By Catherine Merridale
484 Pages
Published by Metropolitan Books
Released on April 1, 2007
4.5 out of 5 Stars
The number of books that existed that gave a picture of the Soviet Army during World War II was rather limited in the West during the Cold War. Much of what we understood about the Soviet Army and the Eastern Front came to us through the prism of the German experience, as men such as Erich Von Manstein, and Franz Hadler wrote a view of the war in the East that bore little resemblance to the reality (as much to whitewash the crimes of the Wehrmacht in the East as to “restore the reputation of the German soldier.”)
These works portrayed the Soviet Army as a faceless, remorseless horde in the vein of the Terminator. Recent scholarship, such as this book and Mr. Glantz’s works, have done much to reverse this view. Ms. Merridale has done a fine job in this “grunt’s eye” view of the Soviet Army in World War II, demonstrating her skill as a researcher and writer.
It has only been since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and opening of the Soviet archives, and the availability of Soviet veterans to Western researchers that this balanced picture has emerged. Thirty million served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the entirety of the war, and Ms. Merridale has put a human face on this seeming mass of millions. These were ordinary folks, for the most part, caught between two totalitarian systems, who died in the millions to stop a cruel invader. But, as we shall see, the Soviet Union could mete out a large amount of cruelty of its own. Ms. Merridale has shown in a masterwork that the stereotypical “Ivan” of the Soviet Army never really existed. Soviet soldiers came from one of fifteen Soviet republics, and many of these young men knew little to no Russian, which was the dominant language of the military.
The book portrays a Soviet army that, in 1939, was large, crippled by Stalin’s purges, and amateurish in the extreme. Worse, living conditions were nothing short of disease-ridden and bestial, with corruption and outright theft common. A system of politruks -political officers, who were the eyes and ears of the party were everywhere, seeking out the slightest whiff of potential disloyalty. There were shortages of equipment, and when the Soviet army invaded Finland, it showed a large behemoth that was far competent or capable. It was this campaign that convinced Hitler that the Soviet state was on shaky ground and:
We have only to kick in the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down (Hitler, June 1941)
However, the size of the disaster in Finland never reached the ears of the Soviet people, and their views were cynically fueled by clumsy state propaganda that convinced the Soviet people that if war came, they would bring glorious revolution to the world, all this came to a crashing end in June 1941. Merridale shows a state that was like Jekyll and Hyde. It was a seeming paradise to its citizens and a blood-soaked nightmare to its enemies - all carried out by the overzealous secret police apparatus working overtime to murder millions and crush any form of dissent. But this clumsy colossus had feet made of clay, and not every Soviet soldier was all that motivated to fight for communism before the invasion of June 1941, as this passage describes:
“…Two young deserters whose unit was also bound for the north were locked up when they were returned to base. ‘As soon as we get to the front,’ one of them said ‘I’ll kill the deputy Politruk.’ It may have been to spite the party that soldiers daubed swastikas on their barracks walls The fact that many politruks, whose education tended to be better than the average, were Jews, was probably a factor too.” (Merridale p.66)
Ms. Merridale then goes on to show the Soviet army on the brink of disaster as the Germans invade and confusion reigns. The Soviets were seemingly unable to stop the Germans no matter what they did until they were at the very gates of Moscow itself. But what comes through is a Soviet army that learned on the job and did a good job of digesting these lessons. It learned the lessons the Germans taught and then did a fine job of applying what they had learned. By 1943, with the Battle of Kursk, the student had indeed become the master.
The rest of the book goes into the feelings of Soviet troops in their march westward into what the contemporary Soviet press referred to as the “lair of the fascist beast.” The veterans Ms. Merridale speaks to aren’t shy about talking about witnessing individual Soviet soldiers and groups of Soviet soldiers take revenge on German civilians for the atrocities of the German military in the Soviet Union. Murder and especially rape were common, and Ms. Merridale manages to get more than a few sources to confirm it.
We get a look at Soviet women in the military and how they were really seen versus the wartime propaganda and how they earned their own place in the ranks. We see stories of loss, death, and life in the Soviet Army, all told masterfully. We hear stories unfiltered by Soviet officialdom and the lens of the Cold War.
The book also gets into what happened to the veterans when the war ended, and how their hopes for a better Soviet Union were dashed, most of them shunted aside by a cynical Soviet government (at one point, Stalin rounded up all the amputee beggars, many of them wounded at the front, and had them sent to Siberia), till Brezhnev mythologized the war that the Soviet veteran began to get his due. But even at the time of the book’s writing, most of them had not received any sort of pension or assistance now that they were in their old age.
How is This Book Useful to Wargamers?
While this book is a social history on the “softer” side of the Soviet army and dealing more with a conscript’s view of the war, it’s important to remember that this book is of value to the wargamer in that it tells a balanced view of the Soviet soldier. He wasn’t a remorseless Terminator who was indifferent to loss and bereft of any tactical skill. Nor was he the perpetually cheerfully brave fellow of Soviet propaganda. He was most likely a peasant, far from home, serving a state he didn’t particularly care for that would kill him if he demonstrated the slightest disloyalty. Many wargame rules are still caught in that “Hadler” trap of how they handle the Soviets. If this book does one thing, let it destroy those self-serving myths.
The tactical skill of the Soviets improved as the war went on, and it helped that the German skill declined as well. Like my review of Case Red, this book does a fine job of making ground beef out of the sacred cow and does so in a very readable style.
While there is some stuff that is not of interest to the wargamer, most of this book is good meat for any wargamer interested in the Eastern Front, and especially the Soviet soldier. Aside from it’s minor flaws, I would give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. The book is available in hardback, softback, and Kindle from Amazon.
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At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.
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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)