Richard Karpusiewicz

Wow

Revisado: 07-05-24

Rarely have I felt so negatively about a soldier’s memoir. The author contributes nothing to scholarship and has to be lying by omission about the many atrocities and ruthless actions of the SS Leibstandarte unit. The account by this wretched Nazi is almost certainly dishonest and also contains oddly pornographic passages about his sexual conquests, about which he affects modesty. Terribly written and most likely riddled with lies about his actual role.

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Brought this classic to life

Revisado: 06-09-24

A stirring story of personal growth and adventure amid social climbing and propriety. Richard Armitage and Jack Lowden in particular absolutely embody the early and later villains that serve to make the tale dire and believable. I never read Dickens’ famous novel before and I really enjoyed this production.

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Wild Gonzo Crime Drama

Revisado: 05-28-24

The best thing I have listened to this year, this dramatized hard boiled crime novel has unparalleled dramatic sweep and intensity. While it ends abruptly I hope they do a second installment, voiced by an ensemble cast of fantastic character actors.

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Wonderful performance of a classic

Revisado: 12-22-23

Fantastic. Nothing more need be said of Tim Curry’s performance except that those who pass it by are missing out on hearing Dickens as it should be read.

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Great memoir

Revisado: 12-07-23

Very interesting personal experiences of a German tanker. I was surprised to learn that Hayao Miyazaki had adopted his story into a short manga. There is always something to learn from these personal stories from history.

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Well-acted

Revisado: 11-23-23

Voice actors did a great job and the story was mildly intriguing but very little new here, mostly a retread on well-worn science fiction themes. An entertaining diversion but little more.

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Magisterial

Revisado: 11-22-23

Just a fantastic overview with many of the facts and the week by week progress of the war, its causes, and its aftermath. It was extremely well done and it was great to get a sampling of the wonderful poetry that was such a marked influence of the war and upon a generation in Europe.

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Military Analysis Heavy on Details, Overlooks some Common Axioms

Revisado: 08-08-23

Stahel puts forward a thesis that Germany’s failure in Barbarossa was premised on false assumptions and weak logic, muddled by poor strategic direction and wishful thinking by the German generals. In this much, he must be credited, for the facts comport with much of his central argument.

However, he falls into a trap of allowing historical outcomes to dictate the military possibilities, ignoring the concept that a German victory was possible at all because of Soviet production superiority and the sustainment issues inherent in a war over such vast distances. This strain is prevalent and often the word “impossible” is misused throughout the book to suggest overall impossibility of German victory.

The Germans decisively crushed the Red Army in three of the five great battles during the campaign: Minsk, Smolensk, and Kiev. At Leningrad, they stalled, and ultimately in front of Moscow they were decisively beaten. The question of why is only tangentially addressed and dismissed as a scapegoat by beaten German generals. Simply put, winter beat the German armies, not the Russians.

Before the onset of winter, German operations devastated the Russians even when they fiercely countered. During and after the winter weather, they ground to a halt. Distance and poor planning/strategic direction played a role too. Germany could not fight in Russia as they had everywhere else, relying on superior operational art to overwhelm and demoralize the opponent. The Red Army was too large and dispersed for that - but despite that, Germany got close and only poor weather and the delays caused by road conditions saved Moscow from capture. Stahel really doesn’t address this aspect, treating the campaign as doomed as early as September, when actually following the Kiev debacle the Red Army fell into an unfavorable balance of forces against Germany for a brief time.

Comparisons to 1812 obscure the reality that as the hub of the Soviet system, Moscow held outsized importance in 1941 and Halder was likely right to prioritize its capture as a precondition to Soviet disintegration.

Strangely, Stahel seems to equivocate on whether Hitler was right or wrong to halt the panzer armies and redirect them to the southern front. It may be that he agrees with the Glantz theory that the reduction at Kiev was necessary before taking Moscow, or possibly he believes it was futile regardless of Germany’s next move by that point. This was a decisive moment and one long debated - although not here in this book.

It seems to me that accepting Hitler’s obsession with material economic factors is a necessary precondition for Stahel’s ultimate argument: that total war was about production, statistics, and raw population and resources, and therefore Germany was doomed regardless. On that point I must disagree with the author because regardless of the economic dimensions, the Soviet Union was teetering on the edge of defeat in late September; the battle for Moscow was as desperate a struggle as any major power has ever contested, and though the Soviets won decisively it should not be imagined that the reverse was impossible - no, it nearly happened, had not the combination of factors (weather, logistics, sustainment/exhaustion, Siberian reinforcements) not intervened starting in November.

The book falls short by restricting its analysis to grand strategic level and only reaching into the German war diaries to show errors in planning and in logistics difficulties, rather than assessing the power of Germany and Russia’s doctrine and force employment, and completely neglecting weather. The tyranny of distance is accepted only insofar as it reinforced errors of German strategy. Nowhere is it accepted that Germany could have been victorious despite numerous examples of crushing German victories.

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A tour de force

Revisado: 07-10-23

Simply put, a tremendous biography, greatly enriched by the author’s organization and delivery. Veteran podcaster Mike Duncan presents a well-researched, superbly argued examination of the life of Lafayette. Even someone well acquainted with this historic figure will find new things to learn and new insights into his political career.

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Terrible pronunciations

Revisado: 06-30-23

I get it that Chinese names are hard, but Chairman Moe? Really??? Come on guys.

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