Russia at War, 1941–1945

A History

By: Alexander Werth, Nicolas Werth - foreword

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

In 1941, Russian-born British journalist Alexander Werth observed the unfolding of the Soviet-German conflict with his own eyes. What followed was the widely acclaimed book, Russia at War, first printed in 1964. At once a history of facts, a collection of interviews, and a document of the human condition, Russia at War is a stunning, modern classic that chronicles the savagery and struggles on Russian soil during the most incredible military conflict in modern history.

As a behind-the-scenes eyewitness to the pivotal, shattering events as they occurred, Werth chronicles with vivid detail the hardships of everyday citizens, massive military operations, and the political movements toward diplomacy as the world tried to reckon with what they had created. Despite its sheer historical scope, Werth tells the story of a country at war in startlingly human terms, drawing from his daily interviews and conversations with generals, soldiers, peasants, and other working class civilians. The result is a unique and expansive work with immeasurable breadth and depth, built on lucid and engaging prose, that captures every aspect of a terrible moment in human history.

©1964 Alexander Werth; Foreword copyright 2011 by Nicolas Werth; English translation of foreword copyright 2017 by Skyhorse Publishing (P)2021 Tantor

Eye opener

Detailed, balanced eye witness account and thorough analysis from someone who lived in Russia through the war.

Mass

You would only say Mass if your from Mass. you from Mass would know this.

A very different view of the Russian Front

This is a unique and eye opening look at the Russian Front of the European Theater in World War 2. Alexander Worth was a naturalized British citizen, but was born in Russia and hence spoke Russian like a native. This gave him the unique ability among western journalists to speak with ordinary Russian citizens as well as members of the Soviet government and his reporting was thus more complete and more accurate than those of western journalists who mostly only spoke with those whose job it was to talk to journalists. This book is thus a very different history of the Russian Front in World War 2.

While the book is perhaps the most interesting of all of the books I have read on the Russian Front of World War 2 it does have some drawbacks. One is that the book itself was written in the 1960s and the author was not privy to information that became public after that time, and so some of the author's assumptions and conclusions are wrong. One example is that we now know that Stalin knew all about the US/British effort to build the Atomic Bomb and thus his reaction to the news when Truman told him was not due to his belief that it was not really anything new. A second is that the author sometimes seems to take the government statements at their face value rather than questioning them, although in general he is skeptical of many of the Soviet government's public statements. More such examples exist in the book. Still, as a look at what the average Russian citizen believed and what the Soviet government said, this book is unrivaled in all of the books about the Russian war against Nazi Germany that I have read. It should not be missed by anyone interested in the Eastern Front in World War 2.

The narration by Derek Perkins is absolutely spot on and made the book a pleasure to listen to.

Timeless historical study

That this book was written in the 1964 by an individual who lived amongst the Russians during the great Patriotic War is especially poignant. It provides first hand experiences from a well informed observer fluent in Russian, as well as interpretations untarnished by current biases from anti-Putin sentiments to woke political correctness. The narrative was clear and captivating and the content was almost scholarly in detail. The narrator was superb and was obviously linguistically adept. It was a pleasure to listen to and will be one of the few books I will read again.

Well written and eye-opening, from someone who was there

There have been a few details that have been filled in since the end of the Cold War, but it still holds up extremely well. Werth was actually there, spoke with many important generals while the war was raging and saw all the famous battlegrounds while they were still smoldering.

Obviously, he was shown many more of the red army’s victories and German atrocities than the soviets’ blunders and setbacks. Still, he was able to fill in the suppressed details in the two decades since and combines his memory and contemporary reporting with an excellent historical overview of that massive war. He alternates between eyewitness accounts and the grand scale of the war: political, economic and military, yet still makes time for several well-chosen deep-dives on the war’s most harrowing and pivotal moments, such as Leningrad and Stalingrad (these chapters are almost small books by themselves).

This is an excellent introduction to the subject. It is the biggest story Americans know nothing about. Stalin was a monster, but as a result we’ve gotten the impression that there was something morally ambiguous about the war in the east. There was not. This is the story of people who steadfastly refused to be annihilated by people who wanted to exterminate them. 20 million people died, and the nazis were worn down to certain defeat before Allies even landed in France, due to the incredible, desperate actions by the USSR. I’d say a bunch of stuff about politics and selective memory but I’m honestly not sure the American national security state ever even thought this was a bad thing.

Interestingly, the Russians liberated the first Nazi extermination camp in *August* 1944. A western correspondent (Werth) was there to report on it. The BBC never ran the story. The Brits didn’t believe their own Russia correspondent (or chose to stay silent).

One of the better WW2 books following the Eastern Front. if you enjoy this I suggest any book by author Prit Buttar

One of the better WW2 books following the Eastern Front. if you enjoy this I suggest any book by author Prit Buttar.

A Cold War Masterpiece

I think it's important to recall the date of publication for this book and thus its mindset before coming to conclusions about its relevance today. Taken for its time and its publication in the Soviet Union, it's undeniably a great history, throwing open many a locked door for the Soviet public that had lived through the war, fought in it, suffered in it, but probably never had any objective lens with which to see it from an overhead perspective. This must have been a real hard blast of reality when it first appeared. I find there are many sections within it that are fresh and unvarnished ground level views of the war in the east, reading it today.

Is it objective and bias free? You're asking the wrong questions. Those are obsessions of today's political mieliu where every piece of news is examined according to subjective standards of the news consumer. If it doesn't accord with their political viewpoints, they will claim it's biased. No, Werth was born in Leningrad and his parents emigrated to the UK. He came back to the USSR with the British military mission in 1942 sailing with the PQ16 convoy and he remained in the Soviet Union for the course of the war. For a ground level "And I was there" viewpoint, of a semi foreigner who doesn't have to spew the Party line, it's phenomenal. He sees Leningrad after its siege is broken, he's in Stalingrad shortly after the German defeat, even going to the dog and pony show of the German generals in captivity and its short Q and A session. He interviews Chuikov after Stalingrad, so on and so forth, and he strives to cover the totality of the miltiary action of the war across the entire front line of the conflict, a monumental task, without the story being just tanks moving up and artillery barrages.

The diplomatic and political sections, the close ups on particular moments and cities, the occasional view from the Western Allies perspective, it all adds up to Hall of Fame stuff. And in this it sets itself apart also; this really is the war from the Soviet point of view almost all the time, something of a rare animal in Western histories of the War in the East. And for that along it's not to be missed despite its age and constraints.

Is he honest about everything? No, absolutely not. There are points past which he won't go. Katyn he leaves up in the air. Cannibalism in Leningrad, or anywhere else for that matter, does not exist. Execution of Soviet soldiers for cowardice and desertion at Stalingrad? Not a whisper. As for Stalin, he takes a very uneven tone throughout, sometimes in obvious disapproval, sometimes in grudging admiration and sometimes, unmitigated applause, perhaps reminding us Stalin may been a psycho/sociopath, but he was far more complex a person than simply staring at his murder statistics might suggest.

He does wobble at the finale, ascribing Cold War Soviet propaganda to the American use of atomic bombs on Japan, certainly buying into the suspicions of the time and place, but that can be quickly forgotten. If you have any interest in the Eastern Front you should not miss out on this one, despite is gargantuan length. The narrator is up to the task. This is large scale survey history at its best.

Simply Astonishing

For any serious student of World War II history these days, it's hard to find any original content, especially on the War in the East. The same hoary anecdotes about Stalin ("Lenin gave us this great country and we f•••ed it up" etc.) are repeated ad infinitum, often just with different words; it's like watching documentaries about Stalingrad where you've seen the same clips literally countless times ("Oh no, here comes the guy wearing coconuts on his feet!")—the same stories, the same framings, the same characters and the same histories.

Obviously, there are some standouts, especially on the Russian angle—Beevor's "Stalingrad" and "Ivan's War" by Catherine Merridale are two incredible examples—but most of the rest, to one degree or another, are similar and repetitive.

There are the histories for military types, which run down battalion numbers and tank designations ("Kirponos's 4th Army 3rd Battalion's impressive stand on the Maeda escarpment's western salient, with Yeremenko's 4th Division 2nd Guard's Army's 1,500 Mark IV self-propelled 54mm howitzers were seen at 7:23 pm on January the 23rd, 1942 by blah blah blah blah blah blah") and then there are the man-in-the-street human interest stories and then there are the mechanical treatises of just the fax, ma'am, but a book that takes all this and stands it on its head is hard to come by.

Werth actually takes us *into Stalingrad three days after the surrender and to within ten feet of von Paulus himself* in the **first person** . . . you just can't get more direct than that.

By being perfectly bilingual (trilingual if you count German, oh, and French) he was allowed unprecedented access to most of the major front lines of the war (Leningrad, in the middle of the siege . . . Kharkov, four days after the liberation, Stalingrad, Moscow, and on, and on, and on) and then to many of the personalities (Stafford Cripps, Clark-Kerr, Molotov, etc. etc.) and then at length with German prisoners of war (in German!) as well as all the Russian/Ukrainian citizens themselves, speaking with their voices and then re-speaking in English, so that you have translations that are so authentic it sounds as if the speakers were actually speaking English, not Russian—and they were, in Werth's mind!

But all this, this rich, tapestry-like-detailed history would have all been for naught if the narrator had been, like so, so many narrators of WWII histories, with their myriad places and persons' names mangled atrociously; I could name a dozen right off the top of my head right now where you just stop and *groan* as you hear "Yamamoto" pronounced "Yamomota" and "Ordzhonikidze" as "Ordikidz." You get the picture!

But Derek Perkins is an astonishing narrator; perhaps the best narrator I have ever heard of any audiobook I have ever heard—and I have been listening to audiobooks every single day of my life since 2016.

Perhaps only one of the Churchill books' narrators came close, but Perkins nails every single accent there is in this book. His pronunciation of "Yeremenko" is bizarre; not even recognizable as the same name, but I went and checked—Perkins was correct!

It's obvious he has studied every single non-English word down to the tiniest syllable and worked them out carefully before committing them to tape. Further, his pitch, rhythm and pauses are exquisitely good.

The combination puts this book—and I'm only halfway through it! In the top five of any book—audio or otherwise—about the two world wars and probably THE top audiobook about World War II that I have ever listened to.

I knew Werth was around—I just never ran across any of his books as audiobooks before.

I would have given this book ten stars if they had been available.

(A little personal bio: I'm a 64-year-old American, now Canadian, born in India and lived there for ten years, educated at British public (private) schools for six years and lived in Africa (5 years) Japan (five years) California, France and now Montreal; speak Japanese and French fluently, German passably and used to speak Hindustani at a native level.

(Father was a radio operator in B-24s over Europe and flew 26 missions, later moved to Pan American and then The U.N.)

Still Fresh.

I learned much about RUSSIA & SOVIET wartime history. The material collected from the every day people of that time is precious.

Essential, If Imperfect

Werth's extensive work, based on both his own war time experience and observations as a journalist during the war (and until 1948) alongside extensive research and interviews inform this vibrant treatment of the conflict. Brilliantly combining both a wide-ranging, big picture narrative (especially strong on diplomatic and Communist Party matters) with a series of "close-ups" of individual incidents, battles and personalities, often witnessed at the time, worth pulls together a colorful and detailed picture of the Soviet Union at war. Werth, born in pre-Bolshevik Russia and a fluent Russian speaker, seemed remarkably skilled at getting unusual and highly human answers from figures high and low.

Most of the book's imperfections and shortcoming are a product of the time it was written and published (the late 1950s and early 60s, the Kruschev Era) and Werth's own highly personal perspective. The Soviet archives were not then opened, leaving out much supporting and sometimes corrective materials and Werth is also at pains to contrast the official Soviet war history of the post-Stalin era with both what was said at the time and what actually happened. Thus the Katyn Massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets (which some reviewers suggest Werth doubted, believing it was the Germans, which I did not find him concluding here) was fully settled by and official apology from the USSR to Poland in the late 1980s. While Werth shows no love for Stalin or Beria, the work is generally free of direct and detailed indictments of them also, and while Werth's work by no means follows the party line, it's often non-critical tone seems out of place today. If anything, though, one of his lasting contributions is to humanize not just the generals and political leaders but the ordinary citizens of the then Soviet Union. They people are (as they should be) the heroes of the piece--and rather tragic ones at that. Werth's own desire for peace for the people of the Soviet Union and a reduction in their suffering--which the country's surviving war generation, he convincingly argues, largely shared--was not to be. Indeed, Werth's son (a respected Eastern European historian) seems to hint that the crushing of the Prague Spring of 1968 by Russian forces may have contributed to the depression leading to his father's suicide. Since Werth's work left me liking both him and his hard-pressed ordinary heroes, it was hard not to feel a sense of loss in subsequent Russian history.