Why Stalin's Soldiers Fought

Inept leadership, inefficient campaigning, and enormous losses would seem to spell military disaster. Yet despite these factors, the Soviet Union won its war against Nazi Germany thanks to what Roger Reese calls its “military effectiveness”: its ability to put troops in the field even after previous forces had been decimated. Reese probes the human dimension of the Red Army in World War II through a close analysis of soldiers’ experiences and attitudes concerning mobilization, motivation, and morale. In doing so, he illuminates the Soviets’ remarkable ability to recruit and retain soldiers, revealing why so many were willing to fight in the service of a repressive regime—and how that service was crucial to the army’s military effectiveness. He examines the various forms of voluntarism and motivations to serve—including the influences of patriotism and Soviet ideology—and shows that many fought simply out of loyalty to the idea of historic Russia and hatred for the invading Germans. He