Deathride

Hitler vs. Stalin - The Eastern Front, 1941-1945

John Mosier

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781416577027
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Originally published as Deathride, this is the true story of the Eastern Front in World War II, emphasizing how close Germany came to winning and the USSR to losing; the severity of the Soviet losses, which have been minimized due to Soviet propaganda; and the importance of the Allied invasions of North Africa and Sicily, among other factors, in forcing Hitler to re-deploy troops, saving the Soviets from disaster. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, began a war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest theater in World War II. In the conventional narrative of this war, Hitler was defeated by Stalin because, like Napoleon, he underestimated the size and resources of his enemy. In fact, says historian John Mosier, Hitler came very close to winning and lost only because of the intervention of the western Allies. Stalin's great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing the prevailing interpretation of the war. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, would eventually prove fatal, setting in motion events that would culminate in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mosier argues that the Soviet losses in World War II were unsustainable and would eventually have led to defeat. The Soviet Union had only twice the population of Germany at the time, but it was suffering a casualty rate more than two and a half times the German rate. Because Stalin had a notorious habit of imprisoning or killing anyone who brought him bad news (and often their families as well), Soviet battlefield reports were fantasies, and the battle plans Soviet generals developed seldom responded to actual circumstances. In this respect the Soviets waged war as they did everything else: through propaganda rather than actual achievement. What saved Stalin was the Allied decision to open the Mediterranean theater. Once the Allies threatened Italy, Hitler was forced to withdraw his best troops from the eastern front and redeploy them. In addition, the Allies provided heavy vehicles that the Soviets desperately needed and were unable to manufacture themselves. It was not the resources of the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler but the resources of the West. In this provocative revisionist analysis of the war between Hitler and Stalin, Mosier provides a dramatic, vigorous narrative of events as he shows how most previous histories accepted Stalin's lies and distortions to produce a false sense of Soviet triumph. This is the real story of the Eastern Front, fresh and different from what we thought we knew.

INDEX

Alexander the Great, 195

All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), 269

Alsace-Lorraine, 324, 330, 430n, 440n

Amis, Martin, 337

antiaircraft guns, 8.8 cm (“flak 88”), 113, 187, 216, 245, 327–28

antitank weapons, 61–62, 77, 94, 108, 113, 134–35, 245, 252, 296, 402n, 424n

Antonov, Aleksandr S., 48, 283

Anzio landings (1944), 258, 298–99, 301–2

armor-piercing shells, 61–62, 64

Army Group A, German, 192–93, 194, 197–98, 206, 207, 210, 219–20, 221, 222, 223, 281, 420n

Army Group B, German, 95, 192–93, 194, 198, 199, 203, 206, 207, 210, 223, 420n

Army Group Center, German, 96, 110–11, 131, 133, 142–43, 147, 149, 152–55, 189, 192, 193, 198, 199, 209, 210, 212–13, 227, 240, 255, 267, 297–98, 299, 301, 302, 303, 311–12, 398n

Army Group Don, Soviet, 221–22, 223, 224, 238

Army Group North, German, 95–96, 131, 133, 142, 143–49, 150, 181–83, 189, 192, 198, 199, 201, 209, 210, 212–13, 216, 220, 227, 255, 279–80, 332, 398n

Army Group North Ukraine, German, 282, 294, 300, 305, 306

Army Group South, German, 96–97, 142, 149, 153, 157–58, 163, 164, 184–85, 189–93, 204, 240...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• I INTRODUCTION: PSEUDO-REALITY AND THE SOVIET UNION
• II UNDERSTANDING THE EVIL EMPIRES: TWO CASE HISTORIES
• III THE DICTATORS’ GAMBLE
• IV INTO THE MAELSTROM: THE FIRST SEVENTEEN DAYS
• V DEEP BATTLE: FROM THE BREAKTHROUGH TO THE FALL OF KIEV
• VI THE CAMPAIGN OF COMPROMISES: OCTOBER–DECEMBER 1941
• VII THE HOLLOW VICTORIES OF 1942
• VIII THE PLANETS AND PARADOXES OF 1942–1943
• IX SUMMER 1943: THE TURNING POINT
• X DEADLOCK: THE GREAT RETREAT
• XI DEATH OF THE PHOENIX: THE LAST ELEVEN MONTHS OF THE WAR
• XII THE WAR OF EXTERMINATION: ALLIES, PARTISANS, CRIMINALS
• XIII CONCLUSIONS: FALSE VICTORIES, MISTAKEN BELIEFS
• XIV EPILOGUE: THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR AND THE COLLAPSE
• NOTES
• INDEX