John Erickson (historian)

John Erickson (17 April 1929 in South Shields – 10 February 2002 Edinburgh) was a British historian who wrote extensively on the Second World War. His two best-known books – The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin – dealt with the Soviet response to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, covering the period from 1941 to 1945.

Erickson was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE, 1982) and a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA, 1985); he later gave a considerable amount of on-screen opinion to the Battlefield series, in programmes dealing with the Eastern Front and armoured warfare and appeared in subsequent documentaries.

He was Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow in Defence Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His wife, Ljubica Erickson, spent many years with her husband researching Russian military affairs, in particular the Soviet Army and the Soviet-German war.

Publications

 * The Soviet High Command 1918-1941: A Military-Political History 1918-1941, St Martin's Press (Macmillan), London, 1962
 * Panslavism, Routledge & Kegan Paul, for The Historical Association, London, 1964
 * The Military-Technical Revolution, Praeger, New York, 1966 (Revised and updated papers from a symposium held at the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich, Oct. 1964)
 * The Road to Stalingrad, Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 1, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York 1975 ISBN 0-06-011141-0
 * Soviet Military Power, Royal United Services Institute, London, 1976
 * ''Soviet Military Power and Performance, Palgrave Macmillan Press, London, 1979 ISBN 0-333-22081-1
 * The Road to Stalingrad, Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 1, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 1983
 * The Road to Berlin. Stalin's War with Germany, Volume 2, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983
 * The Soviet Ground Forces: An Operational Assessment, Westview Printing, ISBN 0-89158-796-9
 * Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevski, by Richard Simpkin in association with John Erickson, Brasseys's, 1987
 * The Russian Front, a four-part narrated televised series, Cromwell Films, 1998 (1. Barbarossa Hitler Turns East, 2. The Road to Stalingrad, 3. Stalingrad to Kursk and 4. The Battles for Berlin)
 * Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies, Erickson, John and Dilks, David, eds, Edinburgh University Press, 1994 (contributors include Dmitri Volkogonov, Harry Hinsley, Klaus-Jurgen Muller, Klaus Reinhardt)
 * The Eastern Front in Photographs: From Barbarossa to Stalingrad and Berlin, Carlton Publishing, 2001