Product Description

There have been many individual accounts of particular moments in the vicious war between the Nazi regime and the Soviet behemoth, but none which sets out to tell the full and dreadful story of that absolute war: absolute because both sides aimed to 'exterminate the opponent, to destroy his political existence' and total because it was fought by all elements of society, not simply the armed forces, but civilians - men, women, children - too. Chris Bellamy, Professor of Military Science at Cranfield University, is one of the world's leading experts on this subject and has been working on this book for almost a decade. It benefits from his remarkable insight into strategic issues as well as exhaustive research in hitherto unopened Russian archives. It is the definitive study of what the Soviets called - and what their fifteen successor states still call - the Great Patriotic War.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209937 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 650 pages

Review
Chris Bellamy's book has much to recommend it... --Evan Mawdsley, The Literary Review

Book of the year, New Statesman
'Outstanding - magisterial and often witty in tone'

Military Illustrated
'Well researched, well structured and exceptionally well written history is based on ten years of research...'

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive rush job
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
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
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.