Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the East by Earl F. Ziemke

An excellent overview from the German point of view, best used with Erickson's volume "The road to Stalingrad." Although in the end both lack concrete numbers for Soviet losses, but Erickson's volume presents the Soviet point of view in much better terms than Ziemke's. The maps are very helpful to the text, something that Erickson's volume lacks at times, and the narrative is easy to follow and very interesting. I was very much impressed about how difficult the German situation was both after the Moscow Counter-Offensive and the encirclement of the 6th Armee at Stalingrad. Zhukov's opinion that if the Moscow Counter-Offensive was follwed up by concentrated attacks against Army Group Center only, it would have resulted in a greater German 'retreat' or even a full scale rout seems very much in tune with the situation Army Group Center actually found itself in in late December of 1941 and January of 1942. Yet in the end Stalin choose to attack on 9 out of 10 fronts and in the end the results were less than impressive, to say the least. Overall a dated but still excellent study of the Eastern Front in 1941 and 1942.