The Year Germany Lost the War 1941 Review

The seeds of Nazi defeat were sown long before the Centrality' surrender.

What a difference a yr makes. Or so argues Andrew Nagorski in his newest book, 1941. That, in his view, was the year Frg lost World War Ii. Others might suggest 1944, when the Allied invasion of Normandy forced Hitler to fight on ii fronts, or, ultimately, 1945, the twelvemonth the Axis powers surrendered.

But Nagorski, a erstwhile longtime foreign correspondent for Newsweek and the bestselling writer of vi previous books, makes a compelling case that 1941 was a disquisitional turning point leading to the eventual German defeat.

Nagorski'southward view is informed not only past an intimate knowledge of history — he drew, in part, on his previous books to research this ane — merely likewise by his own family unit's story. His grandpa was evacuated from France in 1940 and was part of the free Polish authorities in exile in London. His male parent was in the Shine army and escaped to Scotland during the German language occupation.

Hitler and Stalin loom over information technology all, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of import but lesser figures in Nagorski's gripping drama. Hitler'southward prison work, Mein Kampf, may be best remembered for its extreme anti-Semitism, blaming Germany'south defeat in World War I and every other imaginative ill on the Jews and foreshadowing the Holocaust. Only Nagorski recalls a less noted passage in which Hitler describes Stalin's Soviet Russia as the biggest threat and vows one day to conquer information technology.

Hitler viewed Russians as Untermenschen, a half-Asiatic people second only to the Jews as a sub-human species. Hitler hoped, among other illusions he harbored, for an brotherhood with U.k. confronting the "Jewish-Bolshevik" menace. Stalin, for his part, had antipathy for Hitler. Both men were murderous dictators, opposite sides of the same coin.

Still, they signed a non-aggression pact in 1939. That allowed Stalin to absorb the Baltic countries, invade Republic of finland, and occupy Poland. Stalin naively thought the alliance would hold; he dismissed his ain intelligence that Germany was poised to open an eastern front, attacking Poland and and then invading Soviet-controlled territories and even Russia itself.

Operation Barbarossa, which Federal republic of germany launched in June 1941, drastically inverse the equation on the fields of battle and diplomacy.

Then, Hitler, dismissing his advisors' recommendations, opted to seize Kiev rather than start attack Moscow. Equally the Nazi forces approached, Stalin came shut to abandoning the upper-case letter city but inverse his mind at the last infinitesimal. Meanwhile, the Russian wintertime, which Hitler had hoped to avert, forth with vehement resistance from the Red Army, stopped the German accelerate. Due to Hitler'due south miscalculation, his troops were inadequately provisioned and clothed for the harsh weather.

Nagorski poses another tactical and ironic fault on Hitler's part — his decision to use railroad cars to conduct Jews to death camps rather than transporting fresh troops and supplies to the front. Then, thanks to Hitler's extreme hatred of Jews, the Holocaust proceeded, and Hitler lost the war.

Further motivating the Russian resistance was Hitler's credo, that "terrorism is a salutary thing," indicating how he expected his troops to treat Russian prisoners-of-war and civilians in the areas they conquered. The Commissar Order commanded German language troops to execute Carmine Regular army political officers, including those trying to give up. Similarly, Stalin's Order 270 allowable that Soviet soldiers who refused to fight or sought to retreat be executed.

Non mentioned — but the subject of another recent book, Blood, Oil and the Axis, by John Broich — was Hitler'southward decision to boxing for command of North Africa rather than the oil-rich Levant, which left the Reich without the fuel it desperately needed.

Through information technology all, Nagorski reports, Hitler rejected recommendations that might have improved Germany'southward chances. He alone, he ranted, knew the answers, and he took no responsibility for his mistakes.

While Hitler and Stalin were waging strategic wars, Churchill was badly trying to nudge FDR closer to an outright wartime alliance. It would have the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. vii, 1941, to force FDR's mitt. Meanwhile, Nippon's decision to attack the The states rather than the Soviet Union'south Far East freed up Russia to send troops stationed there to the westward to fight the Nazis. Such geopolitical decisions or whims, Nagorski writes, made 1941 the pivotal twelvemonth.

These unforeseen turns of events in 1941 drive the volume'southward narrative. It slows only when Nagorski gives united states of america besides much detail nearly the comings and goings of diplomats — American, British, and Russian. Also many characters float in and out of these scenes. Here, the story tends to get bogged downwardly, and this reader wished more than for a summary.

1 important exception is the role of U.S. Administrator Joseph Davies, whose sympathetic "Mission to Moscow" became a bestselling book and so a propagandistic Hollywood pic. FDR appeared to welcome his roseate view of Russia under Stalin and backed the Soviets with military supplies and vocal support in one case America entered the state of war. The sulfurous dictator transformed into likable "Uncle Joe."

The pivotal year this book highlights, Nagorski suggests, also prepare the stage for the postwar division of Europe. Though FDR was faulted for acceding at the 1945 Yalta Conference to Russian demands for hegemony over Eastern Europe, Nagorski argues there was logic to the Soviets belongings onto lands they had seized dorsum from Federal republic of germany and already occupied.

Thus, 1941 was not only the year that Germany lost the war simply also, given events that flowed from Hitler's failed Operation Barbarossa, the year that the Soviet Marriage arguably won the peace.

Eugene L. Meyer, a former longtime Washington Mail reporter and editor, is the writer, most recently, of 5 for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Chocolate-brown's Army, winner of the 2019 Outstanding Biography/History Book honour from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

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