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Some very good books

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#21
Thanks, I've read those 9 pages.. Still not convinced. I mean, maybe the guy was in Eastern Front, I don't care about this - his book was bad for my taste. Too much epicness. I wasn't convinced that this was all real. War is not epic. It's a lot of sweat and blood.
Also, not a bad quote, imho
Given all the great veteran accounts available today, I personally choose not to waste my time on an author who can't even come up with a clear cut answer about his date of birth.
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Just in case - I have nothing against German memoirs, GErman war movies etc. In fact, I think that Der Stalingrad is one of the best movies out there.
 
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#22
Nestor Makhno said:
Wish I'd read the review of the Beevor book about a week ago *sigh*.
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thedonster said:
A couple of my recent WW I /WW II related reads: One to avoid: Vasily Grossman: A Writer at War
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Opinions differ THATS MY FAVORITE BOOK!!!!
I have read it 2 times and i think it is best.
It does not have continuity like personal memoirs but it gives you a "TRUE"
look uppon the russian side all of Grossmans notes are the real thing and not
the propaganda he was forced to write for war newspapers while others wrote from the safety of command centers and in the back lines he was always in the front line from the start to the end of the war.
I personaly recomend it to anyone.
 
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#23
Nestor Makhno said:
Wish I'd read the review of the Beevor book about a week ago *sigh*.
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Have you read it? If so, what did you think? His namesake on this forum obviously liked it.
I've also read Life and Fate by V. Grossman. Pretty good, but it's not quite the all time great Russian epic that Beevor makes it out to be. It's much better than A Writer at War though. It makes direct comparisons of the totalitarian systems of Communism under Stalin and Nazism under Hitler, so I can see why it landed Grossman in trouble and was suppressed.
I've recently acquired Beevor's history of the Spanish Civil War. Hopefully this will be a good read.
 
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#24
I just finished this:
Ivan's war by Cathrine Merridale a very good political-social study about russian soldiers life
http://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526/sr=8-1/qid=1172318437/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-6143311-6372158?ie=UTF8&s=books

And now i am reading this:
Frontsoldaten by Steven G. Fritz a book that is almost in the same vein with the previus book but its about
german soldiers.
http://www.amazon.com/Ivans-War-Life-Death-1939-1945/dp/0312426526/sr=8-1/qid=1172318437/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-6143311-6372158?ie=UTF8&s=books

My next1 will be Life and Fate by V.Grossman.
Donster i've heard from a friend of mine that Beevor's history of the Spanish Civil War is VERY good you will enjoy it!
 
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#25
Guys, I haven't read Ivan's War, because I cannot find translated copy here, but I've read this on one of the forums.. Can anyone of those who have read this book can comment, please?

I haven't read the book (and I don't think I ever will), but I've already read plenty of reviews which pretty much describe how it's laid out. That left me somewhat skeptical. This book is based on author's interviews with Soviet veterans and archival documents of expository nature. I've read plenty of such docs generated by the Special Departments. Their point is usually to describe certain negative aspects of something (like, the number of soldiers being critical of military leadership, level of training, level of crime, etc). They have a couple of obligatory sentences in the beginning saying that in general things are fine, and then proceed to expose some problem citing specific examples. It is somewhat disturbing to see such documents used to describe the TYPICAL situation in the army, when most of them quite clearly spell out that they are describing EXCEPTIONS. It appears that the author chose this route.

Moreover, one review mentioned how the author found it difficult to interview Soviet veterans because they wouldn't talk of things that she expected them to talk of. So you can imagine this situation, she reads these Special Department docs, and then pesters veterans to describe how they were all criminals and secretly hated the Soviet government. Obviously she gets told to shove it. After which she makes a "profound" conclusion that they can't face up to their past or some crap like that.

So, based on that, my expectations for the book are quite low. If anyone read it and can say that it's not as bad as it seems from the reviews, please do so.
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#28
I've done a little search over history forums (Russian ones) about "Ivan's war".. Really, I don't know.. A lot of people say she has lots of historically incorrect facts, for example she tells that only number of soldiers' deaths was 44 million. <-- Is that true?? I mean, does she say that?? Also, she says that only 3% of those men, whos date of birth was in '21-23, survived.
If she indeed tells this, she is lying. Somehow I don't want to intentionally search this book in our stores anymore, although if I accidently find one, I think I'll take it (the same situation was with Beevor's Stalingrad)
 
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#29
Bolt said:
she tells that only number of soldiers' deaths was 44 million. <-- Is that true??
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I had a quick look through the book, but could not find this figure at all.
There is mention of 4.5 million dead up to 1941, and total active in the Red army by 1945 as over 30 million.

She starts talking about the losses very early on (page 2 and 3) and uses:
- G. I. Krivosheev. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses
as well as:
- John Erickson, "The System and the Soldier," in Paul Addison and Angus Calder, eds., Time to Kill: The Soldier's Experience of War in the West 1939-1945
as sources.

The former may be a translation - perhaps you are familiar with the original?
 
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#31
Some books I have read over the last year are

The Last 100 Days, by john Toland

-Some realy good stuff, basicly about the last 100days of the reich, how curropted it was, etc... and it adds that coldwar feel to it.

"Berlin:1945 The downfall" is realy good too.It has more of the human aspact of war, alot of soldier stories. A good naritive :)
 
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#32
Hi all,

Thank you for some of your book suggestions listed above. There are a couple there that I had never heard of and am about to get particularly Island of Fire, its reviews have been excellent.

I've probably read over a hundred war related books mostly on WW2, vietnam and the french foreign legion and my fondness tends towards eye witness accounts rather than 3rd person overviews so in return for your recommendations I offer mine.

Storm of Steel - WW1 German soldier eye witness account, very good book.

Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography by John Toland - the first highly accurate account of hitlers life, I saw Der Untergang shortly after reading this and concluded that the film makers might have used the book.

Legionnaire by Simon Murray well off english man who joins the FFL decent
Blackjack 33 - special forces combat medic in vietnam, good book very pro-montagnard

Reflections of a Warrior - no big words in this one but plenty of slang, medal of honor recipient, pretty crazy firefights.

Gunners Moon - tail gunner in ww2 RAF very hard to find I think, pretty interesting account of one of the most dangerous places to be in the war - back of a bomber.

Wishlist:

Sniper on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of Sepp Allerberge

Heaven and Hell: The War Diary of a German Paratrooper

 
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#35
Blood Red Snow by Gunther Koschorrek

This book is weird - it claims to be based on a guy's diary accounts but at no time does it read even remotely like a diary - in some places it just seems too poetic and in other places it seems to be all written using the 'retrospect-o-scope'.

I am finding it rather difficult to believe a lot of what the guy writes - particularly after he starts referring to Soviet troops wielding Kalashnikovs. there are also a lot of maps in the book which show virtually nothing and seem to bear almost no relationship whatsoever to the narrative.

Catherine Merridale makes a few technical bloopers as well, for example stating that the PPSh is an artillery piece. I think that she can be forgiven this as she was not and does not claim to have been there and is more interested in the psychology of the combatants rather than their 'boy-toys'.
 
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#36
aktionman said:
I had a quick look through the book, but could not find this figure at all.
There is mention of 4.5 million dead up to 1941, and total active in the Red army by 1945 as over 30 million.

She starts talking about the losses very early on (page 2 and 3) and uses:
- G. I. Krivosheev. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses
as well as:
- John Erickson, "The System and the Soldier," in Paul Addison and Angus Calder, eds., Time to Kill: The Soldier's Experience of War in the West 1939-1945
as sources.

The former may be a translation - perhaps you are familiar with the original?
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Krivosheev is certainly the most comprehensive work I am aware of on the subject of Russian/Soviet casualties. Based off the Russian/Soviet Ministry of Defence's archives, it is also very open and honest about the actual problems of calculating casualties, especially during the collapse in 1941 - estimates of 500,000 men taken prisoner in the process of mobilising, but of whom there is no actual record - which is a scary enough number in itself.
 
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#37
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#38
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#39
aktionman said:
I found this one by Siegfried Knappe in the town library today:

Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936-1949

Perhaps someone has read it already and has an informed opinion of it?
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A very nice book that shows the story of a man from the end of childhood before the war till the end of his captivity from the russians.
It shows that not all the german war machine was modernized and how the military worked with society.
He was a very lucky guy he was wounded many times but not fatal and survived the russian captivity,he was professional soldier till the end of the war.
It was good read at least for me:)
 
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