Product Description

In THE ROAD TO STALINGRAD Professor Erickson takes us in detail from the inept command structures and strategic delusions of the pre-invasion Soviet Union, through the humiliations as her armies fell back on all fronts before the Barbarossa onslaught, until the tide turned at last at Stalingrad. Unsparingly he assesses the generals and political leaders, and analyses the confusions and wranglings within both Allied and Axis commands. The climax, the grinding battle for Stalingrad, leaves the Red Army poised for its majestic counter-offensive, Operation 'Uranus', discovering it had 'caught a tiger by the tail'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250483 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

About the Author
John Erickson was an Honorary Fellow in Defence Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He was a leading authority on the Soviet-German War and lectured on Soviet-German affairs at the universities of Oxfod, St Andrews and Manchester as well as a number of American universities.

Customer Reviews

Excellant, But REALLY does need maps
Quite simply the best reference source to date on the "Great Patrionic War". Volume one of a two volume set. Takes a good look indepth like never before of the Soviet war-machine and ineptness of its command structure, to the turning of the tide at Stalingrad. Make sure you have an atlas handy as there is not one singal map to look at, unlike Volume two. Still, a book required on everyones shelf who thinks they know the Russo-German War 41-45.

Excellent book but desperately needs maps
This is an excellent book which deals with Operation Barbarossa from the start of the offensive until the defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad. It is very detailed and obviously the author has had access to archives previously not available previously - this makes the book very interesting. The only problem is that the book has no maps !!! Unless you have an atlas, or an indepth knowledge of Russian geography you will struggle to deal with the in depth details of troop deployments. Buy it - but make sure you have an atlas !!!

Virtually unreadable without some good maps
This is a moderately interesting but at times mind-numbing account of the first two years of the Russian Front during the Second World War, written almost exclusively from the Russian perspective, and at a strategic-to-army level (the Stavka high command and its relation with the army groups and the logistical services). Don't look here for accounts of what it was like for a German infantry squad or Mark IV tank to encounter a T45, or to be a Russian colonel or divisional commander during the catastrophic campaigns of 1941-42; it's all about Zhukov flying into crisis situations to sort things out and incompetent generals being called back to Moscow to be shot. I'm sure John Erikson did a fantastic job at the time this book was written to secure all the information in this book, but there's no sign of any revision and new knowledge after the opening of Russian archives post-1991, and it is simply extraordinary that there isn't a single map in the whole book. The publishers (Cassells) should be ashamed of themselves: even if there weren't any maps in the original publication, why didn't they commission some when they re-published it in paperback format? Finally this book wins absolutely no prizes for its prose style, which is workmanlike at best. John Erickson has a single metaphor for all his descriptions of military action: it's all about slicing and dicing and hacking, ad nauseum. OK, we are largely dealing with armies being moved over maps and crises in the supply chain, and Erickson is generally good at marshalling his material and guiding you through a massive war, but he very rarely gets into the blood and guts, fear and passion of what it felt like to be a general as your forces collapsed about you, with a sense of responsibility for the very survival of your country. This to me is a major failing in any work of military history that claims to be a classic or definitive.