My Amazon Review of Andrew Nagorski's "1941: The Year Germany Lost the War"

The Hitler- Stalin Duel

Journalist and historian Andrew Nagorski’s highly readable book places 1941 as the pivotal year of World War II. Although the actual tide of the war turned in 1943, the die was cast in 1941. His book is very much in the tradition of Ian Kershaw’s broader “Fateful Choices” which focuses on both 1940 and 1941 as the two years that determined the outcome of the war. Although Nagorski discusses the roles of Churchill, Roosevelt and the Japanese he mostly focuses on Hitler and Stalin. 

To Nagorski it is Hitler’s failure to understand that Germany did not have the resources to simultaneously fight the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union that led him into the trap that Russia became. Yet it was a very close run thing during the 1940 battle of Moscow. The Soviets won that battle because Stalin finally relented in giving battlefield control to General Zhukov. Prior to that Stalin failed to heed his generals and more importantly refused to accept intelligence from multiple sources, especially Richard Sorge in Tokyo, that Hitler was about to invade Russia. It was Japan’s decision to move south in 1941, instead of supporting Hitler in Russia, that enabled Zhukov’s army to be transferred from Siberia to the Moscow front.

Hitler’s tactical mistake on the Russian front was his maltreatment of captured POWs and the civilian population. Initially the long suffering Russian people welcomed the German Army, but it was the harsh treatment by the German occupiers that soon made enemies of them. It was also in 1941 Russia that the horrible outlines of Hitler’s destruction of European Jewry was actualized.

Nagorski’s Roosevelt and Hopkins are all in to aid Britain prior to Pearl Harbor. In fact it was with the introduction of the lend-lease program that Hitler believed that war with the United States would be inevitable.

Nagorski is very good in developing his thesis that Stalin from the get go was thinking beyond the alliance with the U.S. and Britain towards a postwar era that would enable him to capture the gains he made in the Ribbentrop- Molotov Pact of 1939. Thus to Nagorski the Cold War begins in 1941 and further he sees both Roosevelt and Hopkins being taken in by the wily Stalin against the wishes of the far more experienced diplomat George Kennan.

I have only scratched the surface of Nagorski’s magnificent book. He brings real drama to the personalities and the events of that very critical time when, in very real sense, civilization was held in the balance.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1X6BGF00YCXTZ/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv