Customer Reviews

Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare

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Robert Citino has written an excellent military history that has descibed the development of combined arms warfare. The first section of the book, Citino compares the military doctrines of the United States, Germany, Britain, and Russia during the Second World War. Citino believes that German military doctrine was severely flawed since it was mainly adaptable to wars in Western and Central Europe and did not make logicistical provisions for the campaigns in North Africa and Russia. Citino also praises Russian military doctrine for being able to plan for the mass encirclements of the German army in 1943-1945, but criticizes the Russians for lacking personal intiative in combat. Citino also criticizes the British for only attacking with tanks and showing no personal intiative on the battlefield. However Citino praises the American for being flexible and massing their forces on a single point during Operation Cobra.
The second part of the book, Citino praises the personal freedom allowed officers to conduct battle in the Israeli and Indian armies and writes about the lackluster performance of the Iraqi and Iranian armies that lacked competent officers. In the closing chapters of the book, Citino believes that the victory in Operation Desert Storm was due to superior firepower as well as tactics while Operation Iraqi Freedom was dangerously based on the assumption of internal rebellion and was eventually won by the use of armor. I would reccomend this book for anyone who believes that technology can replace officership and armor.

This is an interesting and provocative book, well worth reading; see the other reviews for that. Unfortunately, it makes very clumsy reading. I think this was not Citino's fault. This seems, in fact, to be the worst edited book I've ever read. The main problem is not typos but repitition: Citino will often say virtually the same thing in virtually the same way within paragraphs. (See for example the comments on the US M3 tank on pp. 58-59.) This is the kind of understandable mistake a writer makes in the course of writing a book, and it is why publishers hire editors and pay them (albeit not very well). This book was published by University Press of Kansas. They need to have a stern talk with whoever edited Citino's book; they have done him an injustice.

Despite all of the new technology, the rules of warfare always remain the same. In Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm, Citino analyzes every major military campaign from WWII to the present. The details are amazing. Most history books just tell you what happened, Citino tells you how. Every major battle is broken down into divisions and corps with a complete description of their objectives, capabilities, and commanders. His narrative tone makes book the enjoyable and entertaining while at the same time, informative and stimulating. This book is a must read for anyone interested in topics such as 20th century history, military history, or modern war studies.

In this follow-on to the author's "Quest for Decisive Victory", Citino analyzes how armies from World War 2 on achieved or failed to achieve decisive victories, including many cases rarely mentioned in other military histories. Although not quite meeting the extremely high standard set by the earlier book, it is still an outstanding book. Its footnotes will tell you what books to read to learn more about a particular campaign, and giving the strengths and weaknesses of each, which I think is extremely helpful. If you have any interest in an operational analysis of modern campaigns, but this book.

I can recommend all mr Citino's books. It is on the operational level that a battle/war is won and mr Citino's ability to explain and analyse operational warfare is unequalled.