Unlike other theatres of the Second World War, the historiography of the war in Eastern Europe is still very much in its infancy. This is due to the sheer number of people involved in the events, the many counties (and therefore linguistic backgrounds) that share this tragic history, and the volume of primary materials to review. The writing of this history has also been hindered by the ideological divisions of Cold War politics and later by a complex network of contented memories enforcing legal, social, and cultural boundaries. In more recent years, the East–West split created by the Russo–Ukrainian War has further intensified these divisions, with contested histories becoming their own battleground. Yet, fractured and competing historical narratives are nothing new, especially when war and genocide are present, and far from obscuring the reality of events, they remind us why objective, scholarly, and transparent research is so vital.

It is in this context that Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe's anthology makes its first contribution as a rigorous and rich academic work, which avoids the sometimes varying quality of edited collections. The conceptual starting point for Rossoliński-Liebe's study is to shift attention away from the dominant German–Soviet focus and direct attention to the war “as a multidimensional and multiethnic campaign with significant importance to the history of the Holocaust and European history of collaboration.” (13) There can be no question that until very recently the historiography has struggled to capture these as integrated events, and although I would dispute the claim that this is “perhaps the first transnational narrative of Operation Barbarossa” (13) it is nevertheless a most welcome one.

The two best general histories of the Nazi–Soviet War—Evan Mawdsley's Thunder in the East (Second Edition, 2016) and David Glantz and Jonathan House's When Titans Clashed (Second Edition, 2015)—have each shared a blind spot in exploring the collaborative contribution of German allies. This pertains not just to their omission in exploring complicity in the war of annihilation, but also in dealing with their important operational and strategic role in fighting the war itself. Rossoliński-Liebe's anthology makes a valuable contribution to the former, but makes no attempt to focus on their strictly military role. Indeed, we may speculate that the omissions, in otherwise such rigorous general accounts of the war, are the direct result of the gap in the historiography, which for linguistic reasons no single author studies, even only ten years ago, could reasonably hope to tackle. Rossoliński-Liebe's anthology draws on research in Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, and, of course, German and Russian.

The book is divided into five parts with eleven chapters, some of which are major contributions that deserve to be cited widely in future histories of both the Nazi–Soviet War, but also general histories of the Second World War. Rafaello Pannacci's discussion of Italian war crimes in the East was outstanding—and takes us far further than anything else available in English. One hopes his 2023 book might find translation into English. Istvan Pal Adam's discussion of Hungarian forced laborers in the East was also remarkable, given that they made up some twenty percent of the Hungarian Royal Army in 1942, making it, at least in part, a twentieth-century slave army. More niche subject areas, showcasing illuminating research, are provided by Jan Vondráček, Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, and Grant Harward. Yet, as stated, the quality of the contributions across the board is first-rate.

If there was any bugbear with the collection, as a military historian, I never felt reconciled to the title of the book—Operation Barbarossa and its Aftermath: New Approaches to a Complex Campaign. Strictly speaking Operation Barbarossa is a campaign; however, Hitler's war in the East 1941–1945 is not a campaign (singular), but rather numerous individual campaigns. Thus, when I first read about the book, I assumed it was mainly about 1941. Only when I saw the table of contents did I realize that Operation Barbarossa played no more role than any other period of the war. Indeed, some chapters are wholly devoted to periods of the war after 1941. While selecting a good title is always a subjective choice, I think we can agree that it needs to be both representative of the content and avoid any potential for misconception. This is especially true for scholarly books that retail at very high prices. I am aware that there have been other book titles that have adopted “Barbarossa” as a byword for Hitler's war in the East—Alan Clark (1965), Christian Hartmann (2011, in English 2013), and more recently, Stewart Binns (2021). Rossoliński-Liebe at least offers the caveat “and its Aftermath” but I still think it is misleading and potentially confuses what Operation Barbarossa was. It was never intended as an open-ended war lasting years, but rather a short, decisive summer campaign.

Bugbears aside, this is a powerful collection showcasing excellent research on a good selection of long-neglected subjects. I would strongly recommend it to scholars and interested readers of the Nazi–Soviet War.