Shelves bend under the weight of books on the epic Soviet-German clash on the Eastern Front from 1941–45. In addition to older, rigorous scholarly accounts by John Erickson and Earl F. Ziemke, more recent books by Chris Bellamy, Stephen G. Fritz, David M. Glantz, Jonathan Mallory House, Ewan Mawdsley, and Geoffrey Megargee, to give an incomplete list, take advantage of new archival revelations to cover the Second World War in the east within the space of a single volume. Is there really room for another book synthesizing the voluminous secondary literature and selected archival material?
As it turns out, there is. Alexander Hill not only finds room to say something not covered in other synthetic works on the Eastern Front, but in fact he depends on those other books to make his points. His book does not pretend to be comprehensive, despite its length and weight. Instead, he looks at a particular theme: how “the Red Army was transformed into a more effective fighting force” (3). This is in itself not especially new. Indeed, an almost universal theme in recent literature on the Soviet military in World War II has been how almost all aspects of the Red Army's military performance, from the lowliest rifleman to Iosif Stalin himself, displayed a clear pattern of increasing sophistication and effectiveness from the dark days of 1941 to the occupation of Berlin in 1945. Hill's contribution is in focusing on specific aspects of that transformation.
In particular, Hill examines specific technical questions of military effectiveness in great detail. Both scholars and general readers with an interest in military history are likely reasonably well-informed about the operational and strategic history of the Eastern Front. They are familiar with the T-34 tank and the Shturmovik and other iconic examples of military technology which contributed to Soviet victory. Hill's focus lies elsewhere, with communications technology, reconnaissance, intelligence, logistics, training, and organization, along with less glamorous weapons systems alongside tanks and aircraft. Indeed, Hill makes it explicit that he expects his readers to have read and become familiar with more traditional operational histories of the war in order to grasp his own points. He provides exhaustive detail on how the Red Army organized its telegraph, telephone, and radio nets; how Soviet commanders improved over time in their coordination of infantry, artillery, armor, and aircraft; and how reconnaissance and intelligence improved their collection of data and presentation of conclusions to decision makers. As a result of this focus on less-studied aspects of the Soviet military experience, Hill deliberately omits important aspects of the war. His account of the pre-war mechanization of the Red Army explicitly avoids any discussion of the development of operational art. His coverage of partisan warfare, where he is an established authority, focuses on questions of tactical employment and organization, eschewing discussion of the social and political aspects of the movement. While he does discuss operations, they serve him as illustrations of the Red Army's growth in the mastery of warfare, not as a sustained and coherent narrative.
As a result, the book is most useful for a particular audience. It is not designed or suited to be an introduction to the Eastern Front. The book's organization, revisiting Hill's chosen themes repeatedly through nearly two dozen chapters, makes for a somewhat choppy read. For those interested, however, in the concrete technological and organizational basis of the Red Army's institutional learning and growing effectiveness, Hill's work is a remarkably thorough, clear, and comprehensive account of previously-neglected technical questions of Soviet military development.
