Originally Posted by
GogglesPisano
Not a book, but the 1970's series "The Unknown War" narrated by Burt Lancaster is first-rate, although a bit Soviet-friendly (conveniently failing to make any reference to the Gulag or to the NKVD troops who followed Red Army troops in most of the early battles and shot any deserters.)
At any given time 2/3 of the German war effort was expended on the Eastern Front. The size of the battles are orders of magnitude larger than anything seen in any other theater of that war.
Most of the millions of POW's on either side never made it back home -- and the Russians who did were forever tainted in Stalin's eyes because they had seen then West.
That sounds right up my alley, thanks.
And yeah I've also learned that there's a big difference in the material out there about the USSR pre and post dissolution. Once the archives were opened to everyone we learned some nasty stuff that everyone suspected but we just couldn't speak of with absolute certainty.