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Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War
by Christopher Bellamy
by Christopher Bellamy
Would it be wrong of me to compare the prospect and execution of reading this 687-page (not including the notes, bibliography and index) behemoth to that of the war in the east itself? Best not, I suppose.
Maybe it would suffice to say that having bought Absolute War for the '40s-esque price of a mere £1, it took me two years to pick it up in anger, and even then I expected to just read the intro and then shelve it again for perhaps another 2-20 years. However, instead I ploughed on through to the other side with all the swiftness of Pliev's cavalry-mechanized group, in an impressively swift two weeks.
True, had I not had the uninterrupted leisure of the Christmas holidays to devote, I might have had chance to grow battle weary and be tempted by surrender, but the point is - it didn't happen.
So what of the contents? I can make little to no comment on the book's extensiveness, not knowing anything more about the topic than what I learned here. More knowledge was taken for granted than I would perhaps have liked - of Stalin's character, for example - but Bellamy states early on that his intention is not to rehash old ground, so I can't really fault him for assuming that someone picking his book up might already have a bit of background knowledge. The book was never dull enough for me to seriously contemplate giving up, which is quite a feat considering its subject matter and size, although the many similar battles from the turning of the German advance up to the Soviet capture of the Reichstag did get rather tedius at times. Again though, I can't really blame Bellamy if the events of the war got a bit samey as the Soviets drove towards Berlin. There are some fascinating sections - esp the ones on relations between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, and in the final reckoning these were enough to keep the momentum going. Absolute War recounts the most impressively logistical and staggeringly wasteful endeavours in human history, depressing as that may be, and perhaps not surprisingly that makes for interesting if at times uncomfortable reading.
Not the most festive of reads perhaps, but then I couldn't have got through it at any other time. And I'm glad I did, even if I'm now in pretty severe need of a little RnR. White Russian, anyone?
Maybe it would suffice to say that having bought Absolute War for the '40s-esque price of a mere £1, it took me two years to pick it up in anger, and even then I expected to just read the intro and then shelve it again for perhaps another 2-20 years. However, instead I ploughed on through to the other side with all the swiftness of Pliev's cavalry-mechanized group, in an impressively swift two weeks.
True, had I not had the uninterrupted leisure of the Christmas holidays to devote, I might have had chance to grow battle weary and be tempted by surrender, but the point is - it didn't happen.
So what of the contents? I can make little to no comment on the book's extensiveness, not knowing anything more about the topic than what I learned here. More knowledge was taken for granted than I would perhaps have liked - of Stalin's character, for example - but Bellamy states early on that his intention is not to rehash old ground, so I can't really fault him for assuming that someone picking his book up might already have a bit of background knowledge. The book was never dull enough for me to seriously contemplate giving up, which is quite a feat considering its subject matter and size, although the many similar battles from the turning of the German advance up to the Soviet capture of the Reichstag did get rather tedius at times. Again though, I can't really blame Bellamy if the events of the war got a bit samey as the Soviets drove towards Berlin. There are some fascinating sections - esp the ones on relations between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, and in the final reckoning these were enough to keep the momentum going. Absolute War recounts the most impressively logistical and staggeringly wasteful endeavours in human history, depressing as that may be, and perhaps not surprisingly that makes for interesting if at times uncomfortable reading.
Not the most festive of reads perhaps, but then I couldn't have got through it at any other time. And I'm glad I did, even if I'm now in pretty severe need of a little RnR. White Russian, anyone?
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