I perused two recent WWII history books that focus on crucial events that took place during 1943 and 1944, as the tide was finally turning along the Eastern Front. The Soviet Red Army was beginning to drive the German occupiers out of the Ukraine and Byelorussia.
“Armor and Blood-the Battle of Kursk: the Turning Point of World War II” by Dennis E. Showalter (Random House, 345 pages, $28).
The Battle of Kursk took place in 1943. This epic confrontation was the greatest tank battle in history. The historian Dennis E. Showalter is an authority on German military history. In “Armor and Blood”, he takes readers move-by-move through a grueling and prolonged boxing match that ultimately exhausted the Germans and gave the Red Army the momentum that eventually carried them all the way into Berlin.
Showalter documents every strategy, feint, advance, retreat, last stand and knockout blow. The Germans had superior tanks. The Soviets had overwhelming superiority in the numbers of tanks and soldiers. The Germans were stretched to the breaking point and had very little in the way of reserves. The Red Army had millions of troops they could deploy.
Every night, the Germans repaired their disabled tanks. On the other side, the Soviets were burying some of their tanks up to their turrets to create pillboxes to blunt German attacks. The carnage on both sides was inconceivable. A German offensive was halted at Kursk. This defeat set the stage for the USSR’s Operation Bagration, an advance so rapid that it was comparable to the German blitzkrieg attacks from earlier in the war.
“Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising” by Alexandra Richie (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 752 pages, $40).
By 1944, the Red Army had advanced all the way into Poland. They were closing in on Warsaw. While historians have written widely about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that was brutally suppressed by the Germans in 1943, the uprising that took place in 1944 is not so well-known.
Alexandra Richie is a Canadian historian. She lives in Warsaw and is married to a Pole who gave her access to his extensive family archive from this period. As the Red Army closed in upon Warsaw, the AK — the Armia Krajowa or Polish Home Army — made a crucial mistake. This resistance force instigated a revolt against their German occupiers. They thought that The Red Army would be attacking Warsaw soon. This massive blunder became a fatal error.
Stalin, the Soviet dictator, had other plans. He held back the Red Army. Meanwhile Hitler, the German dictator, took his brutal revenge upon the city. As the Soviets did nothing, the Germans proceeded to destroy Warsaw while savagely decimating the population. By the time the Red Army finally attacked, there wasn’t much left of this formerly magnificent cultural center.
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