Barbarossa Derailed: The Battles for Smolensk

[Tzar007]

This might be of interest to the ATD2 players: David Glantz, the well-known military expert of the Eastern Front, is getting a new book out. It's called Barbarossa Derailed: The Battles for Smolensk, July-August 1941. I have pre-ordered it at Amazon.

Should be a good read, Mr. Glantz books usually are. Warning: these books are VERY detailed. You really need to be a WW2 and military ops buff to enjoy that kind of prose. What I especially like about Glantz is that he is not cheap on maps. He often has over a hundred maps in his books to make sure you can follow the text.

[TargAK]

Ordered as well,
hopefully he does a good job covering both sides and offers commentary as well rather than just repeating op orders and OOB details. Some of his books can be rather dry and a hard read.

[Tzar007]

ORIGINAL: TARG

Ordered as well,
hopefully he does a good job covering both sides and offers commentary as well rather than just repeating op orders and OOB details. Some of his books can be rather dry and a hard read.

Yeah, being a Soviet military expert, he does tend to cover the Soviet side somewhat more thoroughly than the German one. But then again, it varies from one book to the other, depending on the kind of sources he is relying and depending on the type of battle (German offensive or Soviet offensive).

But I'm confident the Smolensk book should be a very interesting one.

[TargAK]

This could be a good time to mention good books on the Eastern front.

One of my favorites is Panzer Operations by Erhard Raus. He does a great job at explaining tactics at the battalion/ Regiment level on the Eastern front.
http://www.amazon.com/Panzer-Operations ... 0306812479

Another Favorite is Germany and the second World War ( Oxford Press). There are Ten volumes and if you speak German that they can be had cheaply. If not than the price is really steep. I only bought book IV as it deals with the Russian front. It is 1300 pages long and covers the build up prior to war and goes till the End of 1941.
http://www.amazon.com/Germany-Second-Wo ... 268&sr=1-4

The $1000 price tag is silly though. Try amazon.UK or Oxford press.

Here are all of the books listed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_an ... _World_War

[henri51]

ORIGINAL: Tzar007

This might be of interest to the ATD2 players: David Glantz, the well-known military expert of the Eastern Front, is getting a new book out. It's called Barbarossa Derailed: The Battles for Smolensk, July-August 1941. I have pre-ordered it at Amazon.

The title is not too surprising, as he gave a foretaste in "When Titans Clashed", where he states that the battle for Smolensk was a German tactical victory but a strategic Soviet victory, given the time won by the Soviets and the damage done to the Germans. Unfortunately this battle was given short shrift in the book, and there is no map of the area except for one that shows the whole Eastern Front.So a detailed study will indeed be welcome. In addition, except for the maps on the HPS Smolensk 41 site, I was unable to find any maps of the battle on the internet.

A historian such as Glantz was absolutely necessary given the tendency of US and British historians and movie-makers(those who survived the McCarthy purges) to under-estimate the Soviet contributions to WW2 victory. Until the TV series "The Forgotten War" narrated by Burt Lancaster around 1960, most people nourished on anti-Soviet gung-ho American propaganda, and self-serving German autobiographies believed that the US had practically won WW2 in Europe all by themselves (this included me until I began to play wargames and saw the above TV series). I still see statements on US TV to the effect that the US invasion of Europe in 1944 changed the course of WW2 - neglecting the fact that the Soviet had pushed the Germans back from Stalingrad all the way to Poland by this time.

It didn't help that Soviet histories published in English were even more propaganda-ridden (for example "The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union" did not have any symbol to represent encircled Soviet units, and the only encirclements mentioned were those that the Soviets broke out of).

Henri

[hank]

thanks for the heads up ... I have to admit I have not done much WWII reading the past couple of years but I intend on doing better
 
I've read Glantz's Kursk ... once cover to cover and again about half of it mainly the parts around Prohorovka.   I even have a copy still in the plastic ... never opened.
 
have a nice day

[ComradeP]

I'm not a big fan of the maps Glantz uses, but if his newest book has a whole lot of maps for a relatively small area, it shouldn't be a problem.

[Tzar007]

ORIGINAL: TARG

This could be a good time to mention good books on the Eastern front.

One of my favorites is Panzer Operations by Erhard Raus. He does a great job at explaining tactics at the battalion/ Regiment level on the Eastern front.
http://www.amazon.com/Panzer-Operations ... 0306812479

I have this one and I agree it's good. "German Panzers on the Offensive" by R.H.S. Stolfi is similar and quite good also. These kinds of books who cover the operational aspects of warfare manoeuvering are really interesting for wargamers, and too few.

[Peter Fisla]

ORIGINAL: Tzar007

This might be of interest to the ATD2 players: David Glantz, the well-known military expert of the Eastern Front, is getting a new book out. It's called Barbarossa Derailed: The Battles for Smolensk, July-August 1941. I have pre-ordered it at Amazon.

Should be a good read, Mr. Glantz books usually are. Warning: these books are VERY detailed. You really need to be a WW2 and military ops buff to enjoy that kind of prose. What I especially like about Glantz is that he is not cheap on maps. He often has over a hundred maps in his books to make sure you can follow the text.

Could be good, I'm currently reading his Stalingrad Trilogy, 2nd volume Armageddon in Stalingrad: September-November 1942. After finishing the first volume I feel like I graduated from military university course, my head is going to explode

Regarding best maps, I like Jason D. Mark maps from his Stalingrad books...however these are maps on tactical scale.

My primary interest in WW2 lies in Eastern Front and especially Stalingrad. I like how Jason D. Mark (tactical scale) connects with Glantz (operational scale) for me to create a complete image of say the Stalingrad battle.