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Originally Posted by Raellus
I just finished Red Army by Ralph Peters, a fine novel of WWIII set in Europe. What sets this novel apart from contemporaries like Red Storm Rising and Team Yankee is that it is written entirely from the POV of its Soviet protagonists.
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I read that book years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The thing that really stood out for me was that it really did show a different point of view. Some examples that I can remember:
The political officers were respected and liked by the enlisted men (whereas they're generally portrayed as disliked or hated by the officers)
I've often read that Soviet soldiers performed well in WW2 because they were defending their homeland, and their performance in a war of conquest was likely to be less impressive. In
Red Army, the soldiers believed that Germany had invaded (again), and so they were fighting to defend their homeland, as far as they knew.
Another thing that has always stuck in my mind was the general fighting to get
fuel to the tank force that had broken through the NATO lines. He was much less concerned about ammunition, as long as they got fuel. His rationale was that if you see a tank, you don't know whether it's got 3 or 30 rounds for the main gun, so most people will react as though it's got a full load of ammunition.
Russ