Albert Seaton: The Battle for Moscow. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2001. 294 pp.
In this traditional military history focusing squarely on Hitler, Stalin and their top generals (with greater emphasis on the German side), Colonel Seaton offers a convincing explanation for why Hitler risked a two-front war: He actually believed it would be easier to defeat the USSR than to invade Britain. And once Stalin had been vanquished, he could deal with Churchill (or his replacement) at his leisure. The victory over France was in a sense Hitler’s undoing because it convinced him of the truth of his own propaganda. Instead of attributing the triumph of May 1940 to the skill of the Panzer and Luftwaffe forces, he believed it was due to willpower and the innate superiority of the Aryan race.
Though Seaton diagnoses Hitler’s fatal flaw, he does not make the mistake of underestimating him: “He had many qualities which would have stood him in good stead had he been a professional soldier: restless energy, an inquisitive and active brain, great will-power, a clear memory and a good head for detail and technicalities.” (pg. 6)
More problematic is his assertion that Hitler’s talent “lay only in the field of operations” rather than head of state or commander-in-chief. (pg. 7) While he may not have been successful as a grand strategist, clearly he was the only one in the Third Reich capable of thinking in strategic terms. Still, it cannot be denied that Hitler’s hubris allowed him to convince himself that the campaign in Russia would be quick and easy. His generals may not have believed this, but with varying degrees of meekness they went along anyway.
Hitler’s overall strategy seems to have been encapsulated in his oft-quoted remark, “kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse.” When he had done much more than that and still it failed to collapse, he had no other idea than to grab resources in the south so that he could keep fighting, no Plan B beyond buying time until new weapons could be developed. Hitler counted on technological and racial superiority plus will power to carry him through. But if this combination did not succeed in the summer and fall of 1941, when conditions were nearly ideal, they were never going to work later, when conditions were so much worse.
Though he takes an unvarnished view of Stalin, Seaton curiously passes over the 1939 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and the Baltic states without a word. And after Barbarossa begins, he foregoes any mention of German invaders initially being greeted as liberators. On the other hand, while he does mention later partisan activity, there is little on Nazi atrocities as a major factor that stiffened Soviet resistance. Seaton focuses narrowly on battles and commanders, and has scant interest in other matters, even though they also impinged on military operations.
This may be excused to home extent, however, by the fact that the work was originally published in 1971. As a colonel from a NATO country (Canada), Seaton was simply unable to visit any battle sites. Likewise his bibliography reflects what was available at the time: memoirs by top commanders. There is little from the grunt’s eye view.
A more accurate title might have been “The Battles of Army Group Center, Fall 1941-Spring 1942: Advance, Retreat, Front Stabilization.” For in Battle For Moscow there is not much to be found about Moscow and how the fighting impacted people who lived there. (Readers interested in a perspective that focuses on the city and its inhabitants should consult Rodric Braithwaite: Moscow 1941, reviewed elsewhere on this site.) It is only in Chapter Three that Seaton shifts his attention briefly to the capital. Hitler “had decided that he would not occupy Moscow at all but would merely ring it with his troops and, in a fate it was to share with Leningrad, destroy it by bombing and artillery fire… In this way Hitler showed how little Moscow mattered to him as a historical and cultural center, and the value he placed on the lives of its inhabitants. Yet it is almost beyond credibility that Hitler, as a statesman or as soldier, should have wantonly destroyed Moscow as a seat of government and an industrial complex, and disregarded its value as a communication and rail center. Common sense should have told him that in it were the only available winter quarters for a large proportion of his troops.” (pp. 63-64)
The problem with blaming Hitler for losing a winnable war is that those, like Seaton, who pin the responsibility on him neglect to mention that without Hitler, Germany would never have been in any position to win in the first place. The invasion of Russia may have failed, but even with flawed leadership and a disastrously short-sighted occupation policy, it came much closer to success than most historians, benefitting from hindsight, care to remember.
(Memorial of anti-tank hedgehogs marking the spot of closest German advance to Moscow, on the road from Sheremetyevo Airport; the Moscow subway now extends far beyond this location)
For related reviews elsewhere on this site, see: Michael Jones: The Retreat: Hitler’s First Defeat; the Hitler Book may also be of interest, though it concentrates mainly on the end of the war.
© Hamilton Beck
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