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Absolute War(HB): Soviet Russia in the Second World War: a Modern History
by: Chris Bellamy

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780333780220
ISBN: 0333780221
Label: Macmillan
Manufacturer: Macmillan
Number Of Pages: 650
Publication Date: July 20, 2007
Publisher: Macmillan
Studio: Macmillan
Sales Rank: 25248

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Editorial Review:

Review:
Chris Bellamy's book has much to recommend it... --Evan Mawdsley, The Literary Review

Book of the year, New Statesman:
'Outstanding - magisterial and often witty in tone'

Military Illustrated:
'Well researched, well structured and exceptionally well written history is based on ten years of research...'

Product Description:
There have been many individual accounts of particular moments in the vicious war between the Nazi regime and the Soviet behemoth, but none which sets out to tell the full and dreadful story of that absolute war: absolute because both sides aimed to 'exterminate the opponent, to destroy his political existence' and total because it was fought by all elements of society, not simply the armed forces, but civilians - men, women, children - too. Chris Bellamy, Professor of Military Science at Cranfield University, is one of the world's leading experts on this subject and has been working on this book for almost a decade. It benefits from his remarkable insight into strategic issues as well as exhaustive research in hitherto unopened Russian archives. It is the definitive study of what the Soviets called - and what their fifteen successor states still call - the Great Patriotic War.

Synopsis:
There have been many individual accounts of particular moments in the vicious war between the Nazi regime and the Soviet behemoth, but none which sets out to tell the full and dreadful story of that absolute war: absolute because both sides aimed to 'exterminate the opponent, to destroy his political existence' and total because it was fought by all elements of society, not simply the armed forces, but civilians - men, women, children - too. Chris Bellamy, Professor of Military Science at Cranfield University, is one of the world's leading experts on this subject and has been working on this book for almost a decade. It benefits from his remarkable insight into strategic issues as well as exhaustive research in hitherto unopened Russian archives. It is the definitive study of what the Soviets called - and what their fifteen successor states still call - the Great Patriotic War.

About the Author:
Christopher Bellamy has been Professor of Military Science and Doctrine and Director of the Security Studies Institute, Cranfield University since 1997. Until then he was Defence Correspondent of the Independent, reporting from Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, from south-east Turkey and northern Iraq during the Kurdish refugee crisis, from Bosnia many times between 1992 and 1997 and from Chechnya in January 1995. He was shortlisted for foreign reporter of the year in the 1996 British Press Awards. He was Associate Editor of, and a principal contributor to, the Oxford Companion to Military History and is a regular press and broadcast commentator on modern security and strategy issues.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A limited but good addition to Eastern Front literature
Chris Bellamy has written an interesting account of the Eastern front, although to a large degree limited to 1941 and 1942, that at least is what makes up the bulk of this almost 700 page book. I wasn't even aware that something like this was coming out and since it looked promising I ordered it from amazon.co.uk, not looking on the fact that I would be spending more money (but it was due to come out months later in the states and I simply couldn't wait). Was I disappointed? In some ways I was but on the other hand I took much away from this book as well. Bellamy's earlier work regarding the Soviet Union focused specifically on the Rocket and Artillery forces, and one can easily see that in this book he was out of his league. He studied under ... Read More:

Rating:

- A book full of missed opportunities
This book aims to present the Second World War from the Soviet perspective by using documents from formerly closed Soviet archives and memoirs only recently published in their full length (ie those written by Zhukov and Rokossovsky, respectively).

While the non-Russian reader can only welcome such an attempt, Prof. Bellamy's book suffers from some major shortcomings, one of which is the apparent inability of its author to read German language sources. Some errors (German ambassador von der Schulenburg is misspelled as "Schulenberg" throughout the book) could have been avoided.

But the major shortcomings are in the material presented for the Soviet side. Bellamy avoids discussing the Soviet pre-war military strategy and ... Read More:

Books : Absolute War(HB): Soviet Russia in the Second World War: a Modern History