Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 102

September were dogged by exhaustion, bad weather,
supply and maintenance bottlenecks, and relentless
Soviet counterattacks. Stahel does not overturn our
understanding of the Wehrmacht’s failure in the East
by highlighting German difficulties, but his perspective is fresh and compelling—it is hardly an account of
invincible blitzkrieg.
Beyond his operational narrative, Stahel emphasizes
that the outcome of the battle depended on two men,
Hitler and Stalin. For his part, the late summer of 1941
found Hitler wresting control of the Russian campaign
from his generals who believed the main effort of the
operation needed to co