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Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East. By Stephen G. Fritz. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011. Pp. xxiv + 640. Cloth $39.95. ISBN 978-0813134161.
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...