Here's the summary from Wikipedia:
So as we see here, its a WWIII technothriller akin to Red Storm Rising where the Soviet Union seeing that its losing the Cold War without a shot being fired makes one last gamble to conclusively "win" at the last thing they know for sure they are good at, fighting.Red Army was unique among military fiction published in the United States during the 1980s,
in that it told its story exclusively from the perspective of officers and men in the Soviet Army.
Even more uniquely, the Soviet Union prevailed over NATO forces thanks to a combination of rapid military success and political strategy.
No other technothriller by the authors in the genre — such as Tom Clancy, Harold Coyle, Dale Brown, or Sir John Hackett —
presented an opfor perspective for the entire book or victory at the end of the novel.
It was also unique for the genre in that the author did not focus at all on detailed descriptions of the weapons and technology used,
and instead concentrated on the characters and their respective stories in the conflict.
As noted its done entirely from the Soviet perspective, with characters from various SSR's and gives some emphasis on Soviet doctrine of deep operations and of the Soviet way of fighting a war. Additionally there's scant details on the weapon hardware use. There is no usage of NATO call signs like "Growler", "Akula", "Hind" or inform you of what they are. Only their role, what's its doing, some commentary regarding 'size' and so on. For instance they will say "Anti Aircraft vehical", "tank", "anti tank gun", "assault rifle" and so on. The only real detail we get is what ammunition is being used. For instance NATO tanks were described as "large and boxy" while the Soviet ones as "feeling really small", so we can guess Centurion versus T-62M's but we don't always "know" giving the ready if they're well versed in Cold War technocrafting to imagine what's being used without going "Hey! Those aren't ready in enough numbers yet!"
Now the below may qualify as spoilers and I am doing a full review, so you have been warned.
I've been able to track down a few basic premises the author RAR'ed away in order to allow a Soviet victory under the best possible circumstances; this is perfectly fine as the author had pointed out he did this specifically to provide a counter weight to other WWIII technothrillers that have everything going in NATO's favour.
-Some sort of SALT treaty was signed which had the West remove their Ground to Ground missiles from Europe.
-West Germans made artificially incompetant. (This is admittedly in hindsight)
-The West doesn't immediately resort to using tactical nuclear warheads in response.
-China I guess is just sitting on their thumbs?
-The conflict seems to have been kept to Germany, no other theaters are mentioned, the war is kept European in scope and not expanded to Turkey, the Black Sea or Asia.
I'll get to the book review part in a moment, but first operational art! :eng101:
The book includes very helpful maps of the north German plains with updated maps each chapter of the Soviet progress, the Soviet plan is actually pretty darn clever and is (Okay, I know this sounds really arrogant and pretencious but...) what I would've done if I wargamed it; essentially the Soviet plan is a trap within a trap plus an additional trap that was ad hoc added half way through.
Firstly you had General Trimenko (I think he's either a Tymoshenko or Rokossovsky stand in) with the Second Guards Tank Army thrusting into the north with five reinforced divisions, here's an excerpt as they can say it better.
[I don't know who commands the 20th in the novel, I don't think its ever mentioned]Excerpt wrote: “In the north, the Second Guards Tank Army, reinforced to a
strength of five divisions, attacks in the Uelzen -- Verden --
Arnhem operational direction, with the immediate missions
of crossing the Elbe-Seiten Canal in multidivisional strength
on the first day of operations, locating and exploiting the
boundary between the Netherlands Corps and the German
Corps, and rapidly penetrating the Netherlands operational
grouping in depth.”
Followed by an attack in the center by the Third Shock Army under General Starukhin (Zhukov stand in?) who is meant to keep the British pinned down until the decisive moment where the British start pulling off reserves to help the Germans to the North and the Belgians to the South in efforts to counter encircle the Soviet thrusts.Excerpt wrote: “the Twentieth Guards Army attacks in the Duderstadt -- Paderborn -- Dortmund
operational direction, with the mission of developing a
rapid penetration in the Belgian sector, thereby creating an
early crisis in the vicinity of the enemy’s army group
boundary. In this instance, as in the example of the Second
Guards Tank Army in the north, it is our expectation that
early penetrations on its flanks will force the enemy’s
Northern Army Group -- NORTHAG -- to commit its
available reserves early and in a piecemeal fashion as it
attempts to stabilize both of its flanks. Finally, upon receipt
of the appropriate order, the Twentieth Guards Army is
prepared to execute a turning movement to unhinge the
British defense just to the north, should that prove
necessary.”
At this moment is when the Soviets unleash a whole Unified Army Corps to smash through the now exhausted British lines and break through to the Weser river and brush aside the remaining and off balance enemy forces.
In essence a pincer movement from the north and south to distract and pull away enemy forces from the center, hiding the real intention of a massive assault from the center and then a push to the weser.
What's interesting during this briefing is the emphasis on timing, on logistics tables, on the preplanning planning of absolutely every detail trying to eliminate "luck" as a factor in the final outcome; something very much at the core of Soviet military thinking (according to the author anyways but it makes sense to me). Everything is meant to happen at a certain tempo at a certain pace and be accomplished by a certain day. If something goes wrong there's backup plans, if something goes wrong with the backups there's other alternatives. At no point is any setback anything more than that.
The book adopts the Multiple Character Point of View from the Third Person Omniscient perspective, whereas there's a whole bunch of characters in different roles and the book tends to narrate "He thought that is vodka was warm, and it made him sad." and so on. What's marvelous about the book is the way it clearly goes to great pains and lengths to make the Soviets actual human beings with their own motivations and feelings. Many just want to get home, some enjoy the chance to fight the probably enemy and thrive in the chaotic environment, and so on. There's no antagonists here except the 'enemy', the characters are colourful, have personality and act so very human. I heard an interesting truism once, 'when the going get's tough, the tough gets going.' And the book seems to more often than not reverses this, many tough or otherwise capable people break down under the stress, but others thrive, war is hell it seems.
Another pain the author takes to point out to you is that the Soviet Army isn't "the Russians" but is composed of many ethnic nationalities that make up the USSR; such as Kazahks, Ukrainians, Georgians, Estonians and so on not just Russian. I like the point trying to be made although there's no mention as to the "Category" system for divisions the Soviet had that ranked the reliability and readiness of divisions mostly composed of the minorities (or how they likely would not be in the front lines).
The author does such a good job at characterization I genuinely felt a bit shocked when some of them just die at random out of the blue. I won't say who but it sucks.
Honestly make me this game, seriously just shut up and take my money EA! I would play this if it were the next Battlefield game, just make it entirely from the Russian perspective, the Chinese like playing Joint Ops and you mostly play Americans shooting PLA soldiers!
The book begs the question, what if this had happened the way it did? Unlikely yes, a lot had to go "right" for this scenario to work, but suppose West Germany got occupied and merged with East Germany and the war got smothered under political indecisiveness so the Cold War got cold again, would the Sovet Union had "bounced" back economically from having West Germany and such a forceful position on Europe?
I certainly wouldn't want to be France or Britain in that situation.
However though... To be honest while the book is absolutely brilliant, a technical masterpiece and a fun read its boring narratively speaking.
Why is this? Well the reasons are fairly simple and obvious with a bit of reflection.
Firstly lets look at the character deaths, yes I understand the point, war is hell, and very pointlessly random. Sure that makes for realism which is fine! In of itself, but it also makes for a boring story if it accomplishes absoloutely nothing. If you are going to kill off characters I like in a pointless random way to reinforce Lifes Hard Lessons(tm) then at least make the modicrum of effort to have someother character profoundly moved by it and motivated to I don't know, live life to the fullest or something.
Perfect example, [btw MASSIVE SPOILER you have been warned]
Serious now, you've been warned.
Trimenko Dies.
I LIKED HIM! He had an interesting nervous tick and struck me a lot as a Russian General Model, he had STYLE and he really liked machines more than people, so that won points from me and he had this really bad ass rivalry happening with Starukhin.
But then he just dies!? And nothing happens because of it, nothing regarding Starukhin, nothing involving Chibisov who was the closest thing to a human friend he had, nodda! It happens, it passes by and we hear virtually nothing about what happens with the northern tank armies after that, zzzzzzzz.
One or two pointless random character deaths like this would've been fine, but every character offed is offed in this precise fashion it's egregious I say! A literary travesty! Wasted potential! Sure there's two times it happens where it feels like there's actual meaning to it but at least one of the times I felt cheated out of an interesting potential character arc and the second time (in which it had some depth) I just felt like my time was wasted with what seemed to be a humiliation congaline you know?
From wasted potential we move on to entirely missing plot, as in the whole plot, its gone, missing, as if cut out with a laser. It's just following a technically interesting military going about its day with lots of action but there's no development, the characters don't really interact in a meaningful way. There's no narrative, nothing 'happens', oh sure there's hints that something might've/could've been developed from something but it never is. The fact is that it doesn't read to me like a "story" but more like a choose your own adventure where the only choice is the railroad the author set you on.
For contrast lets look at Stargate SG1 and Re:Battlestar Galactica; you have the aspects of a on going military operation; but you also have "stuff" happening, there's a progress towards some broader end goal (even if the end goals was "Summon Bigger Fish" for one and "Incomprehensible Pseudoreligious gibberish" for the other; this is superior to nothing at all). SG1 had Daniel Jackson and his search for truth, O'Neill and coming to terms with his sons death (hrrrrm), Humanities broader goal of resisting threats to our existence and so on.
You had the broader conflict and then you had smaller fractale conflicts in microcosm of the broader conflict and they related to each other. Having the conflict literally be a war and everyone's sub conflicts be surviving the war strikes me as a cheap cop out. Its serviceable, it does the job, but it doesn't analyze or question its structure, it doesn't challenge the reader beyond the initial well crafted premise.
Je ne c'est quois... It's like I have something that is missing half of what could make it great, alone the one half makes it good, but with that something else it could be "great", and to me personally this mostly comes from how I feel that the book positvely oozes with lost potential. Which becomes absolutely painful with how frustrating it gets because of how often it just barely brushes past some interesting conflict or theme but then zips by it without so much as a wave and a good bye.
I mean sure, I liked how it portrays how even good men, professional men, when in a stressful environment, with their lives on the line and exhausted may make bad judgement calls or do acts they could never imagined themselves doing either out of fear or desperation. Such as the times when POV characters either witness, or partake in war crimes. But the author only seems willing to give the matter a passing mention, "well the Generals made an honest attempt to stop it so that makes it okay." and I just feel a little cheated again that I've been denied an interesting addition to the story arc y'know?
Lets look at how an American show or book would do it.
A tank Major is commanding his ad hoc tank brigade due to bad case of officer attrition and just won an impressive engagement against the enemy, but during the heat of battle as troops are making their way through an refugee column on the bridge across a major waterway a massacre happens and there's some attempted rape of civilians.
In both cases of an American show, and in the book; the officer POV character who is meant to be a sort of protagonist we're meant to like manages to stop it before it gets worse but the damage is done. In an American show the situation would be different, but always in the case of good intentions leading to a negative result within the context of a wider success.
In SG1... SG1 usually manages to save the day, but there's good questions whether they did it "the right way" or whether there was unnessasary risk or danger so this prompts some soul searching and intra character and organizational conflict of Your Own Side versus You and so on.
This..... Just doesn't happen in the book. A golden oppurtunity for General Malinski (the POV character whose managing the whole front) to interract directly with some of the front line characters is presented and then discarded. It's an "event" in a series of events where some character may interact with it, but only superficially.
One last final criticism although it isn't once I personally noticed until it was pointed out to me, but.... sigh. The author kinda still does that Tom Clancy/You Know Who thing of where they have that pet peeve whom the book serves somewhat of a vehical to be critical of. It's barely noticible if you enter into the task of reading the book to see the characters as "people" and not as the literary voice of the author. But essentially the West Germany military the Bundeswehr the author is very criticial of and NATO in general; it's better here, and possibly justified a bit as the author is clearly meaning the book to be a critique of NATO's strategy of forward defense at the time, and best seen in this context as being a novel sized staff "memo".
This I think wouldn't be as grating however if the American forces in the novel basically escaped the fighting entirely unscaffed and undefeated, only beginning to redeploy a reserve corps northwards to contain the Soviet successes near the end with one sided tactical success that I didn't entirely understand. I'm vaguely pretty sure the Americans didn't have stealthy undetectable attack helicopters at the time, and also a little strange that the F-16 seemed so god like to Soviet airmen when in the late 80's I'm pretty sure Sukhoi and Mig had some good stuff on hand*.
*I think there were around 1500 Mig-29 and 500 Suhkoi-27's, the F-16 shouldn't have been that surprising to the attack plane pilot? Also I'm pretty sure its an F-16 as it very much pointed out Fly by Wire movement, I don't recall the passage however, it might have said the name.
All in all, I liked this book, it was thoroughly enjoyable and it is one of my great guilty pleasures is playing a "Russian" character in a video game, and seeing a book wherein America Saves the Day is averted with a decisive Soviet victory was just plain cathartic.
So there's my review, I recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in technothrillers, again I'll mention my interest in the what if presented here:
Reading the book yourself if you have, or if you eventually do so how did you find the book? Were the Soviets capable of success here given the handwaves the author presented? And if the Soviets "won" and managed to occupy West Germany, my goodness, how much would that change everything!?
When compared to other technothrillers if I were to give it a score 9/10, cause' Soviets winning. If I were to judge it as a novel on its own merits....? 7/10. It's good but missing much of what makes a great book.
