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On the face of it, Operation Barbarossa – Nazi Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union – is straightforward to understand. Germany was at first strikingly successful, then faltered, and ultimately failed to subdue the Soviets, leading to rout and ruin. And yet Barbarossa has long fascinated historians beyond its apparent facts. As Max Hastings has observed, more than 90% of all German soldiers died on the Russian front. In other words, understanding Barbarossa is key to understanding WWII as a whole.
Reading the many histories of Barbarossa, one question comes up time and again: why did Germany, so successful in dominating Europe early in the war, fail disastrously in Russia? Timothy Manion’s book enters this debate with confidence. It is weighty in appearance and densely argued, with chapters devoted to military theory, the operation timeline, and the respective armies, and the whole is supported by an array of maps. Manion argues two main points. First, that we need to go back to individuals, in particular the generals, rather than rely on the view that overextended supply lines, the Russian climate, or a delayed start to the invasion were to blame for failure. Second, that it was not so much Germany that lost, but the Red Army that won.
To take the second argument first: much writing on Barbarossa is highly critical of failed Blitzkrieg and Hitler’s inept strategising, to the exclusion of taking the Soviets seriously. At the same time, the Soviet side has either been inflated, mistold, or simply left unrecorded. The paper trail in Russia is often closed off in its archives, or a poor reflection of what actually happened.
Manion makes the commendable point that the Red Army, despite the decimation of its leaders during Stalin’s purges and its many strategic errors, was a tremendous opponent. Indeed, the failure of Barbarossa was followed by Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin in 1945, two large nails in Nazism’s coffin. Manion is right to insist that we should look more seriously at the Soviets.
Manion’s first argument, urging us to look at field commanders, is weaker. Of course, there is much to study in the careers of generals such as Heinz Guderian and Hermann Hoth (Germany), or Andrey Yeryomenko and Dmitry Pavlov (Soviet Union). But this book’s desire to judge them as they square up to each other means it doesn’t step back to see the bigger picture.It is here that the work ultimately falls short, as most histories of Barbarossa do.
Barbarossa created an intensely charged context, linking Hitler’s delusions and struggles with his generals to factors such as the poor state of Russian roads, the Soviets’ often intense patriotism, various types of generalship, military morale, respective war industries, Allied material support of the Soviets, and the larger trend (noted by Major-General Sir John Noble Kennedy, Assistant Chief of the Imperial General Staff) that the Germans could be brilliant tactically, but inept strategically.
A thorough analysis of Barbarossa could benefit from seeing it as a dynamic, undecided whole, behaving in real-time according to an array of different inputs. Manion settles for two main explanatory factors in his book, but he seems indifferent to conceiving of counterarguments, or to the idea that understanding Barbarossa needs more than analysis – it needs a complexified view of historical causes.
In the end, the question of Barbarossa’s failure doesn’t lend itself to easy answers, and calls for studies that don’t assign one or two causes when a host of them interacted at the same time. Manion is interesting and provocative to read, but remains cloistered in his arguments and view of history.
REVIEW BY ANDRÉ VAN LOON
Why Barbarossa Failed: Germany and Russia in the Second World War
Timothy Manion
Helion & Company, hbk, 376pp (£29.95)
ISBN 978-1804519097
