Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (Modern War Studies)

Rating:
Summary: A Fresh Account that Alters Our View of the Eastern Front
Review: David M. Glantz, a military officer and expert on the Eastern Front in the Second World War, has written an excellent operational summary of the virtually unknown Operation "Mars" (the operation was such a disaster that the Soviets suppressed records of it until recently), the Soviet attempt to pinch off the German 9th Army in the Rhzev salient in November-December 1942. Even readers familiar with the Eastern Front will find their beliefs altered by his book. As Glantz clearly demonstrates, the well-known Operation Uranus counterattack at Stalingrad was actually a strategic deception for the main effort near Moscow. Soviet Marshal Zhukov wanted to destroy ArmeeGruppe Center but he ordered the Stalingrad attack to precede Operation Mars in order to divert German attention and reinforcements to the south. Unfortunately for him, the Germans did not become diverted and their defenses remained steady. Unlike the 6th Army at Stalingrad, the German 9th Army was well entrenched and had powerful mobile reserves. Zhukov's attack was a spectacular failure despite larger forces being used there than in the Stalingrad counteroffensive. The Soviets failed primarily because they could not breach the German defenses quickly and the Germans (Field Marshal Model) did a superb job of shifting mobile reserves around to meet each crisis in turn. Severe winter weather actually degraded the Soviet artillery preparation (poor visibility limited observed fires), which undermined the initial breakthroughs. Amazingly, Zhukov continued to order frontal assaults for three weeks, even though the offensive was obviously failing to achieve its objectives in the first four days. Soviet losses in the three week offensive on this front totaled at least 100,000 killed, 235,00 wounded and about 1,800 tanks. German counterattacks cut off and eliminated three Soviet corps (one tank, one mechanized, and one rifle). After the Stalingrad operation succeeded and Operation Mars failed, Soviet historians erased all mention of Zhukov's attack and instead re-wrote history to make it appear that Stalingrad always was the main effort. The only deficiencies in this account that keep it from being outstanding are: (a) only marginal information is provided on the air campaign over the salient, (b) there is no detailed information on German forces defending the salient prior to Zhukov's attack (e.g. discussion of mobile reserves available, logistics, status of defenses, obstacles), and (c) no real assessment of Soviet units as to quality, equipment, training, prior experience, etc. Maps are decent in terms of quantity and quality although use of acronyms instead of map symbols clutters maps and makes them difficult to read (e.g. "6GCD" for 6th Guards Cavalry Division). However, if you want to learn something new and important about the Eastern Front, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Fresh Account that Alters Our View of the Eastern Front
Review: David M. Glantz, a military officer and expert on the Eastern Front in the Second World War, has written an excellent operational summary of the virtually unknown Operation "Mars" (the operation was such a disaster that the Soviets suppressed records of it until recently), the Soviet attempt to pinch off the German 9th Army in the Rhzev salient in November-December 1942. Even readers familiar with the Eastern Front will find their beliefs altered by his book. As Glantz clearly demonstrates, the well-known Operation Uranus counterattack at Stalingrad was actually a strategic deception for the main effort near Moscow. Soviet Marshal Zhukov wanted to destroy ArmeeGruppe Center but he ordered the Stalingrad attack to precede Operation Mars in order to divert German attention and reinforcements to the south. Unfortunately for him, the Germans did not become diverted and their defenses remained steady. Unlike the 6th Army at Stalingrad, the German 9th Army was well entrenched and had powerful mobile reserves. Zhukov's attack was a spectacular failure despite larger forces being used there than in the Stalingrad counteroffensive. The Soviets failed primarily because they could not breach the German defenses quickly and the Germans (Field Marshal Model) did a superb job of shifting mobile reserves around to meet each crisis in turn. Severe winter weather actually degraded the Soviet artillery preparation (poor visibility limited observed fires), which undermined the initial breakthroughs. Amazingly, Zhukov continued to order frontal assaults for three weeks, even though the offensive was obviously failing to achieve its objectives in the first four days. Soviet losses in the three week offensive on this front totaled at least 100,000 killed, 235,00 wounded and about 1,800 tanks. German counterattacks cut off and eliminated three Soviet corps (one tank, one mechanized, and one rifle). After the Stalingrad operation succeeded and Operation Mars failed, Soviet historians erased all mention of Zhukov's attack and instead re-wrote history to make it appear that Stalingrad always was the main effort. The only deficiencies in this account that keep it from being outstanding are: (a) only marginal information is provided on the air campaign over the salient, (b) there is no detailed information on German forces defending the salient prior to Zhukov's attack (e.g. discussion of mobile reserves available, logistics, status of defenses, obstacles), and (c) no real assessment of Soviet units as to quality, equipment, training, prior experience, etc. Maps are decent in terms of quantity and quality although use of acronyms instead of map symbols clutters maps and makes them difficult to read (e.g. "6GCD" for 6th Guards Cavalry Division). However, if you want to learn something new and important about the Eastern Front, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Operation Mars
Review: Glantz is certainly a prolific authority on the eastern front. He tries to avoid a common problem with military histories, listing so many divisions and battalions that one's eyes glaze over, and he makes this book somewhat more readable than his earlier one on the Kharkov offensive by extrapolating the thoughts of the commanders involved. My main gripe with the book is that the places mentioned in relation to specific battles usually do not appear on the accompanying maps, and his chronology sometimes fails to lead logically to the unfolding of the battle scenario. At one moment we are reading about the exploits of a particular Soviet battle group, and the next moment we find, much to our surprise, that they have been cut off by a German counteroffensive that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Still, Glantz shows the epic nature of the battles between the Soviets and the Nazis and makes us realize how much of World War II was fought almost beyond the range of our awareness.

Rating:
Summary: This not a dry history text
Review: Glantz's well balanced account of Operation Mars is outstanding. Glantz does a masterful job of logically breaking down the Russian assault against the Rhezev salient into fronts which the reader follows chronologically in a style that is alive and engrossing. The text has numerous excellent maps. Glantz's access to formerly secret Soviet documents and his interpreation of the battle makes for an excellent read. This book is a good book for those who want to get into the "meat" of the Eastern Front, not for the casual reader.

Rating:
Summary: This not a dry history text
Review: Glantz's well balanced account of Operation Mars is outstanding. Glantz does a masterful job of logically breaking down the Russian assault against the Rhezev salient into fronts which the reader follows chronologically in a style that is alive and engrossing. The text has numerous excellent maps. Glantz's access to formerly secret Soviet documents and his interpreation of the battle makes for an excellent read. This book is a good book for those who want to get into the "meat" of the Eastern Front, not for the casual reader.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting account of a largely unknown battle
Review: I thought this book was David Glantz's best effort in retelling the story of one of the worst Soviet defeats in during the winter campaign of 1942-43. I think the Soviet defeat in Operation Star can equal this debacle that helped the Germans restored stability after their own disaster at Stalingrad. The book was well written and researched. The narrative was easy to follow and author gives good deal of insights on Zhukov's motivations behind his purpose. The book clearly revealed some fundamental weaknesses within the Soviet command while reflecting in some part, the strength of the Germans. Although I understand that the author wanted to give a the Soviet view on this matter, but if Zhukov lost the battle, Model won it and he probably deserves equal coverage. I do have one major complaint and that referred to the maps, while its clear enough, I thought the movements of units were not very clear and he should have used the standard NATO symbols to clarified the position instead of just writing a meshmash of lettering and numbers that designated units. It made a complex picture just more confusing when he didn't have to.

I also thought that the book was a textbook example of how the Germans could have fought the Soviets after Stalingrad. If the Germans decided against the Kursk campaign, battle like this would have been a good example of how the Germans could have outlast the Russians along the eastern front. Powerful mobile reserves, flexible command structure and capable leadership, post Stalingrad period would have been not a sure thing for the Soviets.

This is a book written for people who already got background education on the Eastern Front. Author don't waste a lot pages trying to explain what been going on since Barbarossa began and almost immediately plunge the reader into the conception and realization of Operation Mars and its relations.

Rating:
Summary: DETALLADO Y CLARO
Review: Indica claramente paso a paso el curso de la operacion Marte, los esquemas hacen seguir con la maxima claridad y facilidad como se desarrollaron las distintas batallas. El analisis es pormenorizado de cada frente haciendo un estudio detallado dia a dia de las distintas zonas de operaciones. MUY RECOMENDABLE.

Rating:
Summary: Zhukov's Greatest Defeat was a Draw, at worst
Review: OK, enough already! There is a long, dark tradition in the Anglo-Saxon historiography of World War II, which goes something like this: A) the Russian Front was an irrelevant sideshow compared to more decisive and spectacular battles in the West;

B) the German General Staff was composed of psychic chess masters and druidic geniuses of warfare, endowed with semi-divine faculties of perception, mutual coordination and fortitude in adversity, compared to whom

C) Russian military leaders and their staffs were clumsy oafs, political fanatics and terrorist bullies without exception, totally undeserving of victory.

According to this mendacious fallacy, the Wehrmacht was a perfect militarily machine, morally blameless and politically neutral. It would have rolled through the rubble of Moscow, and found Stalin suicided in his bunker, but for the incompetent meddling of a certain Austrian corporal ... Whoa! Didn't happen. What did happen was more like this:

A) With all due respect to those who participated, posthumously and otherwise; the biggest, most publicized battles in the West, (Anzio, Cassino, Normandy, Falaise Pocket, Market Garden and Bulge) would have been considered secondary side-shows on the Eastern Front.

B) The German General Staff (not the brightest people on earth to begin with, knuckling under to a 24-7-365 loony-tunes like Hitler) grew steadily less professional and less competent as Hitler conducted his own, slow motion (but presently unpublicized) version of Stalin's Army purges.

The nazi generals had penal battalions too, Mr. Glantz, they executed prisoners in large numbers, they threw away their own troops by the hundreds of thousands for no better reason than to save their military perks and sorry hides. In short, they made all the mistakes you and other right wing historians have tagged their Soviet opponents with, in spades.

C) The Soviet general staff wound up rolling tanks of superior quality, in superior quantities, through the rubble of Berlin, not the other way around. That is the way history went, that is the way history would read but for your impermissible revisionism.

_Zhukov's Greatest Defeat_ is the latest, crypto-fascist paean to mythical Teutonic mastery.

In November of 1942, Marshal Zhukov threw nine or so newly formed mobile units (called Tank Corps, Mech Corps or groups of Independent Tank Brigades and Regiments), along with attendant foot/hoof-powered assets; against a dozen or more equivalent German mobile units (called Panzer, PanzerGrenadier, Motorized or Cavalry Divisions, as well as groups of non-divisional mobile battalions), of striking power equal to or greater than their Soviet equivalents described above, along with their numerous foot/hoof assets.

The Germans of Army Group Center had a full year to dig and wire themselves in, mine and booby trap every approach, register every killing ground with their amply stocked, full-strength artillery units, etc., etc., etc. The weather was hideous: visibility often near whiteout, the air alternately soaking wet and freezing, and the each side's air force grounded and useless most of the time. The terrain was about as worthless as could be imagined, (rivers, marshes and endless woods, all covered in snow and ice, but not thickly enough to support tanks, artillery trains and resupply convoys reliably).

Wiping out this military hornet's nest would have been like breaking into a modern bank overnight with a single jack hammer and stick of dynamite: possible with miraculous luck, but unlikely. Zhukov, the eternal realist, took exactly this grim attitude about the job at hand. Its low probability of immediate success, and high probability of guaranteeing success to the south around Stalingrad summoned his maximum effort, without reservations. Zhukov was the kind of leader I'd have wanted around if we'd had to fend off saber-toothed tigers with sticks and stones. His more fastidious German equivalents couldn't have coped.

After a few weeks of battle so ferocious we can hardly imagine it (picture the beach scene in "Saving Private Ryan", but lasting a month non-stop across a hundred miles of dead-of-winter front), every Soviet formation was pretty much shot to pieces. As had happened several times before, and would several times again, dazed Soviet survivors withdrew to their start lines, one step ahead of last-gasp German counter-attackers.

Mr. Glantz goes into loving detail about massive Soviet casualties. He lists every machine gun, horse and man each Soviet unit lost in microscopically detailed charts; not to mention gloating at length over Soviet casualties in essay form. Unfortunately, Mr. Glantz mentions equivalent nazi casualties about three times throughout the battle, in passing, to the effect that irreplaceable German assets were also lost: no German numbers, no unit breakdowns, no tables, no nothing.

Far to the south around this time, the Germans attempted to break the Russian encirclement of Stalingrad with three mobile units. If ONE QUARTER of the mobile forces Zhukov tied down during his attack against Army Group Center had been free to entrain toward Army Group South, the Stalingrad relief force would have been twice as large, and twice as likely to break through to the trapped German Sixth Army. With the successful relief of Stalingrad, history would have been rewritten. Mr. Glantz dismisses this vital accomplishment of Zhukov's as Soviet propaganda.

Mr. Glantz has summarized hundreds of unit histories and staff reports that make up the bulk of his research. German and Russian staff reports are surprisingly indistinguishable in translation, as were German and Russian command/control techniques and errors - which truth Mr. Glantz and his pro-Aryan friends would consider damnable heresy. The trouble with German generals' and their Western sycophants' histories is that they've branded the Soviets with the darker side of their own psychic identities, without any attempt at balance. Basically, they're preparing for the same war all over again, without any attempt at embracing their former enemies.

Mr. Glantz's tactical summary of Operation Mars is a welcome addition to the minute collection of small unit combat analyses on the Eastern Front available in English. On the other hand, the central, strategic thesis of his work: that Zhukov suffered defeat during Operation Mars in the winter of 1942, is simply fantastic, as in fantasy, fabrication and make-believe, if not something far more sinister. He is not alone among Western military historians in his cryptically pro-german prejudice -- which in no way excuses it.

Rating:
Summary: Real military history
Review: This is one of the rare books able to capture the "flavour" or the russin front fighting. There aren't heriocal defence or fanatical attacks but only histories of men, mugik or landser, forced to fight a war decided from leader withour remors and without any knowledge of modern warfare. All the reports reported in this books demonstrate above any doubt that History is a delicate tissue built from the single men's daily adventures. Inside the book, readers will find a fine report of the stategical basis for the campaign and of the mental status of the two operative leaders and how their decisions and their orders were able to obtain an heavy influence on the ebb & flow of the single fightings and on the entire operation. This is a real study of military history and you'll se no winner no loser but only professional soldiers that make their job.