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This is an OK book but I do not recommend it. This book is more about Stalin's purges and the suffering he imposed on his own people than actual battle It should have been titled accordingly. This book gets the German armies to Moscow but then falls short.
This is a political overview interspersed with many interesting but hardly relevant personal vignettes. Where are the manoeuvre formations, how were they deployed and why. This book is not about the battle for Moscow.
How were the logistics handled. We are still waiting for the definitive book on the battles around Moscow. Yes, Moscow and the Russian people suffered but that is not supposed to be the point of the book.
This book does not cover the battle in any depth at all.
He also lists a lot of good reasons on why things happened why they did. He cites Stalin himself third hand on how everything tied in at Moscow. The book makes you think on how the world had been different if the Germans would have won the battle. It is almost like you can feel the cold and hear the shells.
The standard view that Stalingrad was the decisive battle. That cost them valuable time at the gates. This book is a great read. The author looks at on old story with new eyes. There is some of the standard military history, but the whole book isn't that. You get a feeling of the panic both the governments felt plus the average citizen.
The German steering away from Moscow to the Kiev pocket is the main reason the author cites on why the Germans lost. You can see where some of the issues from yalta started in 41 like the Polish question. He cites an interview from a farmer in the battle area where so many Siberians were buried the fields like crunched when you walked. That seems to be lost in today's stories since the battle was so long ago. If you want a book about the battles this isn't it. The book makes you realize how bad it was. He uses a combination of the standard military history, new unclassified material, and some great personal accounts the author took from his own interviews.
The book also dives past the Russian propaganda to tell some things that have never been said before. The author uses stories to create a sense of the emotional feeling that happened during the battle. The author paints a convincing story on how Moscow was the big show. The book focuses more on the political part.
Heinz Guderian on the German side. I did enjoy the book and learned much about events around Russia in the Stalin era, such as the impact of the 1930s show trials on the Red Army's readiness to fight at the outset of the war. The author actually pays very little attention to military operations in the battle he says changed the course of World War II.
And Nagorski seems to have included comments from everyone he could track down who was old enough to have been there at the time. But you need to go into this book expecting that, and not a detailed military history of a battle. They don't really add much to the story.
This is more of a character study of people involved in the Battle for Moscow, especially Hitler and Stalin, the two great monsters of the 20th century. Didn't we know that many of the Soviet claims of a unified people fighting herocially for Stalin and Communism were propoganda before the Soviet Union fell.
It says something about the level of detail of the book that we see more of Stalin and Hitler, and even Churchill than we do of General Georgy Zhukov on the Soviet side or Gen. The author, Andrew Nagorski, says he relied on much newly declassified material to reach ground breaking conclusions, but it is hard for me to see.
Aside from the respective incompetences of their respective regimes, Stalin killing off the officer corps on the eve of WWII and Hitler refusing to issue winter clothing until his soldiers were forced to steal lady's underwear for ear muffs, was that these were two of the most (literally) bloody minded rulers ever. This and the subsequent 7 November Red Square celebration probably did a great deal to rally the population. I think that this is an excellent overview of the war. Whenever I think of the eastern front in WWII, I cannot help but recall the old Lowe cartoon in which Stalin and Hitler are standing over a dead body and politely introducing themselves to each other. Another very interesting book on the topic which gets further into military matters is Glantz's "When Titans Clashed." However, this book is an excellent overview of this crucial battle in the history of WWII. Stalin himself opted to stay.
While discussing WWII, or the "Great Patriotic War" remains a sensitive subject in Russia, this work provides a great deal more from the ordinary Russian citizen and soldier than I have seen in a work in English. It was due to the efforts of these people that the Red Army was able to survive and then to fight on, destroying one dictator while unfortunately allowing another to survive. which give the book its added luster. This adds to the basic understanding of what an effort it was for the Soviet regime to pull itself together to fight the Nazis after all Stalin and his henchmen had put the country through.If the battle for Moscow had a turning point it was, according to this book, between 6-29 October. There are any number of interviews with the less prominent members of the war, particularly on the Soviet side.
Stalin refers to Hitler as "the bloody assassin of the workers," Hitler views Stalin as simply "the scum of the earth." This cartoon illustrates why the fighting was so fierce. However it is not just the parts of the narrative that deal with generals and the leaders that make it worthwhile. Between 16-17 October, residents of Moscow, including the government were in the process of fleeing (elements of the government relocated to Kuybyshev (now Samara). When the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany went to war, the outcome could not be anything less than a bloodbath.Most of the histories I have read on the battle for Moscow have generally relied on primary sources for the German side and had to resort to the official view from the Russian. During this period, the first snows began to fall, Zhukov was recalled from Leningrad to take charge of the defenses in the capital, and the Wehrmacht became bogged down in an assault on Tula (this expensive loss of time ensured that fighting would continue through the winter, undermining the objective of a quick German victory).
Nagorski illustrates how the Soviet people and military organized their resources and manpower to meet the German invader. Both sides of this epic fight are presented in an easy to read style with a clear narrative voice. Andrew Nagorski's "The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II" is a fascinating account of the Wehrmacht's first defeat and the Red Army's first triumph. The Wehrmacht, by contrast, made one last throw of the dice to end the campaign before the end of the year. Serious students of the Eastern Front and casual readers will greatly enjoy this work. With great skill Nagorski takes the reader back to those eventful weeks in late November, early December 1941 when the fate of the world hung in the balance. The political and military implications of the battle permeate this work, and was certainly understood at the time to Hitler and Stalin.
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