‘Barbarossa’ Revisited: The War on the Eastern Front, 1941–1945: A Survey of Recent Literature

Abstract

Within the past several years, the war on the Eastern Front during World War II has witnessed a steady stream of books on the fighting that lasted from 22 June 1941 until 8 May 1945. This avalanche of literature has given students of that titanic struggle a much better perspective on the RussoGerman War, a war that not only determined the outcome of the Second World War but defined the post-World War II world until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 that signaled the end of the Cold War. While this survey is not definitive, it is nonetheless an attempt to examine some of the more notable books that have recently been made available to students of that conflict. And this essay is not intended as a ‘review’ in the traditional sense. The author’s intent is to draw attention to recent works on the War in the East, in the hope that scholars may further review them as they represent some of the finest scholarship on a conflict that remains largely forgotten by scholars of World War II.