Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945 by Evan s> Mawdsley (review)

Abstract

I64 SEER, 85, I, 2007 of I932 revealed,his regime was corrupton a grandscale. When Italyinvaded in 1939 Zog escaped with about ?4 million in gold coin. In a broadcast calling for cooperation with the invader, collaborator Khafer Bey Ypi noted that Albanians 'had a quarterof a centuryin which to try to govern ourselves, and what is the result?The country is in a state of decomposition'. Many resisted the occupation, of course, but it fell to the Communists under Enver Hoxha to remedy the situation by draconian means. More recently gentler methods have been applied: large transfusions of aid and investmentand the discreetsupervisionof NATO and the EU. But there are still discontents, tendencies to violent nationalism and organized crime. The saga of Albania may not have ended. London PHILIP LONGWORTH Mawdsley,Evan. Thunder in theEast:TheNazi-Soviet WarI94I-I945. Hodder Arnold, London, 2005. xxvi + 502 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Chronology. Glossary.Notes. Select bibliography.Index. 25s.00. 'Do you want to know how it ends?,' the flight attendantjoked, seeing my copy of Evan Mawdsley's 7hunder in theEast as he checked on his Torontobound passengers.And that in a nutshell is the problem with writing about the Second World War. Everybody knows the story. So many authors have alreadyproduced so many books and articleson the subjectthat it is hard to say anything new. Yet for all that, certain odd gaps remain. Until now, for instance, these millions of words have not included a scholarly,one-volume, English-languagehistory of the war on the Eastern Front, which gives equal attention to both sides of the battle. The standard texts have been John Erickson's7heRoadtoStalingrad (London, I975) and 7heRoadtoBerlin(London, I983), but the two-volume format makes these rather inaccessible to the average reader. More recently, Richard Overy's enjoyable Russia'sWarhas appeared, as have many works by writers such as David Glantz. But they concentrate on the Soviet Union. Evan Mawdsley's book thus strikes new ground by being a one-volume work (albeitat 502 pages quite a long volume) on the Eastern Front which gives equal weight to both the Soviets and the Axis. Consequently, it is likely that this will become the point of firstcall for those interestedin the war in the East from 194I to 1945. Thunder in theEast is not a page-turner in the fashion, say, of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad (London, I998), but is very readable, and from a scholarly point of view it is hard to find fault with it. It is well-written, amply researched, and fair and balanced in its conclusions. In some respects, it is quite an old-fashioned,guns and battle sort of militaryhistorybook, long on weapon systems, generals and military manoeuvres, short on social history and events in the rear echelons. The focus is very much on the operational level, and in that respect the book is extremely thorough, giving full weight notjust to the famousbattles,such as Stalingrad,but to the lesser-knownones and to all theatres of the conflict. REVIEWS I65 Mawdsley'sconclusion is, in essence, that the Soviet victorywas inevitable. Germany, he says, 'could not have won the war' (p. I88). Operation Barbarossawas fatally flawed, the entire concept resting on wildly overoptimistic assessments of Soviet weakness. For this, as for later strategic errors, Mawdsley blames the German generals every bit as much as Adolf Hitler. They were partners in crime, destroyed by their own arrogance. Germany lacked the resources to defeat the USSR in one quick campaign in I94I. Thereafter, the conflict became a war of attrition.Had it just been a case of Germany versus the USSR, the former might have prevailed. But from 1942 onwards, Germany was increasinglyfightinga two-frontwar, which it simply lacked the industrialcapacity to win. Even if war production had been much more efficientlymanaged, Germany could never have matched the output of the USSR, USA and British Empire combined. Mawdsley argues this case most effectively,and putting the war in the East in its broadercontext in this manner is surely the correct approach. If Mawdsley is quite rightly tough on the German high command, he is slightlymore forgivingof the Soviet leadership,despitethe enormousblunders made by Stalin and others in I94I...