Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted

by Russel H.S. Stolfi

Book Overview

How close did Germany come to winning World War II? Did Hitler throw away victory in Europe after his troops had crushed the Soviet field armies defending Moscow by August 1941? R.H.S. Stolfi offers a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0739407783
• ISBN13: 9780739407783
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: U of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Truly a Groundbreaking Book!

Forget all the traditional, "standard" histories of Barbarossa you've ever read -- the ones which simply repeat the same tired reasons why Germany lost, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. R.H.S. Stolfi has written a work which presents a completely new view of Barbarossa, and the real possibilities of the German Army to win the European-wide war in 1941. Basically what Stolfi contends is that the Germans had the force and the battle-winning tactics to defeat the Soviet Union, if only they'd done things alittle differently. Stolfi puts the spotlight on Hitler's decision, made during August, 1941, to divert the bulk of Army Group Center's panzers south into the Ukraine, instead of resuming the offensive on Moscow. Such a decision, which was severely contested by many of his generals, both in the Army High Command (OKH) and in the field forces, lost the Germans the initiative, gave the Soviets a breathing space of 3+ months to recover in front of Moscow, and threw away the best chance the Germans had of defeating the USSR. Stolfi maintains that an uninterrupted drive on Moscow would have taken that city by the end of August. The facts he presents to bolster this view are, from what I can see even from his fiercest critics, beyond question. Stolfi points out that, by mid-July with the seizure of Smolensk (July 15th) and the bottling up of another vast host of Soviet forces west of that city, the Soviets had lost eight of the nine field armies within their Western Special Military District (which roughly corresponded to German Army Group Center's area of operation), and had relatively meager forces organized to meet the German onslaught. Stolfi estimates the total Soviet strength at about 35 divisions (only 22 of which where complete -- the rest being bits and pieces of other units, many already badly "roughed up" by the German attack). Against this weak force, Army Group Center could deploy all 55 units they began the campaign with (and at almost their authorized strengths -- so light had been German losses at that point), along with 3 to 5 divisions from their general reserve which von Bock wanted to throw in. That this force would have disposed of the remaining Soviet forces before Moscow is not in doubt. And based on proven German capabilities up to that point, Stolfi estimates it would have taken only three weeks to close the pincers on Moscow and seize that city (with alittle longer to destroy the trapped Russian forces in the pocket west of Moscow). Some critics of Stolfi, unable to dispute this, have still gone back to the tired old refrain of "vast reserves" that somehow would have rallied to stop the Germans east of Moscow, and even suggest the German occupation of that city might have been short-lived. The problem with that argument is that, at the time of Stolfi's projected attack, almost no reserves had been built up in the area east-northeast of Moscow (what Stolfi terms the "Moscow-Gorki Mobilization Space")! By late July th