David M. GlantzBesprekingen

Excellent book on airborne operations in Soviet Union before, during and after WW2.

Author gives a historical overview of the establishment of airborne units in Soviet Union in the 1930's and the way Stalin's purge caused deficit of qualified senior officers (general staff level, operations fought valiantly in any instance) that could have prevented misuse of these forces during the battles with Germans. Using very detailed references from both Soviet and German side it is visible that Germans were affected by paratrooper actions but due to lacking materiel means overall effect was piecemeal drops and attacks that were more convenient for Germans to counter, although these did tie substantial resources in the Germany's rear area and thus affected the front operations.

I have to admit it was quite a surprise to read about very intensive use of airborne forces from the Soviet side (considering their preference using infantry and motorized forces supported by high number of artillery pieces). Considering they used both planes and gliders I have to admit I was very much surprised.

Author gives a very detailed presentation of strategic level disasters (like Vyazma assault) caused by the lack of experience but also technical means to deploy huge number of paratroopers in a short time period to a designated area. This would continue to be a hallmark of Soviet airborne deployments whenever strategic effect was attempted (even as operational experience grew, material support was way lagging, especially in means of transport). Use of light armed infantry behind enemy lines did cause issues for German army but not as expected by Soviet command. Due to this smaller, tactical and special operation drops were the mainstay of the Soviet airborne forces and these were much more effective and successful. Coupled with partisan units airborne troops proved to be a force multiplier.

Also, author gave very interesting information on post-WW2 evolution of the now fully operational VDV and the way they adopted first to the nuclear warfare tactics and then to full adoption of helicopters in the vertical maneuver.

Excellent book, highly recommended to military history buffs.

Much of what I thought about the companion book in this duo also applies here, though, for whatever reasons, this volume feels more like a narrative and less like a collection of footnotes and appendices lightly tied together. One particular thought that comes to mind is that the most significant Soviet military personality to come out of this operation was Andrei Grechko, who went on to become Soviet defense minister. One of his particular contributions to operational thought is that, apparently, he intended to use tactical nuclear weapons early and often had there been a war with NATO. Perhaps a reaction to how the Soviet offensive to drive Army Group South out of the Caucasus could never quite attain the great encirclement that was desired.

Describes sixteen forgotten operations conducted in the Leningrad, Demiansk, Staraia Russa, Rzhev, Sychevka, Orel, Sevsk, and Donbas regions within the context of the Red Army’s counteroffensive at Stalingrad.

Describes four forgotten operations along the southwestern axis

Describes fourteen forgotten operations along the western axis

Describes ten forgotten operations along the northwestern axis

So, here we come to what might be the author's last great contribution to military history, as he contemplates the Soviet effort to retake Rostov while the battle of Stalingrad was in its endgame, and bag another German army as the thrust into the Caucuses came undone. Why did this Soviet effort fail? In some ways, the answer is easy, as the Soviets were too optimistic about what they could accomplish, their logistics weren't in order, and as always, the enemy gets a vote. The Germans were fighting on internal lines and could always come up with more armored vehicles to counter the Soviet forces at this point in time.

One thing that is a little problematic about this book is that Glantz incorporates big hunks of primary documentary material. Partly this is to let the record speak for itself. Partly, one suspects, this is due to Glantz being quite an elderly man at this point, and this is probably the only way this work was going to see the light of day. I'm glad to have a new book from Glantz, but it is to be admitted that it's not quite up the the standard of Glantz's masterpiece, the "Stalingrad Trilogy."

Further, I'm quite sad to learn that that the Kansas University Press might be shuttered. Without them it's hard to imagine the works of Col. Glantz being published, and that would have been a great loss to the field.

This study examines the experiences of the Red Army in World War II and traces Soviet airborne theory and practice both before and since the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Airborne warfare emerges as an essential part of the high-speed offensive operations planned by Soviet commanders. In demonstrating the ability of Russian airborne and partisan forces to survive and fight behind German lines for months at a time, it provides us with an instructive example of how Soviet special operations troops probably plan to operate in future wars.
https://www.merriam-press.com/thesovietairborneexperience.aspx

An exhaustively detailed examination of one of the more obscure campaigns of the Eastern Front in World War II -- Operation "Mars," which was an attack near Rhzev that went on at the same time as the vastly more famous Operation "Uranus," which occurred at Stalingrad. On the positive side, the author does go into a good deal of detail as to why the Russian offensive failed. At its root, Zhukov tried to do to much with too little, especially given the terrain and the condition of his troops and equipment. Additionally, German control of their troops was masterful. A major flaw in the book is that the maps, while liberal in number, are not easy to parse, owing to the colour selection (it's very hard to read where the villages are), the orientation of the maps, and the way that units are represented. Given the importance of knowing where actions were occurring, that's important. One can also get lost in the maze of detail provided. The author also engages in the "getting into the mind" of participants, which is something that I don't particularly like in historical accounts. Certainly valuable for plugging a hole in our understanding of the Eastern Front, but this is very much for specialists, in my view.½

The reflections are useful; the conclusion is elegant. You'll want to read it either with Glantz's other books nearby, or at a computer that would enable you to check maps.

It's beautifully researched and very persuasive.

When considering this examination of Soviet military operations in late 1943/early 1944 the word to be applied is perhaps not "forgotten," but "suppressed," as the Soviet military high command convinced itself that with just a little more pressure the German Army Group Center would collapse; an event that didn't happen until Operation Bagration in 1944. Glantz's conclusion is that this suppression is more than just trying to brush the deaths of thousands of soldiers in successive unimaginative operations accomplishing nothing into darkness; reputations are at stake. The particular reputation being that of Vasily Sokolovsky, protege of Georgii Zhukov and a senior commander of the Cold War Soviet military. Apart from that Glantz also makes the useful point of how the argument that Moscow had left its addiction to broad-front operations in the past by 1943 was not the case, as illustrated by the failures in Belorussia. All that said this is even more of a reference work than a narrative even as compared to some of Glantz's other studies.½

That Glantz's "Stalingrad" trilogy ultimately comprises five books (counting the documentary companion) tells you something of the scale of detail involved here. However, all but the most dogged students of the Eastern Front in World War II might be better off sticking to the forthcoming condensed version of this work.

Glantz is something of an expert on Soviet combat operations during the Second World War, about which he has written a number of thick books. This particular one deals with the Soviet conquest of Manchuria in August 1945, and is organized as a set of case studies of the crucial operations. It's rather a specialized military book, but I thought I'd give a quick review.

The good: Incredibly detailed orders of battle. Some real insights into how the Soviets carried out the campaign. Good description of unit movements and actions. A good structured format, with detailed description of the local geography, the Japanese defense plans, the Soviet operational plans, and the outcome.

The bad: The maps are absolutely atrocious; maybe two out of the whole book were actually useful. They appear to be mostly very poor reproductions of military topographical maps. Most are all but unreadable.

Surprises: Glantz concludes that the Soviets were quite willing to throw an awful lot of firepower against the Japanese to ensure a quick and crushing victory. They were not willing to expend a lot of soldier's lives to do it; their operations were carried out to minimize casualties. I doubt this was any avuncular concern for his men on Stalin's part; more likely he didn't want to waste trained and experienced troops that he might soon need elsewhere.

The operations in Manchuria overcame heavy fortifications and daunting terrain through fairly impressive planning and conduct of operations. The Japanese kept discovering that their assumptions about where heavy military forces could operate were wrong, and they hardly knew what had hit them as a result. Think eight separate Battles of the Bulge.

THe operations Sakhalin and the Kuriles were not nearly as successful as those in Manchuria. There was less room to maneuver and the Soviets were severely lacking in amphibious capability. None of these operations would have been possible if the Japanese still had any kind of functioning navy or had committed any sizable air force.

Not for the casual reader, but interesting to the serious student of military history. Except for the blasted maps.

Reconozco un extraño interés por la guerra en el frente oriental de Europa durante la IIGM. La escala de brutalidad, los números involucrados y el sufrimiento escapa a la imaginación. Solo los sucesos que ocurrían más al oriente, en China, podrían eclipsar el drama de Polonia, Ucrania, los países bálticos y todas las personas que vivian entre Berlín y Moscú, en ese tiempo a cargo de dos los tres mayores asesinos de la historia, junto con Mao.

Debe ser el libro más completo con el detalle de las operaciones en el eastern front. Como bien Detalla como fueron los revolucionarios cambios en el mando, estado mayor y técnicas operacionales y tácticas sovieticas las responsables no que Alemania perdiera sino que la URSS ganara.
Interesante que los sovieticos comenzaron con conceptos rígidos, siendo frecuentemente embolsados, pero luego los papeles se invirtieron y los sovieticos aprendieron rápidamente las lecciones, haciendo maniobras dinámicas y retiradas tácticas cuando era necesario. Por el contrario, Hitler comenzó a insistir en defensas estáticas.
Stalin comenzó la guerra desconfiando de su mando y tomando las decisiones, para luego delegar y confiar. Hitler hizo lo contrario.

Glantz es posiblemente el principal autor occidental acerca de la guerra en el frente este y este libro resume las principales conclusiones de sus estudios.

www.glantzbooks.com

In this continuation of Glantz's masterwork the emphasis is on Operation "Uranus" and what we now know about the provenance of how Moscow opting to stage a great double-encirclement battle came about, the current best estimate of the forces involved on each side and how, despite the improvements in the Red Army's operational craft, how Stalin's legions were really only good enough to just pull off the basics of the mission. As weakened as the German Sixth Army was they still had a vote, as did the allied Romanian troops.

Really well-researched and detailed account of the Soviet side of the Eastern Front. Could have done with a scorecard, or at least a few more maps. Names and units were flying fast and it was difficult to keep up at times. Overall, a terrific addition to this field.

Oof, this is a beast. A thick, dense, impenetrable beast. Almost impossible to read if you're trying to go at it casually - but it is invaluable if you know what you're doing. This book emphasizes a lot on the Soviet side, and you'll get a lot of information here than nobody else even considers.

1) The desperate suicidal attacks in 1941 were able to prevent the Germans from taking the city by winter. Supplies over Lake Ladoga and beneficial terrain helped further advances.

2) The siege conditions from 1941-44 basically tied down all of German Army Group North and prevented these troops from assisting with the capture of Moscow or Stalingrad.

3) By 1944, the Soviets had improved their tactics, including the use of strategic deception, or masirovka, to drive back the Germans and destroy the majority of their armies by June of that year.

Impressive discussion of tactical and strategic history. If you can pick out information from the sea of unit names(The 237th, 259th and 301st Rifle divisions attacked at Zherlosiugorsk from 21st September at 0300 hours using KV-1 tanks until...), you'll find a lively analysis.

Recommended For Specialists Only. Not your typical Enemy at the Gates fare.

Representing more of the ever incisive detective work of David Glantz, here we have the story of how the Soviet 2nd & 3rd Ukrainian Fronts tried to conduct a pursuit battle into Romania in the Spring of 1944, only to be undercut by a combination of bad logistics, bad weather and unfavorable terrain, not to mention the small matter that even this late in the game the German military was still the master of mechanized defense when it really counted. As this operation was ultimately a failure, it's only now that it can be perceived as a potential game changer, and one is left to wonder about the strategic implications of the German Balkan defenses being unhinged before Operation Overlord was unleashed.½

The middle volume of what will be close to the definitive study of Germany's 1942 Offensive in Russia, this exhaustive book makes use of the best available documentary evidence to give you a block-by-block examination of the actual fighting in Stalingrad, up until the point that Stalin was ready to unleashed the offensive that sealed the doom of Germany's Sixth Army. If there is a key insight it's that both sides were fighting with fewer resources than older sources have suggested, with Glantz & House documenting the mutual slaughter in close detail. The authors also make the key point that the real failure of 1942 was not the test of wills in Stalingrad, but the culminating failure of the German effort to conquer the oil reserves of the Trans-Caucasus region.

While it is no fault to say that this is not the first book about the battle of Stalingrad you should read, I'll admit that I found the maps a little disappointing; in particular, maps that did a better job of relating the fighting in Stalingrad proper to the operations mounted to take pressure of Chuikov's Soviet 62nd Army would have been appreciated. This is a small complaint in relation to the greater achievement of the authors.

It should also be noted that German air superiority into late 1942 played a large role in this campaign, but that is mostly just alluded to in this book. Those who would like to have a better sense of the campaign in three dimensions should consult Joel Hayward's "Stopped at Stalingrad" and Christer Bergstrom's "Stalingrad: The Air Battle."

One also comes away wanting to know more about how the Soviet naval forces kept men and supplies flowing into Stalingrad, as this has to be an epic story in and of itself.½

Volume 2 of 'Barbarossa Derailed' picks up pretty much where the first volume left off. Throughout both volumes Glantz's goals have been the following: to show that the Wehrmacht was suffering before the beginning of Operation Typhoon and the defeat it experienced at the gates of Moscow could be seen written on the wall throughout the Smolensk engagement Army Group Center found itself suffering through; the Red Army, while taking grievous losses throughout its multiple counteroffensives against Army Group Center, performed better than previously thought and consistently bloodied numerous German infantry, motorized, and panzer divisions; finally, the German (more so Hitler's) decision to continue battling Soviet forces on the flanks of Army Group Center - eventually leading to the encirclement at Kiev - was consistent with Hitler's initial orders for Operation Barbarossa and eliminated close to 1 million Red Army men from Army Group Center's front and flanks that might have done a great deal more damage if left in place with an early German offensive toward Moscow.

The book itself contains dozens of maps and battle orders and reports, same as the first volume. And just as in the first volume, while many of the documentation is dry and repetitive there are always some interesting facts that come out. For instance, every now and then there are reported losses from various units, yet more interesting is what these reports don't say - a lot of the time the 'missing' are themselves missing. The majority of reports only mention dead and wounded. The numbers themselves are interestingly but offer only a glimpse into Soviet losses, which Glantz details himself quite well throughout the book and in the concluding chapter. In truth Glantz's commentary is often the most interesting as many will have a hard time following the action on the maps included or through the orders and reports as the numerous locations mentioned (from groves, to hills, rivers, villages, towns, cities, etc.) will make little sense even if you are familiar with Soviet geography.

Overall, Glantz's mission with these two volumes is readily accomplished. Repeatedly it is evident that the Red Army was put in an unenviable position as Stalin and STAVKA sent out orders that most of the units in the field could not fully accomplish. The cream of the pre-war Red Army facing Army Group Center was lost during the first two weeks of the war in the Minsk encirclement and follow-up operation(s) and the armies that took the field in their wake were made up mainly of reservists and/or conscripts with little training compared to the soldiers they faced in Army Group Center. Thus, the stop-gap measures consistently employed by Stalin and his commanders became part of an attrition strategy that bloodied dozens of German divisions and forestalled another complete encirclement at Smolensk. With Panzer troops leaving behind their infantry counterparts, the encirclement at Smolensk was weakened by Red Army troops attempting to break out and in simultaneously. Some 50,000 escaped to fight another day and Army Group Center's panzer forces needed time for rest and refit, yet were continually denied it as Soviet counteroffensives against Army Group Center grew in intensity. Here is where volume 2 continues the story with offensives launched by three fronts under the command of Timoshenko, Zhukov, and Eremenko. The majority of readers familiar with the Eastern Front will have heard of Yelnia (El'nia) and the success Zhukov's troops enjoyed. But as Glantz shows, this was less of a victory than Timoshenko's troops experienced. The latter inflicted greater casualties on the Germans and captured more territory than Zhukov's Yelnia operation, yet it has been overshadowed by the moral victory that was the Yelnia offensive (most likely because of Zhukov's presence and the propaganda that the victory generated). Today even Russian historians can see that Yelnia, while a moral victory, did little to hinder future German action in Operation Typhoon. It seems the worst performance was that of Eremenko's front. In part it was the fault of the commanding officer, but it seems more so that STAVKA and Stalin continually pushed Eremenko who in turn pushed his army commanders to needlessly waste lives in operations that were doomed from the start because of numerous reasons (including lack of logistics, tanks, artillery, aircraft, surprise, etc.).

The concluding chapter is in many ways the most interesting as Glantz ties up various loose ends. It's true that there are still many 'white spots' in the history of the Eastern Front, and unlike the latter years of the war, 1941 was riddled with chaos, defeat, retreat, and propagandized heroism. That propagandized heroism all too often has eclipsed the actual history of 1941 and more so the tangible victories that Red Army forces achieved, although too often by paying a high price in blood. Thus Glantz has shown how the encirclement of Smolensk, which is usually seem as a 'bump in the road' to the encirclements at Kiev and Operation Typhoon, was in fact a prelude to Germany's defeat at the gates of Moscow. The casualties sustained by the Wehrmacht were not made good by the time Operation Typhoon was launched and while the Red Army suffered more than their German counterparts, and in some ways allowed for a weakening of the forces that would face Army Group Center in October, the end result was the buying of time for more forces and material to make it to the west to face the Germans. The victory that awaited the Soviets outside Moscow, that much, at least, the Red Army was able to achieve in part thanks to the sacrifices of hundreds of thousands around Smolensk in July, August, and September.

While David Glantz is always worth reading, it is to be admitted that some of his works are more successful than others. The thrust of this book is that the image given of a Soviet Red Army that had finally learned its lessons in the wake of the Stalingrad campaign is false, if only because it's been made clear that many of the "diversionary" operations mounted in the Winter of 1942-43 were still inspired by Stalin's desire to attack and overthrow German forces in one shattering series of operations. The residue of these failures being the operational reality that was the salient of Kursk.

Perhaps the major problem with this book is that Glantz has written so long and so much about war at the operational level on the Eastern Front in World War II that it feels as though he's cannibalizing his past work. There is also the matter that this work feels like an unfinished draft, or like a set of preliminary findings for a better integrated book that is going to require more research to be definitive, or that Glantz does not expect to be writing himself.

A good narrative of Operation Barbarossa by the foremost expert on the Russian Front in World War II in English. Perhaps a bit too detailed in terms of names of units and commanders (as many characters as a Russian novel!) to make the narrative easy to follow. However, I appreciate his analysis of the perennial question "Could the Germans have captured Moscow in 1941 if they had gone straight for it?" Glantz opines that they probably could not have, pointing out that a major reason that the historical Operation Typhoon advanced so rapidly toward Moscow when it was first launched was that the Soviet Army had exhausted itself in that sector of the front by making two months' worth of continual attacks against the Germans (mandated by Stalin) that cost them huge casualties. According to Glantz, if the Germans had gone straight for Moscow, those Soviet forces would not have been exhausted from those incessant attacks and would have slowed the Germans down considerably. He also considers the question "If the Germans had captured Moscow, would the Soviets have stopped resisting the Germans?" He answers that by saying there is no evidence that the capture of Moscow would have caused Soviet resistance to collapse.

If you been reading the work of David Glantz you'll know what to expect; ultra-close operational analysis of the titanic struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. The background emphasis in this book is on the lurking strategic bankruptcy of the German war effort vis-a-vis the desperate Soviet effort to forge their military forces into an effective weapon. Glantz's particular point though is that the Soviet resistance was such that Paulus' Sixth Army was sufficiently mauled that Stalingrad was doomed to be a slugfest for the Germans; good stuff. Another virtue of this work is that it's well-larded with biographical detail on the German and Soviet commanders.