Before Stalingrad: Barbarossa--Hitler's Invasion of Russia 1941 (Battles & Campaigns)

Rating:
Summary: Answers all those what if scenarios
Review: The German Offensive against Russia in 1941 (Barbarossa) saw Germany defeat Soviet Army after Soviet Army leading to the Russians losing in excess of four millions men. Despite those successes the German invasion stalled before Moscow and in the next few years the Russians were able to win what became a battle of attrition.

The German defeat was catastrophic and led to the absorption of East Prussia and a hundred-mile corridor by Poland and the creation of a Soviet Satellite in what was left of Eastern Germany. Not surprisingly the German Generals who held command positions in the war were eager to shift blame from themselves for this disaster. In reality they were responsible. The German military badly underestimated the size of the Soviet Army, the strength of Soviet industry and the fact that Stalin was a far more determined and tougher leader than Hitler.

Most of the memoirs written by the German Generals tends to suggest that if some different decisions had been made in 1941 victory might have been Germany's. If the assault on Moscow had been made earlier, if parts of Army Group Centre had not been sent south to grab the Ukraine then the outcome might have been different. In general terms this view of history dominated critical thinking up recently. With the collapse of communism it has been possible to write history in a different way with a more quantitative base than the earlier anecdotal approach of memoirs. Glantz is one of the leading historians to write about the East Front and his work is solidly based on Soviet and German material.

Glantz sets himself the task to see if Barbarossa could have been won. His conclusion is simple, it could not have been. The earlier discussions about the timing of the drive on Moscow and all of the previous issues raised in writing about the war were smoke and mirrors. The simple reality is that the Germans bit off more than they could chew. Their forces were not large enough and they had at that point not engaged in gearing up production to cover losses of men and material. More specifically they were poorly equipped with transport. The German Army that invaded Russia was dependent on horse drawn transport and the railway system. The size of Russia meant that it struggled to keep its forces equipped, supplied with ammunition and parts to repair its vehicles. The Soviet system was run by Stalin a person of total ruthlessness and he was able to form army after army each time there was a defeat so that by December 1941 the initiative had swung to the Russians and it was clear that Germany could not win.

Glantz says that the earlier debates simply miss the most basic reality of the campaign. If the Germans had captured Moscow in 1941 it would not have won them the war. The Soviets had been able to raise fresh armies of five million men despite the loss of over 4 million in the earlier months. Those five million would have taken Moscow back with no major problems and the Germans would have still lost a war they had not prepared for.


Rating:
Summary: Essential Reference for Operation Barbarossa
Review: The Nazi-Soviet War may finally be getting its due in western military history. For decades theaters of secondary and tertiary importance have received the lion's share of attention in English-language literature. For example, the comparative sideshow in North Africa held the advantage because half the armies involved were British/Commonwealth or American, sources in English were readily available, familiar and flamboyant personalities like Rommel and Churchill were involved, the fighting was episodic, orderly and easy to follow (like American baseball), absence of murderous Nazi racial and occupation policies there allowed study without forcing a moral stance, etc. Except for the part about flamboyant personalities, the Nazi-Soviet War possessed none of these features.

Historiography of that theater has passed through numerous "generations." First came the German memoirs; after all, no one else in the west knew much about that war. Then followed the standard general works by authors like John Erickson and Earl Ziemke; they overturned the earlier bias that only Soviet hordes led by unschooled generals stood between Germany and victory.

David Glantz, a retired US Army colonel, has been at the forefront of a new generation. Especially after the collapse of the USSR he has seemingly been on a one-man mission to mine ex-Soviet/Russian archives and sources and bring them to light for the western historian interested in WW II's penultimate theater. However, until recently his works have been limited to a specific place and time during the Nazi-Soviet War. These earlier works were also usually extremely detailed, technical and not at all edited for the general military-history reader. The only previous exception to this trend was his _When Titans Clashed_, co-written with Jonathan House, an overview of the entire four-year struggle.

Glantz's _Before Stalingrad_ is a re-issued paperback version of his hardcover and large format _Barbarossa_, published in 2001. Both books cover the fighting in 1941: Hitler's invasion on 22 June through Stalin's counter-offensives that December. They are more accessible and are written and edited for a more general audience than the bulk of Glantz's catalog, possibly in this case mainly serious military historians and students of WW II in particular. However, _Before Stalingrad_ could serve as one's first book on Operation Barbarossa without losing the reader in minutia.

Both books begin with a background chapter on armies, equipment, plans and doctrine. Glantz then breaks down the fighting according to major operations and, where appropriate, strategic machinations in the headquarters of both dictators. Although in hindsight we know the Nazis did not conquer Moscow, Glantz keeps the issue in doubt until near the end. Both contain scholarship of a high order, complete with helpful and thorough endnotes (although personally I prefer footnotes). Errors are so minor and so few that they don't deserve further mention. Appendices include "usual suspects" of Fuehrer Directives plus some Soviet planning documents and an excellent order of battle of forces arrayed on Barbarossatag.

Glantz does not skimp on analysis, either. At the end of each chapter are his "Reflections" and the book closes with a strong concluding chapter. He deals with Barbarossa's greatest controversy by stating that in late summer the Germans had little choice other than to deal with the Soviet threat around Kiev before turning on Moscow (Hitler knew such was the case months before the campaign began). He places fault for the campaign's ultimate failure on German strategic (and logistic) overstretch plus Soviet recuperative powers and climbing learning curve. Operationally we witness Barbarossa's death by a thousand cuts. With fewer that 200 pages of actual narrative, however, one will find almost no mention of tactical engagements.

One regrets Glantz did not add a new forward or preface to _Before Stalingrad_ to update the reader on recent scholarship since the publication of _Barbarossa_. For some reason, the publisher assembled all maps in one section near the end of the book instead of spacing them throughout as in the earlier effort. The maps are greatly improved over those in Glantz's Frank Cass and self-published works (although much smaller in the paperback volume) but I believe the massive campaign deserves more of them. Bottom Line: either book is a "must have" for the serious student of Operation Barbarossa.