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Anthony McIntyre 🔖 In terms of World War 2 literature, books about the Nazi war in the East tend to be the most gripping.


A war of extermination, with German economic and logistic planners estimating that up to 45 million (some went as high as 90 million) Soviet citizens could be murdered if the dream of conquering the East and creating Lebensraum was to be achieved. While extermination was plentiful subjugation of the Soviet Union failed to materialise because of a Soviet dogged determination not to allow the Nazi dream to become a nightmare. No walking meekly to their doom for the Red Army.

The military fightback that first frustrated the Nazis and then defeated them was launched in large part from within Ukraine. Four Ukrainian cities, Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol, and Kerch, were among thirteen in the entire area governed by the Kremlin to win acknowledgement as Hero City of the Great Patriotic War on account of the stiff resistance they mounted against the fascist intrusion. According to Timothy Snyder, throughout the war in the East more communists cooperated with the Nazis than nationalists. 

The lure that the East has for readers of the conflict is something for which Stalingrad can claim the lion's share of the kill. Leningrad showed firm determination not to yield to the Nazi siege, nor did it, eventually breaking the Wehrmacht hold after 872 days. Stalingrad was different. There, the Nazis opted not to slowly starve the city into submission but to swiftly murder their way to victory. It was not to be and Stalingrad has since entered the annals of history as synonymous with pitiless war and uncompromising resistance. While the routing of the Nazis on the banks of the Volga was the most visible turning point in the war, some German generals have opined that the failure to take Moscow in the winter of 1941 was where the war machine began to slither off the tracks in the cold Russian snow.  

By the end of 1941 the two year phase in which Hitler hoped to have everything done and dusted was drawing to a close with victory neither attained nor visible. Nazi attempts to entice Japan into the war, forcing the Soviets to fight on two fronts, were unsuccessful - even at the highpoint of Operation Barbarossa, August 1941, when the might of the German war machine, aided by a series of blunders by Stalin, seemed invincible. Tokyo had suffered badly at the hands of the Red Army in Manchuria in 1939 and had developed a much better appreciation of Soviet strength and potential than Berlin. The Japanese government took the advice of their own embassy officials in Moscow, ignoring inflated German optimism, that the Nazis would never be able to defeat the Soviets. 

Stephen Fritz, in his piercing analysis relies heavily on German source material, ranging from the top table records of Goebbels to bottom drawer letters from German Landsers on the Eastern front. It is a German-centric view of the war which avoids going native as it endeavours to mesh economics, material resources, food shortages, racist ideology and the determination to make Germany a great power into a comprehensible single narrative. Described elsewhere as a nexus between war and mass murder, Fritz captures the moving parts and slows them down sufficiently to allow a unified whole to emerge. 

Ostkrieg, I picked up around the same time as I was starting out on Russia At War by Alexander Werth. The latter at 1400 pages requires more time than is available to me so it has been shelved for now with the expectation of a return visit. As I usually only get time to read while commuting on buses and trains – it would take quite some journeys to get through a tome the length of Werth’s - I plumped for something more downsized. Opting for the work of Fritz seemed a safer bet. But at almost seven hundred pages it still posed a considerable challenge, taking me a quite a while to get through. That's a lot of time on public transport.

Ostkrieg in terms of its captivating lure is on a par with the work of John Erickson. Compulsive reading, compelling analysis, Fritz does not present a straightforward military narrative but stirs in the ideological yeast that was constantly fermenting throughout the war resulting in the rise of ever more murderous policies. This constantly moving dialectical relationship between ideology and war marinades the narrative superbly.  

All too often the focus on World War 2 atrocities has been narrowed down to the Holocaust. It is cast as primus inter pares of  horrendous Nazi acts. Much of this is for political reasons: when the light is shone on what happened to the Jews it serves to deflect light away from the Nazi-like atrocities perpetrated by the so-called state of the Jewish people. Those who fulminate against Holocaust denial can be found denying the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Holocaust while brutal and murderous in its conception and execution was not of the same magnitude as the War of Extermination in the East. 

Not that they were separate projects. Hitler's desire to wipe out the Jews was inextricably linked to the conquest of the Eastern territories but did not account for the entirety of it. Fritz stresses that the war both made the Holocaust possible and shaped the pace and course that it acquired. It was the war of extermination in the East that saw Nazi genocidal urges move into top gear. While Hitler did not invade Russia simply to murder the Jews, killing them became a much more integral part of Nazi war aims as the campaign progressed. Those marked for extermination included Jews but they were a minority of those being eyed up for murder as part of the racial restructuring of the East under Generalplan Ost.

Foreshadowing his later work, The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader, Fritz affords the German Fuhrer more military acumen than his character is used to receiving. In the early stages of the war some of Hitler's ideas turned out to be correct while those of his generals were off the wall. This would change as the war disintegrated and Hitler's mental capacity with it. All told brilliantly by Stephen Fritz. 

Stephen G. Fritz., 2015, Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN-13: ‎978-0813161198

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Ostkrieg

Anthony McIntyre 🔖 In terms of World War 2 literature, books about the Nazi war in the East tend to be the most gripping.


A war of extermination, with German economic and logistic planners estimating that up to 45 million (some went as high as 90 million) Soviet citizens could be murdered if the dream of conquering the East and creating Lebensraum was to be achieved. While extermination was plentiful subjugation of the Soviet Union failed to materialise because of a Soviet dogged determination not to allow the Nazi dream to become a nightmare. No walking meekly to their doom for the Red Army.

The military fightback that first frustrated the Nazis and then defeated them was launched in large part from within Ukraine. Four Ukrainian cities, Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol, and Kerch, were among thirteen in the entire area governed by the Kremlin to win acknowledgement as Hero City of the Great Patriotic War on account of the stiff resistance they mounted against the fascist intrusion. According to Timothy Snyder, throughout the war in the East more communists cooperated with the Nazis than nationalists. 

The lure that the East has for readers of the conflict is something for which Stalingrad can claim the lion's share of the kill. Leningrad showed firm determination not to yield to the Nazi siege, nor did it, eventually breaking the Wehrmacht hold after 872 days. Stalingrad was different. There, the Nazis opted not to slowly starve the city into submission but to swiftly murder their way to victory. It was not to be and Stalingrad has since entered the annals of history as synonymous with pitiless war and uncompromising resistance. While the routing of the Nazis on the banks of the Volga was the most visible turning point in the war, some German generals have opined that the failure to take Moscow in the winter of 1941 was where the war machine began to slither off the tracks in the cold Russian snow.  

By the end of 1941 the two year phase in which Hitler hoped to have everything done and dusted was drawing to a close with victory neither attained nor visible. Nazi attempts to entice Japan into the war, forcing the Soviets to fight on two fronts, were unsuccessful - even at the highpoint of Operation Barbarossa, August 1941, when the might of the German war machine, aided by a series of blunders by Stalin, seemed invincible. Tokyo had suffered badly at the hands of the Red Army in Manchuria in 1939 and had developed a much better appreciation of Soviet strength and potential than Berlin. The Japanese government took the advice of their own embassy officials in Moscow, ignoring inflated German optimism, that the Nazis would never be able to defeat the Soviets. 

Stephen Fritz, in his piercing analysis relies heavily on German source material, ranging from the top table records of Goebbels to bottom drawer letters from German Landsers on the Eastern front. It is a German-centric view of the war which avoids going native as it endeavours to mesh economics, material resources, food shortages, racist ideology and the determination to make Germany a great power into a comprehensible single narrative. Described elsewhere as a nexus between war and mass murder, Fritz captures the moving parts and slows them down sufficiently to allow a unified whole to emerge. 

Ostkrieg, I picked up around the same time as I was starting out on Russia At War by Alexander Werth. The latter at 1400 pages requires more time than is available to me so it has been shelved for now with the expectation of a return visit. As I usually only get time to read while commuting on buses and trains – it would take quite some journeys to get through a tome the length of Werth’s - I plumped for something more downsized. Opting for the work of Fritz seemed a safer bet. But at almost seven hundred pages it still posed a considerable challenge, taking me a quite a while to get through. That's a lot of time on public transport.

Ostkrieg in terms of its captivating lure is on a par with the work of John Erickson. Compulsive reading, compelling analysis, Fritz does not present a straightforward military narrative but stirs in the ideological yeast that was constantly fermenting throughout the war resulting in the rise of ever more murderous policies. This constantly moving dialectical relationship between ideology and war marinades the narrative superbly.  

All too often the focus on World War 2 atrocities has been narrowed down to the Holocaust. It is cast as primus inter pares of  horrendous Nazi acts. Much of this is for political reasons: when the light is shone on what happened to the Jews it serves to deflect light away from the Nazi-like atrocities perpetrated by the so-called state of the Jewish people. Those who fulminate against Holocaust denial can be found denying the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Holocaust while brutal and murderous in its conception and execution was not of the same magnitude as the War of Extermination in the East. 

Not that they were separate projects. Hitler's desire to wipe out the Jews was inextricably linked to the conquest of the Eastern territories but did not account for the entirety of it. Fritz stresses that the war both made the Holocaust possible and shaped the pace and course that it acquired. It was the war of extermination in the East that saw Nazi genocidal urges move into top gear. While Hitler did not invade Russia simply to murder the Jews, killing them became a much more integral part of Nazi war aims as the campaign progressed. Those marked for extermination included Jews but they were a minority of those being eyed up for murder as part of the racial restructuring of the East under Generalplan Ost.

Foreshadowing his later work, The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader, Fritz affords the German Fuhrer more military acumen than his character is used to receiving. In the early stages of the war some of Hitler's ideas turned out to be correct while those of his generals were off the wall. This would change as the war disintegrated and Hitler's mental capacity with it. All told brilliantly by Stephen Fritz. 

Stephen G. Fritz., 2015, Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN-13: ‎978-0813161198

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
Anthony McIntyre Book Reviews

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