Stalin’s Horrifying Victory
Below, an excerpt from the Boston Globe book review of John Mosier’s Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin — The Eastern Front, 1941-1945. I wonder if such a text would be banned by Russia’s history commission (if it still exists).
What emerges from these pages is a struggle between vicious Soviet bunglers with a craven leadership willing to sacrifice millions to survive versus vicious German technocrats with a leadership that didn’t anticipate the dangers of military over-extension and the advantages its rival possessed by fighting a defensive war in a primitive land with unlimited cannon fodder. That said, Mosier believes that Stalin was closer than anyone (including Stalin himself) knew to running out of men, some of whom by 1943 were getting only two days of training.