Volume 31, Number 18 · November 22, 1984
Field Marshal Stalin
By David Holloway
The Road to Stalingrad Vol. 1, Stalin's War with Germany
by John Erickson
Westview Press, 594 pp., $40.00
The Road to Berlin: Continuing the History of Stalin's War with Germany
by John Erickson
Westview Press, 877 pp., $42.50
Not long after the red banner of victory had been raised above the Reichstag in May 1945, Stalin began to propound his own version of how the war with Germany had been won. First he claimed that victory should not be attributed solely to the valor of the Red Army, since it was his policies of collectivization and industrialization that had created the political and economic basis for the war effort. Then he consigned the most famous of the Soviet marshals, Georgi Zhukov, to an obscure post, and allowed the other senior commanders little credit for the Soviet victory. As the military's part in the history of the war declined, so Stalin's grew. The shattering defeats of 1941 were now presented as part of a Stalinist strategy of active defense. By the end of the 1940s Stalin was being hailed as a strategic genius and the greatest commander of all time.
Review, 3074 words
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