Sotakirja

For some time I've been reading Chris Bellamy's quite massive book Absolute War Soviet Russia in the Second World War. The text is based mostly on Russian archives - of which some are older and some from the time since Soviet Union collapsed. Massive book from massive material. The war on the Eastern Front with its giant battles was the biggest and most horrendous ever fought.

Very interesting in Bellamy's text is that he depicts so well what happened before the beginning of the Operation Barbarossa - what led Nazi-Germany to attack Communist-Russia.

Here and there Bellamy doubts the truthfulness of Russian archives. And because of this there is at least one real mistake. He claims that Finns lost during the Winter War (1939-1940) 48000 men. But in reality that number is twice the actual number. Why didn't he check the figures from Finish archives? He used Russian ones instead and those were from the 1950-ies.

All in all Bellamy has written an absolutely interesting book!

Juha H.