ISBN 1-86227-206-9
x + 326 pages

Preface; maps; photos; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Taylor, Brian. Barbarossa to Berlin, volume 2: The Defeat of Germany, 19 November 1942 - 15 May 1945. Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount Ltd, 2004

ISBN 1-86227-228-X
x + 341 pages

Preface; maps; photos; Notes; Bibliography; Index

   Although it's an imperfect analogy, in many respects reading a book about a military campaign is like listening to the radio broadcast of a baseball game, because the listener relies on the broadcasters to transmit all the salient information about the invisible contest while also injecting drama and excitement into the proceedings. Writers play much the same role in bringing military history to life. Some broadcasters prove more successful at their task than others; likewise, some authors write better books than others.
   A chronological reference book, to continue with the analogy, is similar to learning about a baseball game by studying a scorecard without hearing the broadcast: all the action is there, but it's compressed into a coded format that leaves out all the explanation, embellishment, and excitement.
   In the same way some baseball fans have no use for learning about a ball game from a scorebook, some military enthusiasts have no desire to see history reduced to a sequence of chronological records. Others find such material useful and interesting. We definitely fall into the latter category, although we're aware that chronologies are best used to supplement, not replace, fully-rounded accounts by competent, well-informed writers. Furthermore, to stretch the original analogy, if baseball scorekeeping is something of an art form, so is distilling warfare into the format of a kriegstagbuch. Thus, like broadcasters and scorekeepers and writers, the skills of the compiler and the quality of his chronological compilation can make all the difference between a valuable war diary and a useless one.
   For Taylor, Berlin to Barbarossa is definitely an exercise similar to baseball scorekeeping: four years of Russo-German warfare distilled into almost seven hundred pages of day-by-day records of movement and combat without much else. The first volume opens with 32 pages of background material. Beyond that, the books include some maps and photos. At the end of each month the author also offers a brief summary of the state of the opposing armies. Other than that, the two books present a relentless series of entries listing daily events from the beginning of the campaign until its end.

23 February 1943

Northern Sector

   Bitter fighting erupted at the base of the Demyansk salient as the Soviet 27th Army tried to isolate the 16th Army. However, the Germans had considerably strengthened this area and were able to hold off the Soviet assaults. The evacuation of the salient was almost complete by this time and had largely proceeded according to plan, the bulk of the 10th and 2nd Korps having escaped the pocket.

Central Sector

   There was heavy fighting around Rzhev and Orel as the Soviets pressed home their attacks against Army Group Centre. Here also the Germans were preparing to withdraw from their long held salient.

Southern Sector

   In an effort to halt the German advance the Stavka began to pile forces up before them. A rifle, cavalry and tank corp had dug in to try and halt SS Panzer Korp. However, SS forces unleashed a fierce attack, drove to within twelve miles of Lozovaya, and closed upon Pavlograd. In conjunction with this attack the 48th Panzer Korp moved from the southeast, advancing from Chaplino to link up with other forces pushing north towards Boguslav. Elements of 48th Panzer Korp crossed the Samara.
   With his 6th Army in tatters, Vatutin ordered a flanking rifle corp from 1st Guards Army to move to the aid of the 6th Army. In addition, 69th and 3rd Tank Armies were ordered to turn south from Bogodukhov to support the 6th.

24 February 1943

Central Sector

   The 13th and 48th Armies of the Bryansk Front had pushed the 2nd Army back eighteen miles on the road to Orel in three days of bloody fighting, but German resistance was stiffening all the time.

Southern Sector

   The SS Panzer Korp pushed on to Pavlograd, capturing the town after a brisk battle. The Soviet corps committed to stopping the SS began to retreat, abandoning their equipment as they fled. The 48th Panzer Korp continued to develop its attack, pushing east of Boguslav. Strong Soviet forces along the Samara river held up other elements of the korp. Realising the dire straits that the 6th Army was in, Vatutin ordered the already defeated force onto the defensive.

25 February 1943

Central Sector

   Central Front joined the attack towards Orel in an effort to smash through the German front line before the onset of the spring thaw. The Stavka intended to turn the southern flank of Army Group Centre and prevent it from giving any support to Army Group South. The 2nd Tank and 65th Armies attacked, with support from 2nd Guards Cavalry Corp.

Southern Sector

   Golikov moved an additional tank corp from 40th Army over to assist the 69th Army in the capture of Poltava. The 38th Army lagged well behind the 40th Army's right wing, which was ordered to capture Sumy. Valki and Novaya Vodolaga fell to the 3rd Tank Army.
   The SS Panzer Korp attacked in force from Pavlograd. As the Soviet forces fled across the steppe, fierce German fire inflicted heavy losses. The 48th Panzer Korp also moved north, encountering strong resistance at Bogdanovka. However, the Barvenkovo-Lozovaya railway line was severed. On the approaches to Barvenkovo 40th Panzer Korp encountered heavy fighting, elements of Group Popov attempting to hold the German attack.

26 February 1943

Northern Sector

   There was heavy fighting on the Lovat as the 1st Shock Army tried to close off the much reduced salient.

Central Sector

   Central Front, newly committed to this sector, threw its 65th and 2nd Tank Armies into an attack towards Bryansk but was held up by the German 2nd Army.

Southern Sector

   Heavy fighting erupted at Lozovaya as SS Totenkopf and SS Das Reich attacked the town. The 6th Panzer advanced east to cut off the Soviet line of retreat. At Barvenkovo the 40th Panzer Korp fought its way into the city despite ferocious resistance.

   That might sound like a cold and sterile way to learn about what happened on the Russian Front for readers not attuned to chronologies, but it has its attractions.
   As Taylor states in his Preface, he tracks the action for the most part at the level of German armies and corps and Soviet armies, although for more important operations he digs down to the level of divisions for both sides. It's a completely acceptable perspective, especially given how that level of detail already amounts to nearly seven hundred pages of material!
   In general, each day brings roughly a half page of text. As needed, the author divides each daily entry into separate segments for the northern sector, central sector, southern sector, Finland and Norway, the German Command, and the Soviet Command. The text for each segment ranges from a single sentence to multiple paragraphs. There's a fair amount of information about air operations, especially when not much is happening on the ground, but a relative dearth of naval ops.
   While there's always the danger of distortion in compressing so many plans, so many units, and so many operations into a brisk chronology focused on armies and corps, in general Taylor makes it work quite well. Of course, deciding what to leave in and what to leave out is a daunting task, and a crucial skill in compiling a book like this. During some lulls, such as May and June 1943, there's not much to report from the front and the entries skip dull days. At the opposite end of the spectrum, during peaks of activity—such as the launching of Barbarossa, Uranus, Citadel, and so on—Taylor doesn't hesitate to devote to those events all the pages required while reporting on the operations of individual divisions and sub-divisional units whenever necessary.
   At the end of each set of monthly records Taylor also provides an overview of the Soviet and Axis forces. Sometimes this is very brief, but on other occasions he takes advantage of these monthly summaries to add substantially greater context and background material to the flow of events.

30 November 1943

Southern Sector

   Believing the German counter-attack to have ended for the duration of the autumn muddy period, the 1st Ukrainian was taken by surprise when the 48th Panzer Korp unleashed another attack in the Zhitomir area. The 59th Korp also attacked at Korosten and after a bitter battle recaptured the town from the 60th Army.

The Ostheer

   During November the Germans committed three panzer divisions, two SS panzer grenadier divisions, two infantry divisions and one security division to the front line. One panzer, one mountain and two infantry divisions left or were destroyed, leaving the Ostheer with twenty-four panzer, ten panzer grenadier and 155 infantry divisions.

The Opposing Forces

   From Norway to the Crimea, the Germans had 2,850,000 soldiers. Dietl's 20th Army in Norway had 176,000 men, approximately 40,000 of which were combat infantry, leaving the main line armies with around 2,650,000. Actual combat infantry in the line were becoming a rare breed as losses mounted and replacements became increasingly scarce.
   Army Group North, with forty-four infantry divisions, had a battle strength of only 140,000 combat infantry, 100 operational panzers and assault guns and 2,400 artillery pieces. It faced the Leningrad, Volkhov and North-West Fronts with 355,000 combat troops in their rifle divisions, 650 tanks and Su's and 3,700 artillery pieces.
   Army Group Centre had forty-six infantry divisions but disposed of only 147,000 combat infantry, 216 panzers and assault guns and 2,600 artillery pieces. Facing it were the Belorussian, West and 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts with 650,000 combat soldiers, 3,000 tanks and Su's and 6,720 artillery pieces.
   Army Group South, the most heavily committed of all the German army groups, deployed forty-four infantry divisions with 140,000 combat infantry, 270 panzers and assault guns and 2,200 artillery pieces while Army Group A had seventeen infantry divisions with 54,000 combat soldiers, 100 tanks and assault guns and 800 artillery pieces. Attacking these armies were the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts and the North Caucasus Front. Combined, the rifle formations of these fronts totalled 899,000 combat infantry (616,000 facing Army Group South), 4,250 tanks and Su's and 9,300 artillery pieces. It was apparent from these figures that the Ostheer was massively outnumbered. The average German infantry division at the front had a combat strength of just under 3,200 infantry.

   Although with that approach the author amasses two solid volumes packed full of detailed information, there's no way he can include every attack and every maneuver. That's completely understandable, and it's Taylor's job to make wise decisions about how to condense four years of warfare. Those decisions can still leave some questions unanswered. For example, following along with The Battle of Leningrad by David Glantz (the best source for that campaign, but not in the bibliography), the events at army and corps level don't always match what Taylor records for the northern sector during early 1944. According to Taylor, on 21 January 1944 Mga fell to the Soviet 8th Army. Glantz writes that Lieutenant General Sviridov's 67th Army liberated the city on that date. John Erickson also indicates 67th Army. Those kinds of discrepancies are regrettable but probably inevitable in a work of this magnitude. Without knowing where Taylor found his information about Mga, because daily entries aren't footnoted, this particular discrepancy is impossible to resolve.
   A few of Taylor's sources (amounting to a bibliography of about a page and a half) seem questionable. For example, he footnotes his survey of the opposing OBs at Kursk with this remark: "Kursk deployment details come from the excellent Osprey Campaign Series, Kursk 1943." Without dissing Mark Healy, who does provide some good numerical data in very accessible tabular formats, it's worth noting that The Battle of Kursk by David Glantz and Jonathan House (not listed in Taylor's bibliography) contains detailed OB appendices amounting to more than fifty pages, while Healy's entire book weighs in at fewer than a hundred. Similarly, Barbarossa to Berlin appears not to have taken advantage of some other important Russian Front resources, such as Boog, Thies, and—especially great for chronological information—Mehner.
   While Taylor's failure to utilize some of those important and readily available sources might seem a little odd, their absence seldom hurts the book. For the most part Taylor has relied on fairly recent, perfectly reputable work—including Erickson's books and some of Glantz's volumes—offering ample scope and detail for creating a chronological reference like this. So, while it's true that, for instance, the Wijers book on Stalingrad is missing from Taylor's bibliography, plenty of other books provide more than enough information to distill into a daily log at the army/corps level.
   In his entries, Taylor properly emphasizes information over explanation, and he does so with a minimum of superfluous adjectives. He might report "heavy fighting" or "hard-pressed forces" or "Stalin was furious," but that's about it. And, in the tradition of chronologies, Taylor's work usually eschews dramatic flair. At Stalingrad, for example, while the author accounts for the comings and goings of units and their employment in combat, his logbook doesn't try to make the reader feel Vasili Chuikov's stress and discomfort as the general hunkers in his cold dugout along the Volga under German artillery fire with a raging case of eczema.

27 October 1942

Southern Sector

   The Germans made minor gains in the Red October and Barrikady factories, bringing the landing stages on the west bank under direct fire. Reinforcements coming into the city had to run the gauntlet of sustained artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire all the way across the river and on the western bank as they tried to disembark. Many units suffered heavy casualties even before they entered the battle.
   Chuikov counter-attacked along Samarkandskaya Street after scraping together three repaired tanks and a handful of infantry. Sixth Army was nearing the end of its strength, Paulus having nothing more to throw into the battle.
   The German advance in the Caucasus drew closer to Ordzhonikidze as 37th Army fell back. German air strikes plagued the Soviet withdrawal, causing heavy casualties.

28 October 1942

Southern Sector

   The 14th Panzer and 51st Korps struck the Soviet forces in the Red October and Barrikady factories. Despite heavy fighting, the Germans failed to make any progress.

Soviet Command

   Operation Mars was postponed to the end November, after Operation Uranus had begun around Stalingrad.

29 October 1942

Southern Sector

   Rumanian 4th Army became operational as Constantinescu's headquarters took command of 6th and 7th Rumanian Korps from 4th Panzer Army. Hoth was left with 4th Korp and 16th Motorised Division.

30 October 1942

Southern Sector

   A lull settled over Stalingrad, both 62nd and 6th Armies having fought themselves to a standstill. Paulus intended to reinforce and regroup during the lull for what he expected would be the final attack that would break 62nd Army....

   Not a great deal of excitement and drama there, but that's to be expected. In a work like this, the author's job is to render a record of the facts, not keep the reader on the edge of his seat.
   On the other hand, some pages of non-stop combat operations seem to challenge Taylor's skills as a writer, and there are a few clinkers among the daily records, such as "The 3rd Panzer Korp counter-attacked but was almost brought to a rapid halt in the clinging mud." With a day-by-day approach it's also critical to maintain continuity from one entry to the next while simultaneously crafting each daily entry to stand on its own, especially for readers who turn directly to a specific date instead of reading a long series of records. Accomplishing both goals can prove difficult, pitting brevity against clarity. For example, when on 10 September 1941 the entry states "Northern Sector: After a fierce three-day battle the Soviet survivors on Vormsi pulled back to Hiiumaa," readers are not reminded that Vormsi and Hiiumaa are islands off the coast of Estonia. (Nor are the islands identified on Taylor's maps or listed in the index.) Among others, Christopher Argyle and Rohwer and Hummelchen prove with their volumes that it's possible to write extremely thorough chronologies with both brevity and clarity. Taylor doesn't always live up to that standard, but his pages are on the whole quite readable.
   Nevertheless, one quibble should be mentioned. On page after page (as observant readers probably noticed in the quotes above) the author strikes a sour note by using the terms "korp" and "corp". Whenever he refers in the singular to a German unit which in English would be called a "corps," he calls it a "korp," such as 24th Panzer Korp. Not 24th Panzer Corps and not 24th Panzerkorps and not 24th Panzer Korps, but 24th Panzer Korp. That might be understandable for someone using a word from an unfamiliar language, but the author makes exactly the same mistake with "corp" for Soviet units. Throughout both books, corp and korp are used consistently as the singular of corps and korps. Perhaps we're overly sensitive sticklers, but that usage remains jarring in every entry on every page from 22 June 1941 through 19 May 1945.
   The index could also be strengthened. It contains entries for places and personnel, but not for units, which makes it impossible to find specific combat formations without thumbing tediously through hundreds of pages.
   If it seems like these books aren't perfect, that's certainly the case. However, their strengths easily outweigh their weaknesses. No, Taylor isn't a flawless writer, but he's acceptable. No, he doesn't always include everything everyone wants to know, but he fills two books with much solid information. No, folks won't enjoy reading these two tomes straight through from beginning to end, but that's not the goal of books like this. Despite a few shortcomings, the author has compiled a very handy reference which charts the entire Russo-German War in a structured and appropriately condensed manner. This is a project of huge proportions and many difficulties which Taylor pulls it off fairly well.
   We like Barbarossa to Berlin and we're already referring to it on a regular basis when we just want to know the outcome of a particular day's events without exerting the effort equivalent to listening to an entire baseball game. For anyone seriously interested in the Russo-German War, and/or connoisseurs of chronologies, we can definitely recommend these volumes. On the other hand, for those who don't like baseball games reduced to scorebooks and those who don't enjoy reading military operations compressed into chronological records, these books might not seem so impressive.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Spellmount and its American distributor, Casemate.
   Thanks to Casemate for providing these review copies.