OPINION THE MYTH OF THE RED ARMY ‘STEAMROLLER’
“MANY FORMER WEHRMACHT GENERALS TOOK PART IN TRAINING EXERCISES WITH NATO OFFICERS, WHERE THEY REPEATEDLY EMPHASISED SOVIET RELIANCE ON WEIGHT OF NUMBERS OVER SKILL”
It is a widely held view that history is written largely by the victors. In this context the historiography of the Eastern Front in the Second World War is an interesting exception.
English language books about the Second World War began to appear within a few years of the end of the conflict. Inevitably they concentrated at first on those theatres where English-speaking soldiers had been heavily involved – the war in North Africa and Italy, the Battles of Britain and the Atlantic, the Normandy Landings, and the war in the Pacific and Asia against Japan. Equally inevitably they initially focused on the campaigns in which the Western Allies were victorious, and accounts of setbacks like May 1940 appeared a little later. Perhaps to explain these defeats, the prowess of the Wehrmacht of 1940 was emphasised and there was less attention to the failures and shortcomings of Germany’s opponents.
By the early 1950s many of the German officers who had been involved in the fighting on the
