Hitler vs. Stalin: The Eastern Front, 1941-1945

By John Mosier

Book Overview

Originally published as Deathride , this is the true story of the Eastern Front in World War II, emphasizing how close Germany came to winning and the USSR to losing; the severity of the Soviet losses, which have been minimized due to Soviet propaganda; and the importance of the Allied invasions of North Africa and Sicily, among other factors, in forcing Hitler to re-deploy troops, saving the Soviets from disaster. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, began a war that lasted nearly four years and created by far the bloodiest theater in World War II. In the conventional narrative of this war, Hitler was defeated by Stalin because, like Napoleon, he underestimated the size and resources of his enemy. In fact, says historian John Mosier, Hitler came very close to winning and lost only because of the intervention of the western Allies. Stalin's great triumph was not winning the war, but establishing the prevailing interpretation of the war. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, would eventually prove fatal, setting in motion events that would culminate in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mosier argues that the Soviet losses in World War II were unsustainable and would eventually have led to defeat. The Soviet Union had only twice the population of Germany at the time, but it was suffering a casualty rate more than two and a half times the German rate. Because Stalin had a notorious habit of imprisoning or killing anyone who brought him bad news (and often their families as well), Soviet battlefield reports were fantasies, and the battle plans Soviet generals developed seldom responded to actual circumstances. In this respect the Soviets waged war as they did everything else: through propaganda rather than actual achievement. What saved Stalin was the Allied decision to open the Mediterranean theater. Once the Allies threatened Italy, Hitler was forced to withdraw his best troops from the eastern front and redeploy them. In addition, the Allies provided heavy vehicles that the Soviets desperately needed and were unable to manufacture themselves. It was not the resources of the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler but the resources of the West. In this provocative revisionist analysis of the war between Hitler and Stalin, Mosier provides a dramatic, vigorous narrative of events as he shows how most previous histories accepted Stalin's lies and distortions to produce a false sense of Soviet triumph. This is the real story of the Eastern Front, fresh and different from what we thought we knew.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 141657350X
• ISBN13: 9781416573500
• Release Date: June 2011
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Deathride

This book sets the new standard on what really happened on the eastern front. I have read well over 50 books on this topic and this one seems to hit as close to the truth as possible and the soviet myth gets torn apart with evidence and support from various sources. I don't want to give away to many details from the book so I will leave it at this, If you are interested in the eastern front and a new take on how Stalin really was as opposed to the victors view of this great leader you will love this book it was azmazing

Fact or fiction?

One of the problem with reading an omnibus rewriting of history such as John Mosier attempts in "Deathride" is determining veracity. Mosier is clearly on a mission: all the other historians are wrong - the Soviet Union, he says, deserves no credit for the victory over the Germans. If Hitler hadn't made a mistake here or there and the Allies hadn't shipped the Soviets prodigious quantities of arms, munitions and other supplies, the Soviet Union would have been crushed. Mosier is monomaniacal. There is no grey. He is right and that is all here is to it. But Mosier plays fast and loose with facts. He disparages Soviet statistics - except where he needs them to support his arguments, then Soviet statistics that were suspect a few pages earlier become acceptable for the present argument. He latches on to off-the-wall memes such as one professor's very arguable contention that 150,000 Jews served in Hitler's military. Here, the proposition is accepted as solid fact. Mosier argues that Hitler, for the most part, was a brilliant strategist who made a mistake or two. Incredibly, Mosier argues that the Battle of Kursk ended not because the Germans were defeated, but because Hitler decided to move key armor units elsewhere - in the middle of a major battle! It is contentions like this that lead me to give this book five-stars. Mosier provides plenty of citations to support his assertions, but as with much conspiracy literature, the citations often cut both ways - they can be cast to support either side of an argument. I have been a student of World War II, particularly of the war on the Eastern front, for more than 50 years. Anyone who seriously studies this conflict isd always very, ery careful because truth is elusive and incontrovertibly absolute truth essentially non-existent. Mosier claims that the West was deluded by Stalin, who wrote the history he wanted believed. There is much more than a grain of truth in Mosier's argument. But can Mosier's vehement dismissal of Stalin and the Soviet Union be supported by the evidence Mosier puts forth? Well, that's why Mosier's book requires a thorough reading and perhaps even a second reading. My first impression, reached during the first few pages, was that Mosier is a crank. Many of the assertions and claims he makes strike the student of the period as flat-out wrong. However, here and there, Mosier does bring an interesting twist to more or less accepted knowledge. Overall, I don't think Mosier's analysis holds water. It is riddled with what can be proven to be factual errors, unsupported assertion stated as fact, hypotheticals presented as fact, off-the-wall extreme individual opinions accepted as fact and so on. Yet, the careful student of the German/Soviet conflict will do well to check everyone of Mosier's claims. The exercise is worth the time invested and will prove Mosier to be an interesting theorist who, ultimately, is largely mistaken in his views. Jerry

Overturns 60 years of misinformation

A brilliant look at the Eastern Front. Having read over 50 books on the subject, I found Mosier's DEATHRIDE to be the freshest, most conclusive and exhaustedly researched book ever on the subject. It appears that all of the previous texts and videos on this front bought to some degree the Soviet myth perpetrated by the "victor" Stalin about the Russian campaign. He pokes holes in these erroneous assumptions backed by by undeniable research and casualties statistics that lay bare his case. His conclusion that the damage done by the Germans in this war greatly contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 opens up my eyes to the myth of the Communist regime for these 50 years and substantiates many conclusions I had thought of about. A great job!

An Eye Opening New Look At WWII on The Eastern Front

I picked up and started reading this book because I own (and have read) two of John Mosier's earlier books "The Blitzkrieg Myth and "The Myth of the Great War". Both of which I enjoyed. He re-examines what we think we know about these topics and casts the facts in a different light. He does this again in this book even more so than in his earlier works. I started reading the book not believing in the author's premise that it was only the Western Allies invasions in North Africa and Italy that save Stalin. By the time I finished the book, I have to concede that he makes a very strong argument to back up his case. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is a World War II buff and especially to anyone interested in the war on the Eastern Front. It is a very detailed read and uses alot of factual information to back up its assertions.

Read This Book!!!

If you read only one book on the Russo-German conflict, make this the one. When you finish, you may love it or hate it. You may praise the author as a genius or damn him as an incompetent, but this book will make you think.