Michael Jones draws upon a wealth of new eyewitness testimonies from both Germans and Soviets to vividly chronicle the German invasion of the Soviet Union on the morning of June 22 and the resulting counteroffensive that carried into the spring of 1942. From the German soldier finding his comrades frozen into blocks of ice to the Russian lieutenant crying with rage at the senseless destruction of his unit, the author shows us the faces of war when the Wehrmacht was repelled and the titanic and cruel struggle of two world powers forged the fate of Europe.
“Jones deserves full credit for the remarkable personal testimonies he has amassed.”—The Sunday Times (UK)
“A mass of first-person material that has been cleverly assembled to paint a striking picture.”—BBC History Magazine
“A gripping account of the opening stages of Hitler’s war of extermination against the Russians . . . Jones tells the story of the struggle with verve and scholarship.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Masters and Commanders
"A military historian with particular expertise on the eastern front of WWII offers this grimly absorbing account of one of the battles that shaped the whole campaign: the German retreat from Moscow in December 1941. Already overextended and undersupplied, the Germans were in no position to resist a massive Soviet counterattack. The next two months were the stuff of nightmares for the soldiers on both sides, whose letters and memoirs have been exhaustively used to paint a horrifying picture of starvation, cold weather, nonexistent medical care, and a complete lack of compassion for opponents (two million Russian POWs died during this period). The Germans suffered an additional defeat, because Hitler believed that his 'No retreat!' order saved his army from rout and from its defeatist generals. His assumption of the supreme command, fully equipped with vast arrogance and little skill, was another large stone that eventually helped build the tomb of the Third Reich. Sound and readable."—Booklist
"Jones's earlier Leningrad and Stalingrad established this British military historian's skill in conveying the human dimensions of the Russo-German War. His new narrative addresses the German sweep through Russia in the summer of 1941, its defeat at the gates of Moscow by a rejuvenated Red Army, and the massive Soviet counterattack that pushed the Wehrmacht to the edge of destruction. Jones makes a convincing case that the Fuehrer's 'stand fast' order in December 1941 entailed unnecessary losses. Retreat, he argues, did not inevitably mean collapse. The point remains debatable. But there is no question of Jones's success presenting, in their own words, the growing conviction of the Germans doing the fighting that Barbarossa had been a compound mistake. 'Does no one realize what it is like here?' asked one bewildered corps commander. Across the battle line, six months of atrocities demonstrated to the Russian people that whatever was wrong with the U.S.S.R., the Germans were not the solution. 'I vowed to kill as many of them as possible,' wrote one Soviet junior officer. His words are an epigram for an apocalyptic war, perceptively evoked here."—Publishers Weekly
Michael Jones is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the British Commission for Military History, and has taught at the University of South West England, Glasgow University, and Winchester College. The author of Stalingrad: How the Red Army Survived the German Onslaught and Leningrad: State of Siege, Jones has conducted battlefield tours of the Eastern Front for several years.
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