Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East (review)

This study is a major effort to draw together the findings of both earlier and more recent literature on Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union and the purpose and conduct of that invasion, as well as the terrible fighting that ensued and made it the major front of World War II. The author emphasizes how the brutal aims of the Germans made this a conflict characterized by the most horrendous slaughter of Jews and the intentional starvation of the non-Jewish population in the occupied territories, as well as the death by shooting, starvation, and disease of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. Fritz also stresses the defects of German planning and the logistical problems of the German military effort from the very beginning of the campaign. He omits the Finnish portion of the front and German participation at its northern end entirely, and barely touches on the Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, and other forces fighting on Germany’s side. There is a substantial bibliography, though Marianne Feuersenger’s memoir on Hitler’s headquarters is missing (Im Vorzimmer der Macht [Munich, 1999]). The maps are few, omit most places mentioned in the text, and contain such errors as showing the 1944 Eastern Front on a map of Europe in 1937.

The account of the actual course of the fighting is well done and will provide readers with a real sense of the developments, especially if a subsequent edition provides proper maps. Fritz illuminates the extent to which early victories in battle misled Germany’s political and military leaders into imagining that all was going just right. The author shows how a combination of unexpectedly determined Red Army resistance, the continued full control of the unoccupied part of the country by the Soviet regime, and German logistical difficulties made any complete German victory unlikely, if not impossible, by the fall of 1941. He also illuminates the interaction between developments on the German home front and events at the fighting front, and how the desperate German need for military replacements—leading to manpower shortages in industry—intersected with the slaughter and weakening by hunger of the victims of a war of extermination. The account of partisan and antipartisan warfare would have benefitted from two considerations. In the first place, it is easy to distinguish between real antipartisan warfare and outright slaughter of civilians by paying attention to the age of the victims: were German soldiers really afraid of two- and three-year-old partisans? Secondly, Fritz has fallen for the alleged distinction between front- and rear-area units in regard to the horrors in the rear: just as security divisions were employed at the front at crisis moments, so practically all major so-called antipartisan operations involved regular frontline divisions.

A fine account of the fighting before Moscow and of the Soviet winter offensive is followed by an equally good review of the German summer offensive of 1942 and its failure at Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Fritz offers a solid review of the stabilizing of the southern portion of the German front and of the arguments over, and implementation of, the failed German summer offensive of 1943. He shows how German retreats were accompanied by both scorched-earth procedures and an acceleration of the Holocaust. At appropriate places he reviews Soviet plans and Joseph Stalin’s role in them. Unlike Adolf Hitler, who listened less and less to his generals, the Soviet leader increasingly paid attention to his own. That said, many of his decisions, especially the one ordering Marshals Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev to race for Berlin, surely led to increased casualties for a military already facing a shortage of soldiers because of heavy losses, a development that resembled the earlier deficiencies of the German army.

A helpful feature of this account is the author’s emphasis on the problems posed for each side by the characteristics of the weapons at its disposal, especially...