The Battle for Moscow

Rating:
Summary: Col. Seaton calls a spade a spade
Review: Col Seaton, comes across as pro Nazi. he refers to Hitler as the Fuhrer, but Stalin as the Soviet dictator.The Germans as the Germans (not Nazis)but the Russians are frequently called Bolsheviks.

Talks of Russian atrocities but not Nazi ones, maybe all those stories of deportment Slave labor, the murder of Jews in the Ukraine are all false?

Rating:
Summary: A masterly account
Review: In his days Albert Seaton was our finest military historian. He never disappointed the reader. The interested reader could always look forward to his next publication with much eagerness. Sadly, Albert Seaton is unlikely to publish any more books. That is our loss.

"The Battle for Moscow" was first released in 1971, shortly following his masterpiece "The Russo-German War, 1941-45." In this regard "The Battle for Moscow" can be seen as a supplement to the former book. Just by reading "The Russo-German War" it is easy to understand why he would want to devote a whole book to the titanic struggle at the gates of Moscow.
Very readable, written in a very engaging way, exciting as a thriller, this is a riveting story. Even better, the account is also well-researched, well-structured, methodical, and sensitive. Through this book you will get a real understanding of the nature of the battle.

The previous reviewer Dwight gets it all wrong. He has obviously not even read the book. Perhaps he don't like the fact that Albert Seaton doesn't devote 100 % of his attention to the Soviets, but tries to give the to opposite sides as equal attention as the available sources. Mind you, not all readers of eastern front books are Sovietologists.
I will advice the interested reader to disregard his advices about this book. It is a case of very ill-informed and biased criticism. Still, it is simply outragous to state that "the older books should be updated or else be allowed to fall out of print since they are historically obsolete." Any reader with an insight into the historiography would resent such an assertion.

By all means read the books by Colonel Glantz and the late Professor Erickson, but please note that their books are far from definitive. Be aware of the fact that most of their research is based on Russian secondary sources rather than archival research. Most of the material in Russian archives remains out of reach for researchers, contrary to what is popularly believed. Also, their accounts of the battle for Moscow is not of the same standards as those by Albert Seaton. They neglects the German side as well.

Albert Seaton's masterly account still stands firmly on its own feet, 33 years on. It is likely to remain so for decades to come. "The Battle for Moscow" is a must for anyone interested in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

If Albert Seatons book should stimulate you to further reading on the Battle for Moscow, I will in particular recommend "Moscow to Stalingrad" by Earl F. Ziemke, "Disaster at Moscow: Von Bock's Campaigns 1941-1942" by Alfred W. Turney, and "Moscow: The Turning Point" by Klaus Reinhardt.

Rating:
Summary: The good and the bad ...
Review: The Good: Concise and accurate one volume account of Operations Barbarossa and Typhoon from their start until the Soviet winter counterattck in February of 42. Seaton, as mentioned in a previous review, minces no words in expressing how he feels about the blunders of both the German and Soviet stratgists.

The Bad: Seaton uses a convoluted grammatical style. The book reads in many parts like a German translation. The book is full of run on sentences. Choice stylistic tidbits like, "Von Bock, overbearing with both superiors and subordinates, was not, however, inhibited from severly restricting the freedom of his own army commanders, even to the extent of meddling with matters which were scarcely his concern (p27)", tax the nerves after a while.

Ugly: One of my pet peeves with military history books is that they should contain at least one good map that permit the reader to follow the action described in the text. All of Seaton's maps are pretty lousy. They seem hand drawn and are devoid of any detail. His operational maps are a mish mash of arrows and dots that somewhat resemble the physical location where the combat occured.

Rating:
Summary: Historically Obsolete
Review: This review was written on Jan 2, 2004. I had been given the hardbound "Battle for Moscow" as a 2003 Christmas present, and, upon finshing the book,wished to share my impressions of it with anyone out there who might be considering buying/reading this book. I am a novice to the study of WWII, and am interested particularly in the Eastern Front. I have read several books in the last year on this topic, as well as having skimmed others. I hope sometime to get around to more accounts by other authors (eg. Ziemke, Erickson, Winston Churchill, Clark, Zhukov, Guderian at al).

I have read the following:

David Glantz

"The Battle of Kursk",
"The Soviet Partisan Movement",
"When Titans Clashed",
"Zhukov's Greatest Defeat",
"Barbarossa 1941",
"Stumbling Colossus",

Donald Sommerville

"World War II day by Day"

John Erickson,

"Road to Stalingrad"

I also read what I thought was an excellent 30+ chapter overall account of WWII online, but the site has gone down.

Last summer, from my local library, I signed out Seaton's "The Russo-German War". Unfortunately, I could not bring myself to read past the first few chapters because it was so heavily cast from the Nazi viewpoint. If a historical treatise is one-sided then this bias should be reflected in the title and the promotional descriptions - Seaton's book should be retitled "The Russo-German War From the German Perspective". With an honest title I would have known what to expect when I opened the book. I got the impression from Seaton, however, that he was presenting his version as a balanced, neutral historical document. The disappointing result was that I often found myself in an imaginary argument with the author as I read the book. I had to shield myself from a somewhat one sided viewpoint which could be considered at best from the German viewpoint compiled with German data, and at the worst sympathetic with the German side. Interestingly, just enough material from the Soviet vantage was given so as to give the unsuspecting reader the illusion of balance.
I bore exactly the same reservations about "Battle for Moscow" as I had regarding "The Russo-German War". The book alternated between descriptions of what the Germans were doing, and descriptions of what the Russians were doing. Sounds balanced, right? No, it wasn't, because the quantity and quality of the descriptions were not even, and anyone can see it if they have read the book. This book should have been titled "Operation Typhoon - 70% from the German viewpoint, 30% from the Russian viewpoint".

Seaton's bias was brought into sharp relief by his "what if" conjectoring. I find it irritating that so often we in the West wishfully ask "what if" questions which would have resulted in the Nazi side faring better. Where does this come from? Why ask such questions? One could just as well ask "what if" questions which would have resulted in the Soviet side faring better. For example, if the Soviets had not made certain mistakes, maybe they would have liberated France before June 1944, resulting in a completely Soviet Western Europe. There are many possible "what ifs", but they reveal more about the our own biases than they shed light on what actually happened. By the way, I don't wish the Soviets had taken over France, it was just an example.

I find that David Glantz's books are a very good remedy to the distortion found in books like "Battle For Moscow". Yes, Glantz's accounts are heavily written from the Russian archives, but he is very up front about where he is coming from. If you examine his book titles and the promotional descriptions, you will be given an honest preview of what is in the book.

In defense of Seaton and others, it is true that when "Battle For Moscow" was first published less historical data were available from Russia compared to that from Germany. This problem has been overcome since 1989, however, therefore the older books should be updated or else be allowed to fall out of print since they are historically obsolete.

My advice - don't buy this book - read Erickson and Glantz instead. A good start would be David Glantz's "When Titans Clashed".

Rating:
Summary: Col. Seaton calls a spade a spade
Review: What made this study so enjoyable for me was Col. Seaton's strong opinions about the performances of the commanders and leaders. The man is more than willing to call a spade a spade, and he presents the facts to back up his judgments. Well written and a pleasure to read, it reminds me somewhat of Ziemke's style. Unlike many books on the Russian Front, the few maps are more than adequate and include nearly all the towns mentioned in the text.

Seaton's "Russo-German War" is next on my reading list.