For most of us, I think the story of World War II in Europe follows the plot of Hitler’s aggression, Churchill’s steadfastness, America’s rescue, and, yes, the Russians had heavy casualties while blunting Nazi expansion. Sean McMeekin, a historian whose earlier works persuaded me that Russia shares World War I war guilt with Austria-Hungary, has a new book with a different story line. In Stalin’s War, he shows how the Soviet leader maneuvered to get the capitalist countries fighting each other, invaded more countries than Hitler did, and secured massive aid and other concessions from America while giving next to nothing in return.
Looking at the conflict from Stalin’s perspective is a valuable corrective. The war in Western Europe and North Africa was profoundly affected by the politics and fighting in the east and the Baltics and the Balkans and the Caucasus.
McMeekin also documents the huge Soviet arsenal built up before Hitler’s attack in June 1941, much of it with better technology and capability than the German weapons.
“By the end of 1940, the Red Army deployed 23.307 operational tanks, 15,000 45 mm anti-tank guns, and 22,171 warplanes, with thousands more state-of-the art models of each coming on line in 1941….The Wehrmacht, by comparison, had only 3,387 panzers on hand prior to the invasion of France in May 1940 … The Red Air Force deployed more warplanes in the supposedly minor campaign in Finland (3,885, including 1,732 bombers) than did the British and Germans combined in [the Battle of Britain]. … By 1941, the Red fleet had 267 [submarines]… Germany had begun the new war in 1939 with all of 57 U-boats”.
Too much of that force was placed too close to the border and was lost in the Nazi attack, but Stalin was clearly preparing for major offensive war. McMeekin dispels the myth that Stalin was shocked and dysfunctional in the early days of the conflict. He was having long meetings and issuing orders every day.
In telling the story with a Moscow perspective, McMeekin shows how poorly Roosevelt, Churchill, and Hitler appreciated Stalin’s strategy or understood how the Soviet leader was manipulating them.
The book has its flaws. It’s too big [831 pages!] and is repetitious of many points. McMeekin also has way too many lists – of units engaged, weapons ordered, materiel delivered, combat losses. Most troubling of all, McMeekin tends to argue that U.S. decisions were often driven by Soviet spies and their American assets. I don’t think he exaggerates FDR’s naivete about Stalin, but I don’t see Harry Dexter White as the mastermind or Harry Hopkins as a dedicated communist.
But discounting for those flaws, I find the book valuable, informative, readable, and worth your time.
