exaggerated, but forces from the Far East, and various other fronts/districts were constantly on the move to bolster the forces fighting the Germans. I see no reason to give so much credit to just 'Siberian' divisions when so many others also participated.
I found it interesting and enlightening that when a veteran recalled seeing NKVD blocking detachments for the first time, he even today approved of them, he stated that "such toughness brought us victory." Again and again one will find interesting stories being related by veterans that the author has interviewed, but that's mainly the only worth I can see in this book. The chapters are not really arranged chronologically as again and again each new chapter brings with it a back story from the 1930's or even earlier. The author's conclusions are reaching, baseless, and in many instances lack context. The only positive side, is once again, the veteran recollections, and sad to say that at times those might not be totally accurate.
A very interesting story of the often-forgotten pivotal Battle of Moscow October 2, 2007
Mark Greenbaum (South Orange, New Jersey United States)
33 out of 34 found this review helpful
For some time, the Battle of Moscow has been forgotten and at times disregarded by scholars and others who have argued that the Battle of Stalingrad was the key battle and turning point in the war against Nazi Germany. Andrew Nagorski has written a very interesting and highly accessible book on the months leading up to the near-takeover of Moscow by the Germans, the battle itself, and its aftermath and consequences, demonstrating that the Battle of Moscow was larger in scale than any other battle during the war and may have played an even greater role in the survival of the Soviet Union and the ultimate defeat of Hitler. "The Greatest Battle" is highly enjoyable because it focuses not just on military minutiae, but because it also draws a fabulously rich and detailed picture of the horrors of the Nazi invasion of Russia, the battles leading up to Moscow, and the senseless death and destruction wrought not just by Hitler but also by Josef Stalin, who, as Nagorski takes pains to show, played a key role in the deaths of millions of Russians because of his cruelty and military/strategic negligence.
Nagorski does a great job by weaving in personal stories from various Russian soldiers, workers, doctors, would-by-spies, and others who are still alive and took part in the Battle of Moscow and other events surrounding the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. These vivid accounts that Nagorski unearthed for the first time add rich detail and help establish the incredible magnitude of destruction of the Battle of Moscow. I for one, had no idea that there were millions of casualties in the Battle of Moscow, far surpassing Kurst, Stalingrad, and Leningrad, for example.
Beyond that, Nagorski does well to establish that the Battle of Moscow has often been disregarded, particularly in Russia, because it is filled with many unseemly chapters and stories that Stalin and his successors never wanted to come to light: namely, that Moscow was gripped by complete panic and mass exodus as the Germans closed in, that nearly everyone believed Hitler's capture of the capital city was inevitable, and that Stalin himself was to blame for the Germans' lightning quick advance across Russia from June to October 1941. Indeed, because Stalin had purged many of the nation's great military leaders prior to the war, the army had no real leadership when Germany invaded, leading to early Nazi routs and the near-collapse of Russia in 1941. Nagorski contends that on many levels, Stalin's brutality against his own people was no worse than Hitler's cruelty, but that in the end Russia survived in large part because the Soviets who initially welcomed the Germans as liberators in hopes that Hitler would oust Stalin, quickly turned on the invaders when it became apparent that the Nazis were no better than Stalin's thugs. Indeed, the Russian victory at Moscow thus does not fit neatly within the accepted framework of the Great Patriotic War, as it was incredibly ugly, destructive on an almost unimaginable scale, and won despite the criminal recklessness by Stalin.
"The Greatest Battle" does not give the author's opinion as to whether or not a German victory at Moscow would have ensured that Hitler would have won the war. He does note, however, that besides the massive industrial and strategic rewards Moscow would have provided to Hitler, more than anything else the capture of the Soviet capital would have been a devastating psychological blow to the Soviets. Further, Nagorski does a good job analyzing how Hitler's late invasion of Russia and stalled drive on Moscow -- William L. Shirer labeled the former Hitler's greatest blunder -- contributed heavily to the Nazis' eventual defeat on the outskirts of the capital and in the war itself
If nothing else, "The Greatest Battle" is a great tale of one of the key battles that turned the tide against Hitler, and is much more readable than other excellent studies of the Russian-German war, such John Erickson's "The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War With Germany", and R.H.S. Stolfi's "Hitler's Panzers East" (a very good examination of the Battle of Moscow written mostly from the German perspective). It delves into rare, vivid personal accounts of the Battle itself which are invaluable and fascinating (such as how Stalin ordered the evacuation of Lenin's body from Moscow as the Germans closed ub, the great and then-ignored work of Russian master spy Richard Sorge who may have single-handedly saved Russia in 1941 with his intelligence reports, and other superb nuggets), and gives a great appreciation of the terrible scale of the Nazi invasion of Russia and how Stalin's monstrous leadership just barely let Russia escape being conquered by Hitler. "The Greatest Battle" is a quick read, and even casual students of World War II should enjoy it.
Four stars.
Amazing book!!! September 13, 2007
Zbigniew L. Stanczyk (Palo Alto, CA, USA)
28 out of 33 found this review helpful
One of the most astonishing books I have ever read in my life.
Nobody has ever done anything like it! It reads like Tolstoy's "War and Peace". Once you start it you won't be able put it away. It's amazing that nobody until now had enough courage to put it all on paper.
Very few had access to the sources used by author. It's a gigantic undertaking and it shows on every page.
The book has changed my understanding of what went on in the East in 1941. Nagorski also explains Stalin's war techniques which allowed him later to gain control of half of the European continent. I hope the book gets translated first of all into Russian and also into other European languages. They need to have a better understanding of the unknown episodes of WW II.
 Book would be an embarrassment for a professional historian. October 19, 2007
M. Powers (Springfield, IL)
28 out of 44 found this review helpful
Luckily, the author is a journalist rather than a professional historian. This fact is obvious even without reading his bio, as he fails to follow traditional historical research methods. Nagorski rarely bothers to analyze evidence or consider the credibility of a particular source. Anything that supports his theories is taken at face value.
There is nothing new about the author's theory that the Battle of Moscow was the turning point of the war. Among historians, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk are almost universally accepted as the three turning points of the war in Europe. Their relative importance has long been subject for debate. Geoffrey Roberts constructed a much more coherent argument in favor of Stalingrad in Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle that Changed History .
"The Greatest Battle" can best be described as "pop-history". Nagorski is to history what Dr. Phil is to psychiatry.
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