was a solid and readable book suited to the general reader, myself included, The author provides a good outline of the build up to the German invasion and then the campaign leading to Moscow's edges mixed with anecdotes and quotes from the political leaderships, commanders, troops and civilians.
My reasoning for three is that whilst book is readable and informative Moscow in terms of battle joined in its specific sense of the German movement and attacks to reach and capture the capital do not feature until near midway through the book.
I'd anticipated the book to be about the Battle for Moscow rather than a wider scoped battle for Moscow that encompassed the buildup to invasion, delays to planned dates, the start of the operation and then the key battles and movements leading to the main event.
That said whilst this was my loss, it is a good book that ably tells that wider story highlighting the strategic mistakes on both sides, including the leaders' approaches and behaviours as well as the treatment of troops and civilians by both sides, preparedness for winter, wider munitions supply, morale and censorship and life as a soldier.
All in all a worthwhile read that for seasoned Eastern front students will offer the author's views and interpretations with good maps and figures.
It should help the new or less experienced reader find
areas of interest, in this the largest battle between two armies in history, that decided Germany's fate and consigned millions to unmarked graves in the forests and fields that surround Moscow's western approaches.
This one was a brilliant piece of history and had all the points that I want when reading a book like this!!
If youre interested in the personal drama of a lot of people from the World war II period, then this is for you.
Especially the ones of the Soviet state, from the unknown civilians to some high ranking bureaucrats of even russian generals,
The german are also present, but this peculiar book is more about the situation in and at the outskirts of Moscow when the german war machine was at its doors.
This book had some new for me tremendous facts and events, but also a lot of unforgettable and unjustified crimes from the both sides that makes you instantaneously hate the whole futility of the war.
There are also the stories with facts and events of some of foreign ambassadors in Moscow and a lot of useful information about the communist regime and its actions on that period of time.
Overall, and keeping it short, an amazing read!
Ps: I recommend it also to those that in these time of Covidare feeling that the rules of quarantine imposed by the various states are too harsh yea, right!or that were living the end of the World!!!
No, guys! The Second WORLD WAR was the real End of the World and a true Hell on Earth!!! This is less of a military account of the battle for Moscow than it is a behindthescenes look at the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin during that enormous conflict.
The majority of the focus, though, is on Stalin, And in that regard, the amount of research here is very commendable, I can imagine the kinks that Andrew Nagorski had to work out when it comes to what's true and what's a result of Soviet propaganda.
The result is a very fascinating and readable account of the tyrant himself how his dallying and hesitation almost allowed the Nazis to seize Moscow in a matter of months, and how his erratic tendencies greatly influenced those around him.
Nagorski used a good deal of primary sources, including but not limited to Western war correspondents and Soviet generals themselves, I found these accounts to be fascinating, though the longwindedness of some of them seemed to detract from the primary narrative, This was the only real shortcoming of the book there was a rather heavy amount of anecdotal material that, while relevant, made me feel a bit impatient about what was happening in the bigger picture.
On Hitler's side, there is not as much meat, We primarily hear from his generals, in particular Heinz Guderian, Nagorski draws from Guderian's own correspondence and memoirs to paint a picture of a very disillusioned general, frustrated to the core at Hitler's refusal to heed the advice of his generals.
From delaying the invasion altogether to quell a rebellion in Albania, to splitting up the advance into attacks on three cities instead of Moscow itself, to doing nothing about the Wehrmacht's desperate shortage of winter clothing and supplies, Hitler's blunders are exposed and explained clearly in this book.
This is not intended to be a definitive account of the battle for Moscow, Rather, it gives us perspective from the people who fought it, suffered from it, and led it, I recommend this to any military history fan you will learn at least something new from it, If one was looking for a detailed description of the defining battle of 'Operation Barbarossa,' he would be disappointed, The Battle for Moscow is described with some good maps but the book is much more than that, It goes into detail into the strategy for the whole operation and into the character and action of the people involved, from the leaders to the soldiers and civilians.
At times it's a litany of horrors perpetrated one after another, I suppose nothing less was expected when two of the greatest human monsters of history squared of against one another, There were nearly seven million people involved with two and a half million becoming casualties, The statistics beggar the imagination, Both Stalin and Hitler were mass killers, Stalin perhaps worse of the two, He was perhaps more merciless with his people than the enemy, sending his soldiers into relentless mass attacks regardless of casualties, It showed. Russian casualties were nearly four times German, Defeat and surrender were not acceptable, Death awaited those who faltered, The climate itself was pitiless with temperatures falling to minusand more, Hitler's intransigence and insensitivity ensured that his soldiers fought in summer clothing, More of them died because of weather than enemy action, He also made strategic mistakes by firstly, starting his offensive a month late and then against the advice of his generals changing the axis of attack southward.
The result was that it was a near run thing, By the time rains and winter set in, German troops were barelykms from Moscow and were held by fresh Siberian divisions diverted from the East, based on the spy Richard Sorge's inputs that Japan would not attack Mongolia.
What this reviewer finds depressing is how mankind seems to throw up leaders with little regard to their well being, driven only by a mad desire for power.
Despite numerous blunders, Stalin seemed to exercise a mesmerising effect on his people, They accepted his ruthless pogroms and genocides with nary a protest, No other battle in history compares with the Battle of Moscow in the scope and the people involved, If Hitler had won the trajectory of History may have changed, Read the book, despite its occasional pedantic style, You will pray that we never face such instances ever again This is a gripping story well told, about a crucial battle of World War II that is too often glossed over and forgotten.
I was initially surprised that so much of the book dealt with people rather than fighting, but I came to see it as a good thing.
First, it puts the battle into perspective to see how it affected those involved, from Hitler and Stalin themselves down to individual soldiers and others caught up in the maelstrom.
Second, the actual details of the fighting are so ghastly, so brutal and relentlessly horrific, that Im not sure I could have takenpages of it.
Hitler was an incompetent fool, a megalomaniac corporal who thought himself a military genius and who overrode the advice of generals who actually knew what they were doing.
Stalin was an soulless brute, willing to throw away the lives of as many Russians as it took to achieve his goals, and to terrorize the rest.
I was appalled to learn that the Germans killed,of their own troops during the war as punishment, but the Russians killed around,, The US executed one.
All war is murder, and madness, but in its neverending torment the battle for Moscow should rank in our consciences along with Verdun, Passchendaele, and Stalingrad.
I did learn a lot from this book which was of course the goal however it was at times a dry text, Still, it was interesting to get a spotlight on this one battle and the author provided detail and context that otherwise would be glossed over in a generalized text about the war.
Most of the stats provided for this particular war are hard to stomach, the amount of lives lost and the way they were lost is something that should not be glossed over.
I did enjoy that this book provided details about the front lines, the civilians, and leadership providing the full picture, From a leadership decision, you see the direct impacts down the chain of command to the bottomtier soldiers to the civilians in the city, I would recommend this book only for those interested in those details, Completely biased and from what I could suffer through factually incorrect, Stalin's essay, or Marxism and the National Question was written innotas Nagorski claims, It was also Stalin's second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva who melted his heart of stone not his first Kato Svanidze, If you're going to write biased hogwash get your facts right, .