OPERATION BARBAROSSA

A chilling reassessment of the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941.

Dimbleby’s premise, similar to that of other historians, is that Hitler’s attempted conquest of Russia, like Napoleon’s march on Moscow more than a century earlier, was a supreme act of hubris and miscalculation. The author begins in April 1922, with a delineation of the Rapallo Treaty, which encouraged the Germans and Soviets, who were both excoriated after World War I, to create a mutual aid pact that allowed Germany to skirt the punitive strictures of the Treaty of Versailles and build up its armaments. This was the precursor to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, which shocked the world but again displayed the deep suspicions of the British held by the Soviet Union and Germany. Indeed, as Prime Minister Lloyd George lamented, Rapallo represented “the deepest slime of pre-war treachery and intrigue,” since Hitler had no intention of keeping his word to the Bolsheviks he despised. Dimbleby writes in excruciating detail of the Germans’ march toward Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow, resulting in hideous carnage on both sides, as well as the Nazis’ cynical design of a “Hunger Plan” for the invaded country—i.e., deliberate starvation. Though the Nazis, who considered the Slavic people to be “subhuman,” expected a swift victory, they were continually surprised by the fierce resistance. Weeks of standoff with his generals weakened Hitler’s resolve to take Moscow first, diverting badly needed resources into Crimea and toward Leningrad. Over the course of this masterly chronicle, Dimbleby shows that while the imbalance of man and materiel worked in the Soviet Union’s favor, “the collapse of Barbarossa owed more, far more, to a catalogue of self-delusions, false assumptions, and miscalculations that flowed directly from the arrogance of the German High Command and the folly of its supreme commander, the Führer.” Though he acknowledges the work of Ian Kershaw and other notable historians, he delivers his own fresh perspective.

An excellent addition to the library of any World War II buff.