Reviews for Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin - The Eastern Front, 1941-1945

The average rating for Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin - The Eastern Front, 1941-1945 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-29 00:00:00 Ej Fesler John Mosier is not an academic historian, he is instead an academic contrarian. This entire book is devoted to challenging and debunking what he see's as the myths and sacred cows brought up over the years concerning the Eastern Front. Mosier, however, sets himself an impossible task: to say the final word about the war in the East. There will possibly never be a final word and those who think they've done so are fooling themselves. Mosier and David Stahel are both guilty of this and both are diametrically opposed. Stahel is the leading academic voice in the consensus which basically takes the Soviet viewpoint (most academics do) and basically asserts that the Germans never stood a chance. Period. Mosier disagrees. This is a good book, in fact an excellent book if nor nothing else it makes one think. Without retelling the narrative in detail Mosier basis his arguments on an excellent truth: Anything 'official' to come from Moscow was always a lie or a huge distortion of the truth. In fact it seems that the only industry the Soviet Union could run effectively was its Numbers making industry. Facts and figures abound in Soviet records...and they're all fantasy. Mosier spends a huge part of the book pointing this out, and he does so conclusively I think. He makes the excellent case that without US and British financial and material aid the Soviet Union would have fallen in 1942 at the latest and even then, with the aid, the Soviets never did match up to the Germans in terms of military capability. By late 1943 the best German formations were in the West and would remain so until the 6th SS Panzer Army would be transferred to Hungary in February 1945 for the operations to relieve Budapest. Mosier conclusively shows that although the Soviet forces did get 'better' as the war progressed, it was not enough to tip the scales in their favor. Even in defeat in 1945 the German and allied forces had a vastly favorable kill ratio in all arms. Soviet equipment was never as good as advertised and it was (in his view) only the Battle of Normandy that saved the Red Army from a war of attrition that it could never win with the kill ratio so far in the Germans favor. Having said all that, Mosier's book is far from perfect. He skims the rest of the war following Kursk and even wrongly analyzes Kursk as a great victory thrown away by Hitler's decision to send the Panzer formations West following the Allied invasion of Sicily. Granted the battle could be seen as a tactical draw but a war winning success it was not. had he narrated in more detail the rest of the war following Kursk his stance would have been built more strongly on a firmer foundation. Also, although he rightly points out the many glaring flaws in accepting the German Generals views of events, he goes too far in his acknowledgment I think in Hitler as a superior strategist. Granted Hitler understood the economic aspects of the war better than his generals but Mosier's assertion that Hitler was a superior strategist to Stalin is not entirely justified. Even Mosier points out that Stalin was able to play both the naive Roosevelt and the impassioned Churchill like two fiddles during the war. Also Mosier is clearly anti-Communist; and seeing as how the Communist Party worldwide is responsible for so much pain and suffering this is easily understandable. (He spends a great deal of the pre-war story detailing the horror of the Soviet regime, accurately I think too.) However, Mosier allows his hatred of anything Communist to color and cloud his analytical judgment, something which detracts from the books authority. Having said that this is an important book and should be required reading. Mosier points out the glaring flaw among more academic Military Historians and their blind acceptance of Soviet data as gospel truth as well as throwing the baby out with the bathwater and rather than presenting a balanced case they go so far in the direction of anti-Nazism that they accept without reservations the viewpoint of just as murderous and horrible a regime. The current trend of ultra-moral-ism that pervades all academic history (making moral value judgments on events of the past through today's viewpoints)has skewed the story in the opposite direction. When before the story was German centric the story is now Soviet centric, and neither is fully accurate. There needs to be a balanced case, and the only one I can think of is Alan Clark's 'Barbarossa' written in the mid 1960's. Due to the over moralizing and the hubris of historians like Stahel and David Glantz (not taking anything away from two historians who are worth reading certainly)a balanced view of the war is impossible and only makes an easy target for writers like Mosier. But writers like Mosier are necessary to try and steer the thinking back towards the center: where truth usually lies. A good book not without its flaws. Recommended. (As are the books of David Glantz and David Stahel, balance after all is the key...)

Review # 2 was written on 2011-05-09 00:00:00 Joseph Stynes John Mosier's books follow a basic formula. What you thought you knew about conflict X is wrong, what really happened is Y. Here he aims to say that the prevailing idea that the Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht thereby winning World War 2 is wrong, instead Stalin used propaganda to build up the story of the great Red Army which is false. The premise is surprising in that for much of popular culture, World War 2 = D-Day. In any case, I found the book an strange exercise overall, even though it is always interesting to read revisionist histories. One of the authors claims is that the German Army kept on beating the Russian Army and so the Russian Army never really defeated the German Army. This is strange in many ways. It is true that the Western Allied invasions of Italy and France also defeated large German formations and that the bombing campaign, whatever the moral issues, drew much more German resources than is commonly known. It is also true that the majority of the German Army fought on the Eastern front from 1941 til the end of the war. Mosier refers to total numbers when he wants to argue that the Soviets were closer to the breaking point than is commonly understood. This was interesting and I wish he spent more time on it. As the war progresses and the Soviets begin to expel the Germans from the East, he begins to talk about a handful of super divisions the Germans used for offensive purposes in the East. The Allied invasions drew these divisions back to the West and hence took away the German ability to conduct offensive or counter offensive operations in the East. This is strange as the Eastern front had well over 100 divisions on the German side alone. Whatever their strength, it is a bit much to argue that the German war effort hinged on such a small proportion of the Army. Mosier does concede that the Soviets won the battle that destroyed Army Group Center in 1944, but thinks of it more as a one off. He basically views the Soviets as ineffective cannon fodder. He tends to focus on casualties in battle, noting that the Germans inflicted an far more casualties per German death than they did when facing the Western Allies. This focus feels like the body count mentality in Vietnam. In the end what matters was, where the Germans going to stay in Russia, the Ukraine and the rest. In his desire to denigrate the Russians, Mosier avoids the discussion that could help explore the relative contribution of American, British and Russian forces to Germany's defeat. I