Stemming the Blitzkrieg: Hitler's Failure on the Road to Moscow, 1941

Winston Churchill once said, “History is written by the victors.” While this may generally be true, in the case of the Second World War in Russia, at least in the English language, it seems as if the reverse has been true, as history has been written by the defeated German generals. Even the name to the theater of operations, the Eastern Front, betrays a German-centric bias to the history of what in terms of magnitude should properly be called “the main event” of the war.

Now, however, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of Soviet archives a new generation of historians are able to present the rest of the story regarding the Russo-German War. As he did in his first book, The Bloody Triangle, author Victor Kamenir has delved deeply into these archives to present a balanced history of the central thrust of the German invasion of the USSR. He shows how the Red Army, despite being overmatched at the beginning of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, valiantly fought back, slowing the German offensive, strategically trading space of the vast Russian steppes for the vital time needed to regroup and prepare for the defense of the Soviet capital, and the counterattack that stopped the mighty German Wehrmacht literally at the gates of Moscow.

Many books extoll the German effort, which faced the “endless Russian hordes.” This book looks at that horde itself, who were in fact flesh-and-blood humans, and examines how in the face of admittedly superior German military expertise they were able to save their capital and homeland from a surprise onslaught from the West.