Prit Buttar

Prit Buttar takes no prisoners on the detail of what is certainly one of the most important military operations of the twentieth century - the meticulously planned if humanly expensive Soviet counter-offensive that effectively smashed German aspirations in the East over four or five weeks in 1944.

Although primarily a technical military history (which the publisher Osprey specialises in), Buttar shows a fair-mindedness, decency and wisdom in dealing with associated events - notably the July show more Bomb Plot against Hitler and the Warsaw Uprising - that shows him to be a fine general historian.

The pleasure in the book (although there is no pleasure in the barbarity of the war and particularly the Wehrmacht and SS under the Nazi regime) lies in his refusal to polemicise through Cold War tropes as well as to humanise the action through memoirs of combatants on both sides.

If courage is a virtue (and I start to have my doubts if it is courage in support of evil), then there was certainly courage on both sides but it is hard, for all the negativities within Sovietism, not to root for the Russians on this occasion. Buttar roots for no one. He just tells the tale.

One reads the memoirs and neither side questions their struggle (even allowing for such questioning receiving a bullet from a superior). One is led to the sad conclusion that, as Ernst Junger taught us, war is for many men a giver of Meaning where ordinary life is bereft of it.

Perhaps this is why war will never be eliminated. Ukrainian identity, Russian existential defence, Palestinian identity, Israeli existential defence ... identity and existential defence will always ensure that conflict will create bodies of professionals and then the basis for conscription.

In essence, the Germans were still a formidable and superbly organised opponent in the Summer of 1944 despite Stalingrad. The Russians (which seems to be a national characteristic) took a long time to learn how to be as formidable and to become better organised.

This was a clash of titans but with, finally, the Western Allies opening the Second Front in Normandy a month before Bagration, history was against a poorly led (politically) and ultimately resource-constrained continental power fighting on two fronts.

Nevertheless, Bagration's success was not a foregone conclusion. Theoretically, Germany could have bottled the Allies in a bloody salient on the wrong side of Falaise and then withdrawn to a defensible line (much as Russia did in Ukraine today) watching the Soviets degrade assaulting it.

This may have only bought time, perhaps for political changes that might have saved the regime (although these look unlikely), but tensions between the Soviets and the West might have seen a very different outcome if the war had dragged on for another two or three years.

Stilll, alternative history is idle speculation. History is what it was. In this case, defeat seems inbuilt into the situation because Stalin did not interfere in operational decisions and Hitler constantly did with instructions that took no account of field conditions.

Bagration cannot be seen in isolation from events elsewhere, Buttar is good on ensuring that we see the bigger picture amidst the detail. Western supply of equipment to the Soviets was important but more important was that Second Front which meant no transfer of divisions eastwards.

There are insights in this book that help us to understand some of the critical events of today. The most noticeable is that there is a natural boundary on one side of which the Soviets were fighting for their own land and, on the other, were fighting on territory more sympathetic to the Germans.

Bagration brings the Soviets across that boundary at the end. It also brings them to the first of the Nazi extermination camps - the 'small one' (where 60,000-80,000 were murdered) Majdanek - which provides us with a gear change in our assessment of an evil regime with more to come.

The importance of the 'behind the lines' partisan movement in Soviet combined operations is also made clear on frequent occasions. These partisans operated where Belarussian and Russian (and Jewish) sentiments tended to seek liberation from the Germans.

Cross the 'boundary' with its gray zone of mixed populations and you are moving into Polish territory but also into Ukrainian and Lithuanian territories where the Soviets were the threat and the mood changed. Lithuanian militia were definitely implicated in atrocities.

In the Polish case, the AK (the Polish Underground Army) was anti-German, of course, but placed its trust in the West which was far away and was a rival of a Lublin Government-in-waiting which was pro-Soviet.

Buttar covers the Warsaw Uprising sufficiently to make us understand that it is all a little more complicated than Western Cold War mythos would have us believe. The West actually accepted Stalin's borders which were not entirely unreasonable since they matched the Curzon line.

The point is that the bit between the post-First World War Curzon Line and the Soviet Union, reoccupied by Stalin in 1939, was, in fact, not a Polish but a highly mixed cultural zone that could have gone to either side. It was, bluntly, the Soviets who were spending blood winning the war.

Similarly the Nazis drew auxiliaries used for appalling crimes against humanity from Ukrainians and Lithuanians (and some Belarussians). The Baltics in particular tended to see Germans as liberators with the Lithuanian 'Forest Brothers' maintaining a partisan war against Moscow into the 1950s.

This leads us to the claim that Stalin deliberately failed to support the Warsaw Uprising with his troops on the other side of the Vistula but this too is a half-truth. What actually seems to have happened is that the Soviet Army was burned out by the time of the Warsaw Uprising.

Other than creating a vital national legend, the Warsaw Uprising was probably futile and absurd. It was the civilians who suffered because the AK made a political decision to rise up believing the Soviets would enter the City and that they could claim their own political role after the City was captured.

They heard the guns in the distance but failed to understand that what was actually happening was a final and vigorous localised German counter-offensive against a Soviet force that had travelled over 300 miles and was now with serious supply line difficulties.

Romanticism might have demanded a last drive for Warsaw but what this exhausted force would have faced was some formidable panzers and attritional street-fighting. The pro-Soviet Polish Army attempted entry to the City but faced appalling losses trying to cross the Vistula.

It is also true that Stalin had decided on an operational pause on the day of the uprising for sound military reasons (the front now stretched to the Baltic Sea) but before the rising started and that he had seriously considered relieving Warsaw but was dissuaded by military leaders.

The rising would continue for some months so Stalin is not fully exonerated. Something political happened to shift his opinion. It is probable that it was partly fear that a strong AK would act to bar the way to Germany as well as other motives including strengthening forces for a drive to Berlin.

Periodically there seems to have been minor attempts to broker a German-Polish rapprochement against the Soviets whether with Polish partisans or the AK as a force to be deployed against them. This, of course, was absurd but mutual distrust between AK and Stalin was not irrational.

The point is to be wary of simplistic evaluations of complex decision-making on all sides. Everyone is playing to their own perception of advantage. There are few angels and many devils in war. The vileness of the German regime is perhaps the one thing we might all agree on.

We can see, however, the lineaments of positions taken today in this history - the Russians trying to restore what they think is their natural boundary, the Belarussians on their side, the bitter hatreds infecting NATO from Balts and Ukrainians and Poland seeking independent great power status.

Even today, a newly militarising Germany finds itself allying culturally and politically with the same nations that preferred collaboration in the early 1940s while Russia continues to see an existential threat from the West. The 'real' West intervenes and dabbles uncomprehendingly as usual.

But it is the state of Germany that is central to events in the summer of 1944 because what we are beginning to see is knowledgeable German Officers beginning to understand that the game may be up and having to make their own existential choices.

The codes of the military and the ideology of the SS combined with a general collective view that the hordes from the East would behave as Germany had itself behaved in the East when they emerged on German soil - a view partially to come true in the drive across Prussia.

These codes and beliefs resulted in a general determination to fight on and a culture of Germanic heroism matched by a dogged Soviet proletarian equivalent for defence of the homeland and the extirpation of a hated enemy. There was always promise for Germans of 'wonder weapons' to come.

However, a group of German Officers in the middle of the Operation took an alternative view - the infamous Operation Valkyrie centred on the failed July Bomb Plot. This failed, of course, was almost certainly futile (since unconditional surrender was allied policy) and strengthened the regime.

We should not make the plotters more heroic than they were. The aim was typically German - simply to end the war on both fronts by cutting a deal with the Western powers and prosecute the war to a successful conclusion in the East. There is little sign of concern over war crimes.

We might guess that the exterminations would end, both to pin them on the deposed monsters and to assist in peace moves - maybe a pro-German puppet Poland to satisfy Western sensibilities - but the war in the East was now out of control. The approach would have remained 'existential'.

Perhaps there are elements in Germany today thinking through a version of this strategy of expanding eastwards (as a 'democracy' within NATO) alongside 'their' petty neo-nationalists and, while holding no love for Russia, we sense the Poles to be a healthy restraint on such madness.

There is also some judgement to be made here about atrocities, committed by both sides. The differences appear to be the very deliberate use of violence and terror against civilians and ethnic groups (notably Jews) by the Germans compared to the Soviets.

Of course, we must not forget the Gulags and so forth or the rapine of Soviet forces across Prussia in the following year but, in 1944, the fundamental difference is that Soviet atrocities came from below and that the authorities made reasonable efforts to control them.

This was almost certainly because the Soviets were recovering (in their eyes) their own lands and people even to the extent, at one point, of making efforts to protect important Belarussian wild life! To the Germans these lands were to be depopulated ultimately for German settlers.

Himmler was explicit about this in considering the Warsaw Uprising as a 'good thing' because it enabled Germany to wipe out the Polish capital and expel its citizens en masse. The Soviets did not adopt the same biological imperative in their conquered territories.

Operation Bagration was an impressive operation. It took three years of war for the Soviets to learn how to wage war and, even then, with a still under-educated force, it took losses a more professionalised army would not. Given the level of development, a bloody achievement.

Not only was Hitler's decision-making working against successful defensive tactics but the Germans had become complacent by the summer of 1944. They simply could not believe that the Soviets were capable of sufficient rational thought. 1944 became 1941 in reverse. Game nearly over! show less

I am the grandchild of Lithuanian immigrants who came to the USA before the First World War, so this book filled in some historical gaps for me. The book tells the story of various communities in the Baltic states who had no good choices when it came to choosing a foreign patron. Perhaps the hardest done-by were the Baltic Jews, who were faced with a choice between Hitler and Stalin. They sided with the latter for obvious reasons and incurred the lethal enmity of their Christian compatriots show more as a result. There are no "good guys" in this book -- the Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians who bravely resisted the Russian occupation after 1945 were in many cases tainted by their previous collaboration with the Nazis.

Buttar tells the tale in a thorough, dispassionate, but workmanlike manner. I found the passages dealing with the German-Soviet battles to be hard going because of the author's insistence on citing every division- or brigade-level unit involved in the fighting. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile read to fill in the blanks about a little-known front of the Second World War. show less

Prit Buttar has done an excellent job on concentrating his and the reader's attention on an area that's often ignored or simply glossed over in the greater histories of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War. The Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia never played a central role in the Second World War but each has an interesting history that's worth acknowledging and discussing. "Between Giants" features a dozen chapters mainly in chronological order that begin by looking show more at the history of the Baltic states and their interactions with their neighbors in all four directions. Following that is an in-depth look at the diplomatic history of each state on the eve of the war and the various political and diplomatic maneuvers that were involved as all three tried to toe a line that wouldn't upset either Germany or the Soviet Union. To date, in all my readings on the Eastern Front of the Second World War, and the Second World War in general (numbering in the hundreds of books), this is the most interesting and enlightening look at the actions of these states in both the inter-war period and the beginning of the Second World War (1939-1941).

The next chapter looks at the initial invasion of the Soviet Union and German actions to occupy all three Baltic states. The actions of both sides, that is the Wehrmacht and Red Army, are well enough described, but there is a noticeable strength in the presentation of the German and Baltic side compared to that of the Soviet Union/Red Army. Additionally, since the author is not an academic, in this chapter (and a few of those that follow) there are unneeded tangents with the author offering what-if scenarios about what could have been if only the Germans acted in one way or another. Personally, I'm more interested in what happened and why, rather than how the Germans could have been flawless in their pursuit of conquest and genocide on the Eastern Front. The Holocaust and occupation of the Baltics, as well as the local movements (both political and military) are covered before the final chapters conclude with further descriptions and discussions of the military actions that took place in 1944-1945. Overall this is an excellent text that focuses on an oft-neglected area of operations on the Eastern Front.

The weaknesses that I noticed include, as mentioned above, the descriptions and analysis of the Red Army/Soviet Union were at times lacking, there was that tendency to drift into 'what-if' scenarios that took away from the context of the Second World War and the Eastern Front and really served little to no purpose, the sections on military actions were quite dry (and this coming from someone who is happy to become engrossed in David Glantz's operational level studies) and there every now and then time periods/the chronology were mixed up or tangents taken into various topics that served little purpose in regards to the main theme of the book (the battles for the Baltics). Otherwise, this is an excellent text that those interested in the Eastern Front and the Third Reich should definitely add to their library. show less

Good, but not as good as other military books where more is happening or changing. The Germans during WWII or the 'Patriotic Great War', attack Russia and go as far as Rzhev trying to get to Moscow. The Russians had killed anyone in their military who knew anything in Stalin's purges prior to the attack. The Russians strategy was just steam rolling attacks. They never changed their tactics and learned very little over the course of the engagement to improve their chances. The Germans had show more much better tactics. Even when the Russians did take some ground, counter-attacks from the Germans would take it back.

In addition to tanks, which the Russians had pretty good ones but never learned to coordinate with their infantry, cavalry was also used. Cavalry may be better to navigate the bad terrain, but against machine guns and artillery? Even the SS on the German side had some cavalry as well.

Seems like if the devil wanted to kill as many people as possible, having two maniacs (Hitler and Stalin) that don't care about people, throwing their populations into a meat grinder form of battle was the way to do it. Always the Russians lost far more in every battle. Each major battle is discussed so it was interesting to see how many ways the author could say 'heavy losses' suffered by the Russians. From Wikipedia 'Russian historian Svetlana Gerasimova the official casualty figures of the four offensive operations, the total losses approach 2,300,000 men. For the other side, according to German reports 'the casualties of the 2nd, 4th, 9th, 2nd Panzer, 3rd Panzer and 4th Panzer Armies (the latter only having data from March to April 1942) amount to 162,713 killed, 35,650 missing, and 469,747 wounded.

Finally the Germans just retreated back so that they could deploy their forces somewhere else and were never defeated. Of course Stalingrad was another story.

Well written and documented, but tales of attacks and massive casualties are repeated over and over and over again through the progression of the almost 2 years of fighting. If that wasn't enough, the last two chapters summarized the failures all over again.

Those chapters also debunked the excuse that they weren't so much meant to win in the Rzhev Salient, but to pin down German soldiers so they couldn't be used at Stalingrad.

So great book if you really want to know more about Russia's role in WWII. The Allied win of WWII was primarily due to Hitler attacking Russia, and both sides there expending so much equipment and lives there which then weren't there to fight everyone else. However, as how interesting the book is, I would say almost all other WWII books out there are probably more interesting because of more variety of things going on.

Lastly, one little fact I learned from my Dad before hearing it in other places. You may ask, why was Hitler so stupid to attack Russia? A big reason was because of Finland. Little Finland was attacked by Russian forces and was able to drive them off. Hitler saw that and thought that Russia was weak and grossly underestimated the will power and forces that they would throw at his army. show less