Review: Stalingrad to Berlin

[Marcus]

A review of "Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East" by Earl F. Ziemke has been added to the site.
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=8027

/Marcus

[Richard Hargreaves]

Very good book. Excellent concise review. Of his two Eastern Front books, I've always found Moscow to Berlin the superior volume.
Did he ever complete the trilogy by writing an account of the march on Moscow? The nearest counterpart would be Vol.4 of the German Official History.

[scarecrow]

So basically this book is like John Erickson's The Road to Berlin?
I mean from the level of details and the analysis of the war form army/corps level an the politics involved?

[Richard Hargreaves]

I think that's a fair description, but it leans heavily towards the German side as most of the records consulted were Wehrmacht, plus limited (and sanitised) Soviet publications.

[scarecrow]

thanks halder
Cédric

[F/PAUL]

I liked the book. I'll take german sources over russian stuff any day of the week. As of late, it seems that there is a movement afoot to glorify what the russian sources have to say about a particular battle or event and to downplay german records as inaccurate or biased. There is no guarantee that anything coming out of the soviet union is any more accurate or unbiased than german records. I don't buy into the 'politically correct' , revisionist history of the eastern front now being touted by certain 'scholars'.

[scarecrow]

well said F/PAUL i share your opinion.

[Kunikov]

I liked the book. I'll take german sources over russian stuff any day of the week. As of late, it seems that there is a movement afoot to glorify what the russian sources have to say about a particular battle or event and to downplay german records as inaccurate or biased. There is no guarantee that anything coming out of the soviet union is any more accurate or unbiased than german records. I don't buy into the 'politically correct' , revisionist history of the eastern front now being touted by certain 'scholars'.

Of course you'll trust the Germans, in your eyes they apparently won the war.

[F/PAUL]

I liked the book. I'll take german sources over russian stuff any day of the week. As of late, it seems that there is a movement afoot to glorify what the russian sources have to say about a particular battle or event and to downplay german records as inaccurate or biased. There is no guarantee that anything coming out of the soviet union is any more accurate or unbiased than german records. I don't buy into the 'politically correct' , revisionist history of the eastern front now being touted by certain 'scholars'.

Of course you'll trust the Germans, in your eyes they apparently won the war.

I have never expressed that opinion!! What I do believe is that soviet sources should be looked at as critically as german ones. Probably more so, given the political climate in which they were composed, drafted, re-drafted, re-edited and re-re-edited On that basis I think russian sources should be even MORE suspect..

[Kunikov]

I liked the book. I'll take german sources over russian stuff any day of the week. As of late, it seems that there is a movement afoot to glorify what the russian sources have to say about a particular battle or event and to downplay german records as inaccurate or biased. There is no guarantee that anything coming out of the soviet union is any more accurate or unbiased than german records. I don't buy into the 'politically correct' , revisionist history of the eastern front now being touted by certain 'scholars'.

Of course you'll trust the Germans, in your eyes they apparently won the war.

I have never expressed that opinion!! What I do believe is that soviet sources should be looked at as critically as german ones. Probably more so, given the political climate in which they were composed, drafted, re-drafted, re-edited and re-re-edited On that basis I think russian sources should be even MORE suspect..

What Soviet documents have you come across that were wrong, 're-edited', 're-drafted', etc?

[F/PAUL]

I liked the book. I'll take german sources over russian stuff any day of the week. As of late, it seems that there is a movement afoot to glorify what the russian sources have to say about a particular battle or event and to downplay german records as inaccurate or biased. There is no guarantee that anything coming out of the soviet union is any more accurate or unbiased than german records. I don't buy into the 'politically correct' , revisionist history of the eastern front now being touted by certain 'scholars'.

Of course you'll trust the Germans, in your eyes they apparently won the war.

I have never expressed that opinion!! What I do believe is that soviet sources should be looked at as critically as german ones. Probably more so, given the political climate in which they were composed, drafted, re-drafted, re-edited and re-re-edited On that basis I think russian sources should be even MORE suspect..

What Soviet documents have you come across that were wrong, 're-edited', 're-drafted', etc?

Given the political climate in the Soviet Union under Stalin\Beria, objectivity would be the last thing I would expect out of Soviet sources. Can you guarantee that the documents are accurate??? IMHO, I doubt they are.

[Kunikov]

I liked the book. I'll take german sources over russian stuff any day of the week. As of late, it seems that there is a movement afoot to glorify what the russian sources have to say about a particular battle or event and to downplay german records as inaccurate or biased. There is no guarantee that anything coming out of the soviet union is any more accurate or unbiased than german records. I don't buy into the 'politically correct' , revisionist history of the eastern front now being touted by certain 'scholars'.

Of course you'll trust the Germans, in your eyes they apparently won the war.

I have never expressed that opinion!! What I do believe is that soviet sources should be looked at as critically as german ones. Probably more so, given the political climate in which they were composed, drafted, re-drafted, re-edited and re-re-edited On that basis I think russian sources should be even MORE suspect..

What Soviet documents have you come across that were wrong, 're-edited', 're-drafted', etc?

Given the political climate in the Soviet Union under Stalin\Beria, objectivity would be the last thing I would expect out of Soviet sources. Can you guarantee that the documents are accurate??? IMHO, I doubt they are.

What Soviet documents have you come across that were wrong, 're-edited', 're-drafted', etc?
Can you answer the question or will you be dancing around it forever?

[Uncle Joe]

Good point, Kunikov. One should not mix the reliability or lack of it of non-archival material to that of true archival material.

[Andreas]

Very good book. Excellent concise review. Of his two Eastern Front books, I've always found Moscow to Berlin the superior volume.
Did he ever complete the trilogy by writing an account of the march on Moscow? The nearest counterpart would be Vol.4 of the German Official History.

Halder - thanks. I do not believe he wrote a third volume, and I agree that the second book is better than the first. In bookform regarding the topic at hand I am aware of a book on the battle of Berlin, the original 'Northern Theatre of Operations', which I rate as excellent (not sure I have reviewed it, if not I shall do so), and the two volumes on the general war in the east.

All the best

Andreas

[Andreas]

So basically this book is like John Erickson's The Road to Berlin?
I mean from the level of details and the analysis of the war form army/corps level an the politics involved?

Yes, that would be it, but it is much better written and illustrated (in particular maps, which seem to be non-existent in the editions of Erickson's work that I have seen). I think you can see the two works as complementary, even though Ziemke is using Soviet sources, but the quality of sources he had access to on the Soviet side was much worse than that on the German side. On the Soviet side he was restricted to memoires, and secondary sources such as VIZH, and that was pretty much it, while on the German side he had all the original NARA records.

All the best

Andreas