Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 | 
 enlarge | Author: Evan Mawdsley
Publisher: A Hodder Arnold Publication
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 403148
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0340613920
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.54217
EAN: 9780340613924
ASIN: 0340613920
Publication Date: April 12, 2007
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Product Description
The battles in Russia played the decisive part in Hitler's defeat. Gigantic, prolonged, and bloody, they contrasted with the general nature of the fighting on other fronts. The Russians fought on their own in "their" theater of war and with an independent strategy. Stalinist Russia was a country radically different from its liberal democratic allies. Hitler and the German high command, for their part, conceived and carried out the Russian campaign as a singular "war of annihilation."
This riveting new book is a penetrating, broad-ranging, yet concise overview of this vast conflict. It investigates the Wehrmacht and the Red Army and the command and production systems that organized and sustained them. It considers a range of further themes concerning this most political of wars. Benefiting from a post-Communist, post-Cold War perspective, the book takes advantage of a wealth of new studies and source material that have become available over the last decade.
Readers from history buffs to scholars will find something new in this exciting new book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Hell on Earth December 6, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Evan Mawdsley, a Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow is an expert in Soviet Russia. He has devoted his obviously comprehensive knowledge and considerable talents to writing a thorough history of the worst of conflicts, World War II on the Eastern Front. The destruction of material and human resources by that conflict easily surpassed each and every of it's predecessors. It remains unique in the annals of war, not only in terms of destruction, but in terms of magnitude and, quite possibly, human folly, as well. The author prepares a compelling case in both these areas in the first two chapters and a brilliant summary in the concluding chapter. The intervening sections exhaustively review the strategy, tactics, men and machines that fought the war. As might be expected by students of the subject, the German General Staff and overall command structure are poorly rated by Mawdsley. He presents a case for inevitable failure of the German military enterprise based on irrational premises held by Hitler and his various paladins. The case is convincing and well argued, though it appeared to be occasionally contradicted. The resilience of the Soviet system was emphasized, as was that of the Nazi regime. Stalin was characterized as an apt strategist and overall military commander, at least in so far as his conceptual grasp of grand stragegy and his ability to appoint highly capable theatre commanders and military advisors. Hitler, in contradistinction, was fighting an ideological war and was hamstrung by the delusions that accompanied this approach. His frequent interference and dismissal of capable commanders illustrates the problem, but it was of even greater dimension: the command structure was illogical, strategy was poorly conceived and the capabilities of the Soviet adversary were grossly underestimated. The book is a major contribution to the literature and is based on archives not available to previous researchers. It stands as a benchmark for future historians of the topic.
 Excellent general history of the Nazi-Soviet War October 10, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read this book after reading a review of a number of books on the subject that was publiched in Atlantic Monthly. I am not an expert on this subject but I have read several dozen books on the Eastern War, and I found this to be an excellent overall review. Very readable and very thorough within the confines of a single book covering such a vast sequence of events across such a vast front.
 Lacking February 2, 2007
27 out of 34 found this review helpful
This book could and possibly should have been titled "Zhukov, Stalin, and the Stavka" because that is the overwhelming focus. Evan Mawdsley is a Russian historian, and it definitely shows here. It gives an in depth analysis of RUSSIAN strategy and wartime evolution, but very little of the German side. Look elsewhere if this is what you desire.
This is a CONCISE history. Concise histories are usually rather dry and skeletal. I slogged through the whole thing, but I fell asleep reading it many a night. Compelling reading it is not.
Be forewarned that this is a history of the war from a GRAND STRATEGIC LEVEL. Mawdsley covers army GROUP movements. An army group is just that--a whole number of various tank and infantry armies grouped together. DO NOT EXPECT TO BE DOWN AND DIRTY IN THE TRENCHES HERE. The cold and desperation at Stalingrad, the T-34 versus the Panther tank at Kursk, the Sturmgewehr versus the PPsh-1, Messerschmidt versus Yak, the morale of individual Soviet versus German soldiers as the war dragged on etc. etc. is NOT here. It's all senior generals, marshals, and supreme leaders stuff. You know, the guys with clean buttoned-up uniforms that move little flags around on a table map.
So much is omitted. Incredibly Mawdsley devotes exactly 3 sentences to the appalling behavior of the Red Army once it entered eastern Europe. The systematic wholesale atrocities committed by the Red Army in East Prussia, Pomerania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary are not mentioned. The three sentences refer to Russian bad behavior only during the final battle around Berlin. Similarly, the grotesque Nazi Einzattsgruppen activity is also barely mentioned. Why? This savagery made the Eastern front UNIQUE from the Western and Italian fronts and characterized the war between these two reprehensible regimes.
Most unforgivable of all are the woefully inadeqate maps. There are exactly 11 of them. Not nearly enough, and they are poor sparse black-and-white affairs with nothing more than front lines drawn on them. You will constantly need an atlas at your side to comprehend the army movements.
There are a very few photos--none memorable.
Only recommended if you are looking for a short history of Zhukov and Stalin's growth as war leaders, and grand strategic army group movements from the Russian point of view.
Now THIS is military history! September 19, 2006
20 out of 23 found this review helpful
Beautifully written, extremely informative, and well-packaged by the publisher, this is another must have for the WWII buff's library. Using the info from the Russian archives which has come out in the past 10-15 years, Professor Mawdsley does a magnificent job of presenting an overview of the War on the Eastern Front. It touches on about every matter you can think of, and has quality footnotes taking you to leading secondary works on almost each subject. A good bibliography, but an annotated one would have been even better. It focuses far more on Russian matters than German, but also has some interesting information on the Nazi side of the hill. Not the only book you should read on the Eastern Front, but a great place to start.
WWII Eastern Front History at Its Very Best! August 3, 2006
49 out of 53 found this review helpful
This is a brilliant book; incredibly well researched, organized and written. Having exploited the latest Soviet and German archival material, "Thunder in the East" provides new and important insights into the German-Soviet war on the Eastern Front. And unlike previous Eastern Front histories, which tend to focus on one side or the other, Mawdsley, a professor of Soviet and Russian history, tells the story from both sides. The result is a powerful and balanced narrative, which touches on every aspect of the titanic struggle between Hitler's Third Reich and Stalin's Soviet Russia.
World War II historians have attempted to provide different explanations for the survival of the Red Army in 1941 and 1942, despite horrendous losses, and then its reemergence and resurrgence in 1943, leading to the defeat of the German armed forces in 1945. Mawdsley shows that rather than a single explanation, a number of factors were at work, depending on the period of the war, including the quantity of troops and equipment, the quality of technology, and the industrial capabilities of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.
The author doesn't shy away from addressing the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and the deliberate elimination of Jews and Red Army prisoners by the German army working willingly alongside the SS. Accordingly to Mawdsley, some 500,000 Jews were murdered outright by mobile SS killing units and other Nazi police units, assisted by the German Army, in the first sweep of killing in the USSR.
In his conclusion the author discusses the cost of the war to the Soviet Union, noting that some 27 million Soviet citizens were killed, including 10 million Red Army soldiers. The war damaged the USSR more than it damaged Germany and cost the country ten years development. "It is probably also true," writes Mawdsley, "that the Soviet economy never recovered from the war." And he makes it clear that a Wehrmacht victory in Russia would have been far worse for both the Russians and the rest of Europe and the world.
"Thunder in the East" is World War II history at its very best!
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