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This book starts well. We get a look at pre-war Soviet tanks, the tank forces available to Stalin in 1941, Soviet theories on tank warfare, and the impact of Stalin’s purges on tank development and the Soviet armoured forces. There is a proper look at the reasons why the massive Soviet tank force of 1941 simply melted away as the Germans attacked, and at how the Soviet tank industry was saved from the Germans and evacuated east.
The main problem with this book is that large chunks of it aren’t really about Stalin’s tanks or armoured warfare other in the general way that any account of the fighting on the Eastern Front automatically includes tanks. Instead many of the later chapters are largely filled with a decent account of the overall course of the fighting on the Eastern Front, with some material on the relative number of tanks available or the role of Soviet tank armies etc.
Chapters
1 – A Tank Aficionado
2 – Lost Advantage
3 – Stalin’s Mechanized Corps
4 – Desperate Counter-Attacks
5 – Tank City Falls
6 – The T-34 Escapes
7 – The Stalingrad Flank
8 – Save the Oil
9 – New Tank Armies
10 – Other People’s Tanks
11 – Triumph at Kursk
12 – Battles for Kharkov
13 – Victory in the Crimea
14 – Stalin’s Armoured Steamroller
15 – Punishing Traitors
16 – Stopped Before Warsaw
17 – The Road to Hungary
18 – Tanks in Budapest
19 – Beneath the Brandenburg Gate
20 – Heroes of Socialist Labour
Appendices
A – Red Army Tank Units 1941-1945
B – Soviet Tanks and Tracked Armoured Fighting Vehicles 1941-1945
Author: Anthony Tucker-Jones
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
Year: 2021