HAYWARD, Joel S. A.

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Office—Coordinator of Defence and Strategic Studies, School of History, Philosophy, and Politics, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North, New Zealand. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Historian. Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, historian, and program coordinator for Defence and Strategic Studies program. Lecturer at New Zealand Army's Officer Cadet School and Royal New Zealand Air Force's Command and Staff College; research associate, U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency.

WRITINGS:

Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler'sDefeat in the East, 1942-1943, University of Kansas Press (Lawrence, KS), 1998.

Adolf Hitler and Joint Warfare, New Zealand Defence Force, 2000.

For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2003.

Contributor to academic journals, including Journal of Strategic Studies, Airpower Journal, Air Power History, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, and New Zealand Army Journal.

SIDELIGHTS: In Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943, Joel S. A. Hayward, an historian at Massey University in New Zealand, has taken a new look at the role of the German Luftwaffe in Germany's disastrous defeat at Stalingrad during World War II. Growing out of a doctoral dissertation, Hayward's study, according to P. L. de Rosa in Choice, departs from the usual scholarly emphasis on the vicissitudes of the doomed German Sixth Army in that campaign. Hayward asserts that the role of the Luftwaffe IV, diverted from other campaigns to hold Stalingrad, was an important one despite the defeat. De Rosa called Stopped at Stalingrad "[a] solid study of the Luftwaffe in 1942 that establishes its role within the broader context of the Stalingrad campaign." A reviewer for the Reference and Research Book News wrote that the book "fills many of the gaps left by other studies of the eastern war"

The siege of Stalingrad was noteworthy for the mass slaughter of thousands of soldiers and civilians, a starving citizenry in freezing weather conditions, and needless sacrifices in the name of both Soviet and German ideologies. After Hitler's retreat from Stalingrad and his demise, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was ultimately able to reassert his control over most of eastern Europe.

Hayward's book focuses on the generals in charge of the Luftwaffe. According to Omer Bartov in the Times Literary Supplement, Hayward is not concerned with the effects of the war on the average soldier, but rather dwells on what he sees as the positive contributions of the generals. Bartov stated that Hayward paints Field Marshall Wolfram Frieherr von Richthofen in particular as "positively heroic" and felt that the author occasionally sounds "downright apologetic" when describing the leadership of the Luftwaffe; according to Bartov, Hayward cites the "conventional wisdom" that Germany might have prevailed in the war if Hitler had not interfered in the war against the Soviet Union. Bartov thought that Hayward's book has some of the shortcomings of a dissertation, especially his "insistence on providing background for his major theme [which] clutters the text with long discussions on German and Soviet land forces and navies." The reviewer also felt that Hayward is too uncritical of German claims and German documents, remaining "under the spell of the German rhetoric of the period." In his zeal to outline the "organization of destruction," said Bartov, Hayward does not take into account that the goal of the German war leadership was "to bring about German world domination, whose result would have been ever more genocide and enslavement of millions." While criticizing Hayward's lack of attention to the possible moral consequences of a German victory, de Rosa called the book a "competent and heavily documented study" which mines material "previously neglected by many scholars."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Aerospace Power Journal, spring, 2002, Herman Reinhold, review of Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943, p. 122.

Choice, October, 1997, p. 374.

German Studies Review, Larry L. Ping, review of Stopped at Stalingrad, p. 372.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 1998, Russell Lemmons, review of Stopped at Stalingrad, p. 27.

International History Review, March, 1999, Earl F. Ziemke, review of Stopped at Stalingrad, p. 219.

Journal of Military History, October, 1998, Richard R. Muller, review of Stopped at Stalingrad, p. 951.

Reference and Research Book News, May, 1998, p. 22.

Times Literary Supplement, October 23, 1998, Omer Bartov, review of Stopped at Stalingrad, p. 12.*