Choice Review

Elegantly researched and written, this sophisticated book describes and analyzes the detailed planning, military expectations, Nazi ideology, and German staff policies that contributed to the failure, as early as November 1941, of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's fatal invasion of the USSR. Megargee (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) describes the murderous role of the Einsatzgruppen in destroying Russia's Jews and how command and operational levels of the German army cooperated with them completely. The author examines the three areas of German operations: Army Group North--target, Leningrad; Army Group Center--target, Moscow; and Army Group South--targets, Crimea, Kiev, and the Russian oil fields. Clearly, the Wehrmacht valued operations over logistics: it ran out of food, clothing, ammunition, fuel, and replacements, and paid a bitter price for those errors in Russia. Most importantly, due to early successes, the Nazi high command underestimated the fighting spirit and durability of the Red Army. Dramatic and painful, especially in the author's graphic descriptions of the brutality against Soviet POWs, Jews, and partisans, this magnificent book serves as a bitter indictment of force without accountability and ranks as a cautionary saga of how this war of aggression ground to a halt. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. R. C. Doyle Franciscan University of Steubenville