A gripping and authoritative revisionist account of the German Winter
Campaign of 1941-1942
Germany's winter campaign of 1941-1942 is commonly seen as its first
defeat. In Retreat from Moscow, a bold, gripping account of one of the
seminal moments of World War II, David Stahel argues that instead it was
its first strategic success in the East. The Soviet counteroffensive was
in fact a Pyrrhic victory. Despite being pushed back from Moscow, the
Wehrmacht lost far fewer men, frustrated its enemy's strategy, and
emerged in the spring unbroken and poised to recapture the initiative.
Hitler's strategic plan called for holding important Russian industrial
cities, and the German army succeeded. The Soviets as of January 1942
aimed for nothing less than the destruction of Army Group Center, yet
not a single German unit was ever destroyed. Lacking the
professionalism, training, and experience of the Wehrmacht, the Red
Army's offensive attempting to break German lines in countless head-on
assaults led to far more tactical defeats than victories.
Using accounts from journals, memoirs, and wartime correspondence,
Stahel takes us directly into the Wolf's Lair to reveal a German command
at war with itself as generals on the ground fought to maintain order
and save their troops in the face of Hitler's capricious, increasingly
irrational directives. Excerpts from soldiers' diaries and letters home
paint a rich portrait of life and death on the front, where the men of
the Ostheer battled frostbite nearly as deadly as Soviet artillery. With
this latest installment of his pathbreaking series on the Eastern Front,
David Stahel completes a military history of the highest order
