Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War

Good: A thorough presentation of the events leading to war, and the ideologies and personalities involved. A good overview to non-initiated. Although there are other books written with similar reach, most of them have been written before the opening of Soviet archives and are thus deprived of some important sources.

Bad: A somewhat chatty writing style, not very useful maps. A couple of gross factual errors regarding the Finnish participation in the conflict left me doubting the accuracy of the entire book. Bellamy takes the estimate of Finnish casualties in the Winter War from Soviet sources, and based on that hardly neutral source he claims that almost twice as many Finns were killed in that war as very thorough Finnish official statistics say (Russians say 48,000 and Finns 26,000). The name, date, and the place of death is known for almost all Finnish casualties, most of the bodies were brought home for burial, and there is no way 22,000 extra deaths could have been hidden.

Bellamy also says that in 1941 there were 150,000 Finnish troops mobilized against Russia, when in fact general mobilization had almost been completed by June 22nd when Russians airplanes attacked Finland and by July Finland fielded 470,000 troops (from a population of 3,7 million).

exploring new territory (2/4 people found this helpful)

Chris Bellamy's 'Absolute War' fills up a tremendous 'white spot' in our knowledge of the Hitler/Stalin-conflict from 1941-'45: the workings of the Soviet-Russian leadership.

Up to now, we always had to deduct from German sources what happened at the other side of the front. Due to newly acquired access to Russian archives this isn't necessary anymore.

I will provide one example: in the first days of this war, from June 22 up to July 3, 1941, Stalin kept silent. We always assumed that the Soviet-Russian leader was mentally recovering from his error to misjudge Hitler's determination to wipe out his Soviet rule. Mr. Bellamy tells us quite the contrary: in these days Stalin busied himself in converting the Soviet-Russian society into a full-scale war economy.

Given the immense dimensions of this Hitler/Stalin-conflict, any writer cannot avoid to make a selection. As I indicated above, mr. Bellamy's choice is a very happy one.

Thorough, but lacking a human touch (2/4 people found this helpful)

First of all let me say that this book is a huge achievement. The information packed into its pages is very impressive. It's so comprehensive that I'm sure it could be used as a reference after it's been read. But therein lies the problem. For me, at least. This book is an awesome collection of facts, a gold mine for the military strategist, but it fails -- doesn't even try -- to explore the human-interest angle. I don't think there are any vignettes -- diary entries, letters, etc. -- of ordinary people caught up in the events. Antony Beevor does that quite successfully in his Stalingrad and Berlin.

This is all about world leaders, generals, armies, divisions -- so many divisions! --, corps and battalions, the formations with their confusing numbers. It is a blow-by-blow account of military operations. Then the reader is repeatedly expected to refer to even more complicated maps decorated with sprawling lines and arrows leading to tongue-twistingly named dots. I'm a good map-reader and a fan of military history, but the busy, poor-quality maps at times left me bemused. Some nice, hand-drawn maps that don't try to show everything at once would have been appreciated.

And, although he forewarns his readership in the preface as to his focus in the book, I was a little disappointed that this book is skewed so dramatically towards 1941-42 when the invasion of the Soviet Union was hanging in the balance during the battles for Moscow and Stalingrad. This is fascinating but it does leave very few pages for the rest of the war. For example, the battle of Berlin was hardly more than an aside (since the outcome of the war was no longer in question).

And constant references to the recent invasion of Iraq were less than subtle.

So, to conclude, this is a very top-heavy and quite clinical analysis of 1941-42 that probably covers military activities very faithfully and thoroughly but lacks a certain human element that would appeal to a wider audience.

Bellamy pulls out all the stops (9/10 people found this helpful)

Having read many books on the eastern front conflict I found this book fresh and yet somehow very familiar. Nothing too new here but the style of the author means the 700 odd pages zip by as the various phases of the conflict are explained and expanded on with plenty of diagrams and maps. No phase is as given as much space as say Clarkes' Barbarssa or Beevors' Stalingrad but then when covering the whole campaign that would be asking something. All in all a great read, newcomers to the conflict will learn loads, those just interested in the period who have read other works will not learn too much new but will come back to this book as it really does a good job of covering a lot of ground.

A limited but good addition to Eastern Front literature (9/19 people found this helpful)

Chris Bellamy has written an interesting account of the Eastern front, although to a large degree limited to 1941 and 1942, that at least is what makes up the bulk of this almost 700 page book. I wasn't even aware that something like this was coming out and since it looked promising I ordered it from amazon.co.uk, not looking on the fact that I would be spending more money (but it was due to come out months later in the states and I simply couldn't wait). Was I disappointed? In some ways I was but on the other hand I took much away from this book as well. Bellamy's earlier work regarding the Soviet Union focused specifically on the Rocket and Artillery forces, and one can easily see that in this book he was out of his league. He studied under John Erickson, whose two volume "Road to Stalingrad/Berlin" are THE works to read when it comes to the Eastern Front of WWII, although dated. So I thought his work would be worth the read. First I'd like to point out the numerous errors I found:

On page 4 we have the quote "Without British and US dominance of sea...Soviet Union would have been defeated in 1942." I simply cannot see this being a fact, less so since he doesn't really support it with a convincing argument.

On page 8 he discusses quickly the Ukrainian famine and gives a number of 7 million death's, but no source is given. Today it is known that the figure of 7 million is an exaggeration.

Page 22 retains the idea that returning POW's were shot or sent to the GULag when the war ended. God how I hate this myth!

Page 100 Blames the delay of Barbarossa on the invasion of Yugoslavia, and not much else. Today it is known that the rasputitsa was extra long and no earlier invasion than late June was possible.

There are countless spelling and grammatical errors here and there which take away from the overall reading experience. They include: Dovator's name misspelled as Dovatpor, Kirponos as Kirponosos, Instead of Jodl we have Kodl on page 331, on page 331 "Kluge handed over control of Army Group Center to Kluge." It was Bock who handed control over.

On page 347 first it says the 29th and 39th armies were trapped behind German lines and then the next paragraph has it being the 29th and 33rd armies.

A few times I saw "lease-land."

On page 539 the author lists operation "Winter Storm" as being Guderian's operation, in reality it was Manstein's.

Page 656 the author mixes up the tank armies of Rybalko and Lelyushenko.

And there are numerous annoying comparisons between the Eastern front and WWII in general to what's going on today in Iraq.

Well, those are some of the mistakes that I caught, the reason I gave this book four stars is because of the author's short bibliography. As I said, he's out of his league. Many of the books he uses I have, they are excellent sources, but he's missing too much!

The author also tackles Suvorov AKA Rezun's thesis and tries to give both sides of the story, but in my opinion his analysis is lacking and leaves too much room for people to believe that Rezun has a point in regards to some things.

The accounts from 1941 and 1942 were excellent, his ideas regarding the intelligence Stalin was receiving and why he didn't believe what the UK and US was giving him are right on, for the most part, as well as the fact that Sorge's activities are given too much attention and what is ignored is all the times that he gave wrong information or at worst ambiguous intelligence. But the author relies too much on Beevor for his accounts of Stalingrad and makes a few of the same mistakes that Beevor did as well, to amend this I would recommend "Stalingrad" by Michael K. Jones. I'll also add on a positive note that the author addresses the - well known today - myth about the 28 Panfilovtsi (Panfilov's men). I was quite interested in his account and it didn't surprise me that Soviet authorities knew from as early as 1948 what really happened but kept their mouth's shut.

Other interesting points that I found were the descriptions of the NKVD in Leningrad trying to find a 'propagandist' who was turning out leaflets saying that they should open their doors to the Germans. The Lend Lease agreements and the impact of Lend Lease on the war effort, here I also think the author doesn't have enough information on this area. His numbers are interesting but the context isn't total. Lend Lease helped but it wasn't crucial and I can only hope that coming away from this book reader's will have the same opinion. The maps and tables were quite helpful but I didn't like the add libbing that the author kept giving me, annoying comparisons. This isn't a work of fiction, stick to the story, please.

Lastly, the descriptions of the rapes and destruction wrecked by the Red Army on the German population is taken out of context, to a degree. Somehow the author thinks that political officers, on the whole, encouraged this activity and gave their silent consent, but no real evidence is provided. Did atrocities occur? Of course, but there is no reason to make believe this was Red Army policy. STAVKA orders came down saying that such activities needed to be curbed and many times Red Army soldiers were shot out of hand for robbing Germans as well as raping and murdering innocent civilians, yet there is no mention of these facts.

In the end all I ask is for balance, an objective view, and a context that will let the reader walk away with a better understanding of what it was like in the shoes of a Red Army soldier or general. Sadly, this book didn't deliver that. For those who expected me to go chapter by chapter in this review, I'm sorry to disappoint, I'd rather point out what I liked and didn't like. This is a very DENSE history of the Eastern front, specifically 1941 and 1942 (border battles, Moscow Counter-Offensive, and Stalingrad). Politics, military actions, NKVD participation, and the allies are all included in what this book has to offer. It is worth the read, I can honestly say that learning the USSR and the US were still, technically, in a state of war with Germany up until 1955 and 1951, respectively, was a surprise for me! But, as with any book, take it with a grain of salt, if something seems amiss, look at the source and consult other works!

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War

Chris Bellamy

Reader Reviews:

Comprehensive rush job (2/2 people found this helpful)

exploring new territory (2/4 people found this helpful)

Thorough, but lacking a human touch (2/4 people found this helpful)

Bellamy pulls out all the stops (9/10 people found this helpful)

A limited but good addition to Eastern Front literature (9/19 people found this helpful)

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