Russia's War

Richard Overy

Anyone interested in a general account of Russia's part in WWII could do worse than to pick up this 330-pager. Richard Overy does a decent job of summarising the key points in the four year war, aswell as supplying a couple of early chapters on the build up to 1941 and a final chapter dealing with the post-war period and the death of Stalin. It's paradoxical that the chapters dealing with the period either side of the war detail just as much misery, starvation and torture as the main account itself. It's worth noting that Russia was still fighting a savage war against rebels and other freelancers within its own borders between 1945 and 1950. It's something that is little noted in the west but crucial in accounting for the paranoia that quickly developed in the soviet leadership with regard to the threat from Britain and the USA. After all, western countries had already intervened inside the Soviet Union against the communist government and on the side of rebels in the aftermath of a great war; between 1917 and 1921.

The main account, however, deals with German invasion, the Russian collapse in 1941, the advance in 1942 to Stalingrad and then the turning of the tide, ending with Russian troops fighting their way into Berlin. There are sections dealing with the Russo-Finnish war, the great battles around and in Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, the great tank battle in Kursk in 1943 and the rivalry of Soviet commanders in their race to be first into Berlin. In between these set-pieces Overy also describes what was going on behind the scenes: the extermination of the Jews, the partisan war fought behind German lines, the interesting question of how many soviet citizens fought on the German side, the technically important but slightly dull story of how the Soviet Union managed to survive the hammer blows of 1941 and rebuild and re-equip.

Not surprisingly, for an author who also wrote "Why The Allies Won", it's that last story which interests Overy the most. His argument, duplicated in that other book (not sure which book came first), is essentially that it wasn't Russia's size and population that allowed it to absorb the German offensive and then strike back but other factors. Overy is especially an admirer of the success the Russians had in dismantling and retooling factories to the east, away from the front line. He also makes the comparison between Stalin's and Hitler's management of the war. Stalin learned to draw back at crucial moments and trust his generals. The other dictator, disastrously, grabbed increasingly and erratically at the steering wheel. A third factor, for Overy, was the Anglo-American assistance to Russia. For Overy it was less important than we liked to believe but far more important than the Russians ever conceded. It seems the Russian army was moved around, re-armed, fed and watered by American trucks. Dull but crucial.

In some ways, however, it has rather a textbook feel. The horrors are carefully documented but the delivery is rather dry. For an insight into the degradation, inhumanity and suffering which characterised the Eastern Front I would say Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, dealing as it does with a single episode in the war, is by far the more masterful account. And while Overy deals with the gulags and talks about the brutality inflicted on its own people by the soviet system even as it confronted an external enemy none of the horror of the camps comes across in the same way as the chapter on Siberia in Ryszard Kapuscinski's Imperium.

Lastly, it's sometimes fun to spot an error in an work of non-fiction. While it isn't exactly an error it's certainly odd that the daily bread ration in the Leningrad siege is given in grams while the ration in Moscow is given in ounces, making any quick comparison impossible.