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Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East. By David Stahel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-76847-4. Idustrations. Maps. Glossary. Tables of military ranks and army structures. Notes. BibUography. Index. Pp. xvi, 483. $99.00.
World War II's decisive theater is increasingly recognized as the Eastern Front. The decisive event of the Russo-German war is increasingly recognized as Operation Barbarossa. Barbarossa was a mditary second choice reflecting Germany's inabiUty to knock Britain out of the war in the summer and fad of 1940. It was also a synergy of dysfunctional improvisations. Frustration, geopofitics, and ideology drove an operation structured by overconfidence, resting on faith, whose ultimate genesis lay in the fever swamps of racism and hubris. .
Stahel, in this revised doctoral dissertation, focuses on the German side of the fighting fine to present a thoroughly researched, comprehensive, and convincing analysis of Barbarossa as a consequence of inherent structural flaws in the German army - -above ad in the planning sphere. The often-cited conflicts between Hitler and his generals take an appropriate second place in Stahel's account to a strategy devised by the High Command...