75 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
One star because I can't give it a zero, November 2, 2004
This review is from: Blood and Iron: The German Conquest of Sevastopol (Hardcover)
This book is a complete let-down. A balanced, detailed assessment of the battles in the Crimea in World War II is badly needed. This book is definitely not it. Instead, "Blood and Iron" is a hack-job, more like an article in World War II Magazine, providing only a superficial overview of the battles and some new pictures.
Part of the problem lies with the author, who, as an airpower historian, is inexperienced in writing about ground combat. However, the publisher, Brassey's, must also take blame for failing to have the text properly reviewed and edited. How else could a book that purports to cover more than a year of combat devote only 65 pages to the subject? Sweeting was clearly unable to write a good book on the subject and had to pad it with filler, but Brassey's published it anyway.
Sweeting covers combat with broad brush strokes. Very little is learned about German, Romanian, or Soviet forces, their commanders, or their operational plans. The story is told without any operational context whatsoever. No information is provided about the naval or the airpower situation. For example, during the first attack on Sevastopol, the Soviets landed significant forces on the Kerch peninsula. Where did these come from? What was their plan? Why were they able to surprise the Axis forces? Without any analysis of combat, planning, or operations, Sweeting only offers an extremely brief narrative and a simplistic timeline of events.
The second attack on Sevastopol, in 1942, is covered in one brief chapter. Sweeting focuses mostly on the heavy artillery bombardments of forts by the Germans (spending several paragraphs on "super artillery" pieces). No analysis of tactical and operational planning is offered. No assessment of various command decisions is made. The description of combat, which in fact was some of the toughest in the war, is bland, generalized, and brief. Sweeting provides no information about the conditions of Soviet forces in the defensive zone, nor anything about the civilians in the city.
Instead, Sweeting uses the small space he devotes to the Crimean battles to focus on trivialities. Here, he is like a bad journalist, focusing on the entertaining but irrelevant and missing the mundane but crucial. So, instead of learning about force structure, dispositions, and plans, we learn about Manstein's favorite meal, how his command post was furnished, and that he flew in Hitler's personal FW-200 Condor, where Hitler's chair had 8mm of armor plating, a parachute, and a trapdoor mechanism. We get a table outlining the precise rations of German soldiers but little about which Soviet units were involved in the fighting.
Sweeting has written a perfect example of 1960s/1970s popular history: long on detail about weapons and "heroic" German commanders, short on analysis of combat operations. Sweeting did no archival research for this book, and instead relied on Manstein's memoirs or other German-focused sources. Thus, the emphasis is on the German army, while the Soviets remain almost completely anonymous. No recent literature is cited, not even Hayward's "Stopped at Stalingrad" which has 90 pages of solid operational analysis of the Crimea, covering air, sea, and land forces.
As a result, the book is superficial and obsolete. Granted, these sorts of books can serve as useful introductions to a subject. However, even here this book fails. Sweeting does not provide enough information even for this low goal. Rather than devoting all 146 pages of the book (not counting notes and blank or picture pages) to the subject at hand, he wastes more than half of his pages on tangential subjects. Chapter 1 is a 14 page overview of Barbarossa. This is fine, and necessary to provide some context. Chapter 2 is a 16 page irrelevant history of the Luftwaffe. Here, Sweeting should have borrowed from Hayward, who provides a thorough analysis of the Luftwaffe's role in the Crimea. Chapter 3 is a 9 page superficial chronology of the German break-in to the Crimea. Chapter 4 devotes 16 pages to the first attack on Sevastopol and the Soviet landings on the Kerch peninsula. This is so brief that the reader does not learn why the German attack failed, or why the Soviets were able to land troops behind the Germans. Chapter 5 is a 24 page chronology of the final attack on Sevastopol. The book concludes with a 6 page Epilogue, focusing on Manstein during World War II. It is clear that Sweeting has a fascination with Manstein, so much so that it borders on being creepy. So, the book has 65 pages of text. Even this is an over-count, as almost every page has at least two pictures.
Then Sweeting provides 5 appendices, none of which are particularly useful for learning about the Siege of Sevastopol. Appendix A is a 4-page combat report from Gunther Rall, a German ace. I'm not sure why this is included, as it is entirely independent of the text. Appendix B is 6 pages of tables and pictures of German ranks, badges and medals. Appendix C devotes 47 pages to weapons used by the Germans and Soviets. This is astounding. It's the largest single component of the book, but presents information easily-accessed elsewhere. Appendices D and E are about the "super-artillery" pieces the Germans used, taking up a combined 24 pages of the book. This is a lot of space for curiosities that did not significantly alter the outcome of the battles. So, Sweeting provides less than 65 pages of text, but includes 81 pages of irrelevant appendices.
This is the last book I'll ever buy either written by Sweeting, or published by Brassey's. Sweeting clearly has no idea how to write or study history. Brassey's clearly has no idea what the state of the discipline is, or how to professionally edit and review manuscripts.
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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An Extreme, Almost Incredible Disappointment, December 9, 2004
This review is from: Blood and Iron: The German Conquest of Sevastopol (Hardcover)
I am quite interested in Manstein's campaigns, and those operations focused upon Sevastopol during 1941 and 1942 are some of his finest. I have long been eager for a comprehensive account, perhaps akin to what Douglas Nash produced for Cherkassy in _Hell's Gate_. Sweeting's _Blood and Iron_ (published by Brassey), however, is not that; is not anything like that; is not, in fact, anything I wanted to read, or would ever care to read again. This is the worst book of military history I have ever read or-- worse luck-- purchased. I received it on October 17th, one day before the first helpful review appeared on this site. Not counting that of December 2cd (which must be either a joke or composed by a relative of the author), I agree with all preceding reviews. This thing is tragic.
I could repeat much that has gone before: _Blood and Iron_ misleads, in that it purports to be a volume about the campaign and siege, while most of it is not; well over half of this rather short book wanders off on irrelevant tangents. What little information it contains about the battle-- or any other subject-- is general, vague, and clearly derivative, containing nothing new. The book is hopelessly one-sided, presenting only the German point of view, and seems to fawn upon Manstein, who may have been a great general, but was scarcely a knight in shining armor.
I would like to discuss sources. Whenever I acquire an historical work, the first thing I do is check the bibliography; I want to know whether the author has done his homework. My first glance at the back of this book gave me a funny, uncomfortable feeling. I saw a list of mainly secondary sources, punctuated by some well known and oft read personal accounts, with that old workhorse _Lost Victories_ clearly dominating. I did note a handful of references with which I was unfamiliar, but they seemed to deal with minor or even unrelated matters. There were no Russian sources, and most of the German (or derivative English language) sources proved to be quite old. I found no fresh or original references, unless one counts Rall's letter, which has no bearing on the main subject, and may even have been included as a plug for the book. Solely from examining the bibliography, I developed the disconcerting impression that the manuscript of Sweeting's work might have been written many years ago, yet only recently published. Then I read the book. My forebodings were justified. To all intents and purposes, I learned nothing. _Blood and Iron_ is a waste of money.
"Glenn Sweeting is known for his meticulous research"; so reports that one very odd review below. I can not respond directly to that statement, because I had never heard of Sweeting before. I do wonder: known to whom? I will say that, whatever positive reputation he may have formerly possessed, _Blood and Iron_ has shattered it forever; no one recovers from a wreck like this. It is not rock bottom, like Gary Simpson's _Tiger Ace_, but it is really bad. Mr. Sweeting owes us an apology, as does Dr. Crane, the author of the introduction, and the editors at Brassey. I will have no future dealings with any of these people.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
good and bad news, February 22, 2005
This review is from: Blood and Iron: The German Conquest of Sevastopol (Hardcover)
The good news (for me) was that I read a friend's copy of this book and so did not waste my own money.
The bad news (for everyone) is that this book is terrible - very short, superficial, incomplete, one sided, padded out with irrelevant appendices and lacking even the most rudimentary historical analysis of the subject.
Be like me, don't waste your money.
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