Suvorov book "Icebreaker" elicited a response in the form a book titled "Stumbling Colossus" by non other than David Glantz a prolific heavy weight author who specialises on the Eastern Front. Glantz's book claims to obliterate the Suvorov myth by proving that the Red Army in 1941 was beyond putting up a reasonable defence let alone launching a surprise attack. Unlike Suvorov he bases his work on recently declassified Soviet documents and reams of statistical data.

One would have expected Glantz to tackle Suvorov head on and take apart his book paragraph by paragraph. To the frustration of many a reader this does not happen and it appears that he talks past Suvorov for most of the time. Nevertheless he succeeds in proving to the reader that the Soviet War machine was in no fit state to even consider any pre-emptative strike and therefore due to this one fact the whole of Suvarov can therefore be consigned to the rubbish bin. It is as if a child asks the question "What would happen if the moon fell down?" and the father answers that this can never happen.

If Suvorov book raises one question that begs a direct answer from Glantz, it is to why the Red Army, assuming that it had adopted a defensive posture with over a year to prepare this strategy, had not done a better job of it. In fact it seems that the Red Army performance at the opening of Barbarossa bordered on nothing less than gross negligence. The onus was on Glantz to illuminate on the strategy that the Red Army was trying to achieve, rather than suggest that they had no strategy at all. The Suvorov thesis that an army in an offensive mode deployed offensively can offer up nothing but a poor defence if surprised, seems attractive in a vacuum created by a lack of other evidence

Glantz's book is by no means an easy reader. His books are about as much fun as reading a technical manual. His writing style reveals very little of the author or his viewpoints, but instead stick to a rigid presentation of the facts as revealed in copious amounts of Russian documents he has examined. However his contribution to the study of the Eastern front is immense and writing style aside he has made a massive contribution to our understanding of this epic struggle. This is not a book for the layman as it takes a dedicated few, hungry for the knowledge to wade through copious amounts of dry statistics

In STUMBLING COLOSSUS, David Glantz captures a moment in time critical in understanding how the world wound up the way it did. From the time that Stalin became undisputed leader of the Soviet Union as First Secretary, his singular goal was the exportation of communism as the world's sole political system. During the late 1920's through the late 1930's Stalin built up a huge war machine that, as primitively equipped as it was, still had to be respected as the brute power he had intended it to be. With the emergence of Nazism, Hitler quickly and illegally rebuilt the German Army to the extent that year by year, Stalin came to be increasingly intimidated by it. As Glantz points out, Hitler was not the only cause for concern to Stalin. The Japanese were making threatening noises in Manchuria, and Stalin had somehow to factor in his paranoia this Japanese expansion into Soviet territory. To complicate matters from Stalin's perspective was his own paranoia. To put matters bluntly, Stalin did not trust his own military. Comrade First Secretary Stalin tended to see more snakes in his own garden than in Hitler's. He determined to remove any potential threat to his own iron grip on power. Glantz writes that "After the expulsion from the Soviet leadership of Commissar of War, L. D. Trotsky, who had been the principal defender of the 'military experts,' and the rise to power of I. V. Stalin, the cleansing of the army began."
This 'cleansing' began in 1937 and continued until the very day that German divisions rolled into Russia. The bag of officers purged was appallingly high. Any officer over the rank of colonel in the Red Army had a one in three chance of facing a firing squad or a tenure in one of Stalin's gulags. It did not take a rocket scientist for the survivors to figure out that their best chance to avoid the fate of their predecessors was to become spineless 'yes-men' who could advance in rank only by cringing before Stalin's bizarre refusal to face reality: that Hitler truly planned to take the Soviet Union as his own and to exterminate the greater mass of the Russian people.
It is here, on the point of deciding the culpability for Russia's poor intitial performance of the war, that scholars are divided. There are the mainstream historians who place the disgraceful state of readiness of the Red Army squarely on Stalin's unwillingness to antagonize the Wehrmacht before he had cleaned up his own messy situation both in Manchuria and in his recognizing that his military was not able to fend off,let alone launch a pre-emptive strike in 1941 or 1942. Reviewer Michael Petukhov insists that Glantz's book is less reliable than the ones written by fellow countryman Viktor Suvorov, whom Petukhov supports by writing in his own recent review that "Stalin was actively preparing the offensive against Nazi Germany sometime in July of 1941." I am not sure what criticism Petukhov intends toward Glantz's thesis that Stalin and Stalin alone was responsible for the near defeat of the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942. If Petukhov insists that Stalin's generals ought not to have worried due to the massive size of the Red Army, then perhaps the inner lesson of Glantz's book suddenly takes on a crystal clarity. When any army corps of generals has to look over its shoulders towards a leader who rewards creative thinking and constructive dissent with disgrace and death, then the stumbling of their military colossus takes on a reverberating of aftershocks that lingers even until today.

This book is an essential reference on the state of the Red Army on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. Although a bit dry in tone, there is a wealth of information in these pages. Excellent maps and statistical data on the Soviet Army Order of Battle in 1941. The author uses recent Russian archival material to provide an unprecedented look into the Red Army just prior to Barbarossa. His assessment is that the Red Army was caught in the throes of rapid expansion, with most units at 60-70% strength. The purges further diluted the pool of available military leadership. Units on the front-line were short of ammo, fuel and key equipment. Finally, the Red Army staff misjudged the German main effort - which they expected in the southwest along the Kiev axis - and thus further weakened the defenses of Leningrad and Moscow. In the long run, the main Soviet success was their ability - albeit initially slow - to tap the full human resources of the USSR and to field replacements to fill the huge losses of 1941. However once again, the Russian fascination with quantity rather than quality cost them dearly. Stalin would have done better with 80-90 well-trained, well-equipped divisions than 170+ poorly-trained, poorly-equipped divisions.

This is not a slight on Mr Grau who I believe was only the translator of this Soviet era text; however, do not expect to learn much from this book.

The translation is excellent, this book reads as if it was written in English. Unfortunately this is the only good thing I can say about this work.

The idea that the original collection of these vignettes was done at the Frunze academy, the equivalent of one of the US Military's war colleges, goes far in helping to explain the pathetic performance of the Soviet military in Afganistan, Chechnya, and their other post WWII encounters. The vignettes are poorly written, only include one point of view, and lack almost every aspect of detail that would normally be required in this sort of work. Yet, based on a vague outline consisting of at most 150 words that describe a three day offensive action the original authors at the Frunze academy would make sweeping "lessons learned" comments on the importance of intelligence, or the coorindation of fire and maneuver. Of course, beyond making these couple of statements, nothing of practical value in the area of tactics, techniques or procedures are provided to the reader.

The quality of these after action reviews are poor and they offer very little to learn from. For a comparison I would urge any reader to contact the US Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth. The history department at the CGSC has produced numerous texts of the same type, but the quality is incomparably better.

...

I believe this book originally started off as a Military paper, which got published and sold. Mr. Grau has done a 3 part series on the Afghan-Soviet war. This is part 1 in the series.

Like the other comments, very easy to read, and to the point. Goes over specific battles, what happened, and how it all broke down. The conclusions and commentary at the end of each battle are excellent. This book works great with the others in the series, esspecially "The Other side of the Mountain: Mujahidden Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War" - which does the same thing, but talks about the battles from a Mujahideen standpoint. The second book is almost impossible to find...... doesn't carry it. Lastly, there's a third book coming out called "Russian General Staff: The Soviet-Afghan War" which looks at the war from the general level - I guess overall strategy.

Overall, excellent book on tactics. And easy enough to read that you don't need to be an officer in the military to understand.

The Soviets experienced in Afghanistan the slow death of a thousand cuts. In his book, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", Lester Grau carefully examines some of those small cuts. The book consists of a number of short vignettes written principally by Soviet Platoon and Company Leaders. In these short narratives, these leaders describe their combat experiences in such realms as ambush, convoy escort and urban fighting. At the end of the story, there is the Frunze Military Academy analysis of the narrative in which the strengths and weaknesses of the action are analyized. The vignettes end with Lt. Col. Grau's analysis of the action.

This book is not for someone looking for a general military history of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. It is a book about small unit tactics and about what works and what fails. I only hope that this valuable book and his other book, "The Other Side of the Mountain" is being ready by young American Platoon and Company leaders currently fighting in Afghanistan.

I obtained both books through Amazon.com UK.

This book is essentially the transcript of a conference held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and focuses on the early period of Operation Barbarossa. This could have been an awesome book; there is a wealth of data but it is poorly presented. There are day-by-day sketch maps of each sector, but they are almost impossible to read. Original German intelligence situation maps are included and they don't make German staff officers look very good; unit symbols are not used - they actually wrote "RD" for Rifle Division on the map. This book is very useful in showing how much of a fight the Red Army really put up in the first month of the war; the Red Army of 1941 was clumsy, but not toothless. Most readers will be unaware that the first big tank battle in Russia occurred when the Soviets were able to mount a very serious armored counterattack at Dubno on the Southwestern front. However, this book missed its opportunity due to very poor editing and wandering anecdotal reminisces of German veterans (one German officer concluded that combat officers need a good knowledge of military history AND the Bible!). There are over 200 maps, but most are crude and barely legible.

The best reference available on the first 2 weeks of Barbarossa (particularly the opening week) for all three German Army groups, and then the Smolensk operation. Amazing operational and tactical detail (Corps level) with additional selected unit level descriptions. Particularly interesting are Glantz's insights into German perception of Soviet forces, and the reality, as well as Soviet tactical moves to counter the invasion. Written as a transcript of a 1980's military conference, in more of a "study" format, than strait recounting of events with Glantz acting as editor and conference participant.

"From the Don to the Dnepr" is a very detailed operational account, primarily from the Russian point of view, of offensive Soviet operations on the Southern Front in the period after the encirclement of Stalingrad to the post-Kursk offensive to retake Kharkov.

As usual in Glantz's books the level of detail is very impressive, especially when one considers that, due to the age of the book, it was written with relatively less access to Soviet sources. The OBs presented, for instance, lack the thoroughness that one has come to expect in his latest books.

On the other hand, it is drier and more "professional" in approach, without the somewhat irritating flights of rethoric or use of hackneyed expressions that sometimes afflict his latest work, in special "Operation Mars" and "The Battle for Kursk". Maps are somewhat rudimentary, but much more plentiful and easier to read than in the books mentioned above.

The book is esential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Russian Front, especially as it covers in great detail a period that tends to be overshadowed by Stalingrad and Kursk.

Incidentally, it is worth mentioning that Operation Rumyantsev, the Soviet counterattack after the defeat of the German offensive at Kursk, is covered in far greater detail in this book than in his subsequent work.

This book is essentially the transcript of a conference held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and focuses on the early period of Operation Barbarossa. This could have been an awesome book; there is a wealth of data but it is poorly presented. There are day-by-day sketch maps of each sector, but they are almost impossible to read. Original German intelligence situation maps are included and they don't make German staff officers look very good; unit symbols are not used - they actually wrote "RD" for Rifle Division on the map. This book is very useful in showing how much of a fight the Red Army really put up in the first month of the war; the Red Army of 1941 was clumsy, but not toothless. Most readers will be unaware that the first big tank battle in Russia occurred when the Soviets were able to mount a very serious armored counterattack at Dubno on the Southwestern front. However, this book missed its opportunity due to very poor editing and wandering anecdotal reminisces of German veterans (one German officer concluded that combat officers need a good knowledge of military history AND the Bible!). There are over 200 maps, but most are crude and barely legible.

The best reference available on the first 2 weeks of Barbarossa (particularly the opening week) for all three German Army groups, and then the Smolensk operation. Amazing operational and tactical detail (Corps level) with additional selected unit level descriptions. Particularly interesting are Glantz's insights into German perception of Soviet forces, and the reality, as well as Soviet tactical moves to counter the invasion. Written as a transcript of a 1980's military conference, in more of a "study" format, than strait recounting of events with Glantz acting as editor and conference participant.

As most World War II Eastern Front enthusiasts would agree, David Glantz is THE man, when it comes to providing balanced and well-researched accounts of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. His unparalleled access to resources within the former-USSR, as well as his decades of accumulated knowledge on the subject matter, make him one of the most recognized authorities on the subject. Unfortunately, many of his works are very dry and somewhat tedious to read, since they are often aimed at military analysts, rather than arm-chair historians. This new book on the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 is a departure for him, in that it seems to be written in a style more suited to non-specialists, and is consequently much easier to read. All of the thorough research and accurate force appraisals that we have come to expect from Glantz are present. However ... if there was ever a book in more dire need of a proof-reader, then I have yet to find it. During the first third of this book, the occasional typo would jump out at me, and I would stumble over it, but then continue reading. During the middle third of the book, I was starting to be very annoyed and irritated at the horrible editing of the story. By the final third of the book, it was just a game to see how quickly I could find the errors on each page. I don't think I retained anything that I read during the last part of the book because the errors were so distracting. Therefore, this book is most disappointing.

Under normal cirumstances, I would recommend this book to all military historians who are looking for a good introduction to Operation Barbarossa, but not until a revised edition becomes available.

It seems like just about every book I read about the Eastern Front, or any book containing an account of the initial German invasion, argues that the southward slash of Guderian's Second Panzergruppe toward Kiev was a massive strategic blunder that essentially cost Hitler the war. That idea is mistaken, as Glantz argues convincingly in this book. The book doesn't only cover that topic, but the entire spectrum of the Barbarossa campaign. However, as many other books cover this campaign to a satisfactory extent, the main attraction for me was the new perspective on the strategic situation before and after Kiev. I was not disappointed, as Glantz offered many striking pieces of evidence that suggest quite contrary to the favored thesis of many historians, that Hitler could have taken Moscow in the summmer or early fall of 1941. The maps provided are a tad lacking in explanation and depth, and with several I literally had no clue what they were depicting, and thus no clue what their relevance was, but hopefully a reader would have enough experience with the campaign to be able to keep up based on their previous knowledge of the movements and dispositions of the fighting forces involved. The fourth appendix was a dream come true, as it had the entire orders of battle for both the Germans and the Russians at the start of Barbarossa, all laid out to you very nicely. That, I imagine, will come in handy for serious students of the war, as it did for me. Well, I'm off! Get the book if you want a short and good history of the first six-months of war on the Eastern Front. It's good.

Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia in 1941 is the lead volume in a new Battles & Campaigns series by Tempus Publishing that seeks to draw "on the latest research and integrating the experience of combat with intelligence, logistics and strategy." The author, David M. Glantz, is an acknowledged expert on the Russo-German conflict and over the past decade, his assiduous research has over-turned many pre-existing notions about that conflict. This volume on Barbarossa, while vaguely reminiscent of an Osprey series campaign title, continues in the research tradition that Glantz used in earlier volumes. Barbarossa is a bit overly succinct at times - the reader may wish that the book was not part of a tightly-constrained series - but Glantz succeeds in delivering an excellent account of the 1941 German campaign in Russia that breaks significant new ground. Furthermore, Glantz combines excellent research with top-notch military analysis.

Barbarossa consists of nine chapters, beginning with a 22-page opening section on opposing forces and plans. Glantz moves through this opening section quickly, but highlights the main strengths and weaknesses of each side. The next two chapters cover the initial border battles and the Soviet response; these chapters were a bit too succinct and readers should consult Glantz's earlier The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front and Stumbling Colossus for greater detail. The three middle chapters cover the battles for Smolensk, Leningrad and Kiev. The Battle for Moscow and the Soviet Winter Counteroffensive are covered in the final three chapters. Glantz provides appendices listing German planning documents for Barbarossa, Soviet documents and opposing orders of battle in June 1941. There are about 200 photographs in the volume, as well as about one dozen sketch maps. Inadequate maps are usually the only weakness in books by Glantz and he continues that trend in Barbarossa; the maps are too few and too poorly presented to enable the reader to follow most of the actions described. A bibliography and detailed end notes complement the text.

Glantz contradicts several popular notions about Barbarossa, and he has the archival data to back up his claims. The trendy hypothesis of recent years that Germany could have won the war by taking Moscow in September 1941 had not Hitler meddled with his "Kiev diversion" is exposed as facile. Before Hitler ordered the Kiev encirclement, fewer than 3 million German soldiers were facing 5 million Soviet soldiers, but after the encirclement this ratio had improved to 3:4. Many authors ignore the fact that Soviet resistance had stiffened during the Smolensk fighting, inflicting the first serious disruptions to the German plan. Hitler went south and north in September because the road to Moscow was effectively barred, and he went for easy pickings. However, a month later, everything had changed. Glantz shows how Soviet historians concealed the ill-judged Soviet counter-offensive in September that depleted their reserves around Moscow. When the German panzers turned again toward Moscow in October, the Soviet armies were caught off-balance still in an offensive posture and the result was the catastrophic encirclement battles at Vyazma-Bryansk. Glantz concludes that, "the Wehrmacht's best opportunity for capturing Moscow occurred in October 1941 rather than September."

Although this book is written primarily at the army and corps level, Glantz does take time to focus on some of the brigade and division-size units that made vital contributions. There are blind spots in this account, particularly concerning air operations. For example, there is no mention of the key role played by Richtofen's 8th Air Corps in spearheading the Blitzkrieg or the German air raids on Moscow. Nor is their much mention of German supply difficulties and inability to assess Soviet mobilization capabilities, despite the fact that this series is intended to incorporate logistic and intelligence perspectives. On the operational level, Glantz sometimes glosses over significant actions such as the failure of the SS Das Reich Division to breakthrough the Soviet defense at Borodino in October 1941 - an action which probably saved the capital. Glantz also ignores the Soviet air deployment of an airborne corps to Orel to help delay Guderian's panzers - a unique operation by any standard. However, the culprit of these omissions is probably the series editor, rather than the author.

Why did Barbarossa fail? Glantz believes that "the most significant factor in the Red Army's ability to defeat Operation Barbarossa was its ability to raise and field strategic reserves." The German panzer groups annihilated one Soviet army after another, only to face a new wall of defenders. While the defending Soviet forces around Moscow received about 75 division equivalents during October-November 1941, the attacking Germans received not one new division. Stalin, unlike Hitler in 1941, believed in total mobilization. Furthermore, the bad weather explanation has been used by Germans to conceal a host of operational errors and reckless contempt for a resilient enemy. Glantz believes that poor logistics, rather than bad weather, was responsible for bringing the German offensive to a halt. While the Russian mud and earlier winter hindered German mobility, Glantz notes that the first serious frostbite cases did not occur until after the German offensive had shot its bolt. Overall, Barbarossa is a fine summary of the 1941 campaign and it succeeds - as always with this author - in delivering fresh information and perspectives on the decisive theater of the Second World War.

I have read a few sections of this book and I was a bit disappointed that zhukov only talked about his triumphs and successful manuevers and skipped failures (operation Mars etc). Most disturbing was the fact that the casuality figures of enemies (germans) were highly cockeyed. For instance, he said that the enemy lost 1.5 million soldiers, 3500+ tanks, 3000+ airplanes etc in stalingrad. He actually multiplied each figure with 10. If germans had lost 1.5 million (half of the their original total strength that attacked russia)men in stalingrad they would not have left much to fight with. It could have been called 'Destruction of Army Group South' but we all know that all the South group was not totally destoyed in Stalingrad.