Customer Reviews

Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Modern War Studies)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To get the full benefit of this outstanding work, I recommend the reader first review the author's earlier work, The German Way of War. In that volume, he analyzes the Prussian/German emphasis in its military history, service schools, traditions, and practices of focus on operational skills. Considering its Geographic location, its military goal was to execute quick, decisive wars which implied aggressive attack.
While the book under review is an excellent stand alone product, I view it as a case study of the analysis the author promulgated in his previous study. He slices out the year 1942 to examine every major battle and campaign executed by the German army during that period. It concludes, of course, with the two defeats of Stalingrad and El Alamein. Because the campaign largely has been ignored thus far by historians, he includes the exhaustian of the army in the mountains of the Caucasus.
Finally, he examines the British and Russian approaches to World WarII combat. The industrial might coupled with large conscript armies (here the impact of America is considered)overwhelmed the German approach to war making it obsolete on the attack. The army remained deadly in defense, of course.
This author's pure writing skill makes the book a joy to read. His descriptions of the actual combat are easy to follow and provide good insight into the decisions made at that time with the information then available to the commanders. The maps are helpful and simple to comprehend. The footnotes are interesting and thoughtful. He's generous with remarks about other WWII historians. He's not fooled by the self-serving German General memoirs produced shortly after the conflict.
If the book is reprinted, and I hope the demand is there, it would be helpful to add an index of the map symbols. There are occasional typos suggesting a more careful copy edit, but they don't interfere with the flow and are petty complaints.
The author and the University of Kansas Press are to be congratulated on making this important addition to military history in general as well as WWII in particular. The book should be in every Library containing a military history section. Professional military personnel, historians and those interested in military history, or just history will benefit from reading Mr. Citino's contribution.

Citino has written a very readable book, but he has the habit of constantly restating his premise about why the Wehrmacht failed. How many times do you need to be reminded that the style of encirclement became outmoded once the Soviets decided to retreat instead of standing and fighting?

In truth three (3) things caused the failure of the Wehrmacht in Russia.
1) The lack of German sensitivity to the needs to create logistical systems when fighting a war hundreds of miles within another country. So many times during battles or ongoing operations, the Panzer armies had to stop because they ran out of fuel. A mobile army survives on movement, without fuel there is no movement and tanks become sitting ducks. Just as tanks need fuel, soldiers need supplies like food and water (especially in the dessert). Because there were limited road systems in most of the Eastern Ukraine, weather would reek havoc with the ability of the quartermaster corp to keep up with the Armies needs. In the end it caused the loss of the 6th Army at Stalingrad.
2) Replacements. By the middle of 1942 the Germans were busy with their final conscription of 18 and 19 year olds. They had now run out of men to fight, and had already lost a large proportion of the experienced men who had fought in 1940 and 1941. Having started Operation Barbarosa with over 1/2 million horses to move supplies and pull artillery, by '42 they had lost half of these and many were worn out and useless. They had also reached the point where they were losing more tanks and planes then they were able to replace. At the same time they were depending more and more on their Allies to take up bigger parts of the fighting. These Allies had even more problems with logistics and replacements then the German Army.
3) No coherent plan as to how to hold the territory they had conquered. During many of the battles, large groups of Soviet Soldiers had been passed by and left for the 'Rear Guard' to deal with. The Soviets were able to arms these 'Partisan' units which spent much of their time destroying the infrastructure needed to bring up supplies to the Fronts. An inordinate amount of the men, machines, supplies (especially fuel) was being used to carry out the destruction of the Jewish population as well as dismantling the Soviet Aparatch (the Communist Party structure). The men and time wasted could have been put to better use, as well as the able bodied men they killed off.

Citino spends some time discussing these issues, but mostly concentrates on the out-and-outright losses from battle. He never discusses the issues of the average soldier, but spends most of his time either praise or crucifying some General or Field Marshall. In his discussion of the Battle of Stalingrad he gives little thought to the idea that by bombing the city into rubble before they attacked it, the Germans made their job twice as difficult by making the city impassible.

On last issue is that the maps in the book are in most cases so weak as to be useless. None of them have scales, so you can't judge size or distances; and many of the landmarks he mentions in the text aren't marked on the maps. Also there is no key as to what the symbols stand for (yes their standardized) but not everyone knows a tank corp from a cavalry division. It almost as if he is making an aside that 'real' military history buffs will understand and to bad for the rest of us. This attitude (which is like a verbal smirk) shows up in many places in the book and I found it distracting.

This book tackles what the Werhmacht went through in 1942, I can comment in detail in regards to the Eastern Front, but less so to the activities in the North African theater of operations. The book is an interesting read and I can honestly say one of the few 'military histories' that is actually enjoyable to read. If you're interested in the position of the Wehrmacht and its campaigns throughout 1942 you could definitely do worse than this book. It gives an operational play by play of the activities undertaken by the Wehrmacht from one offensive operation to the next, its context, its ultimate goal, etc.

I do have to admit that I very much appreciated the authors detail when it came to describing Rommel's campaign in Africa. For the longest time I've been distracted by the fact that this commander gets so much limelight for doing practically nothing at all in North Africa. Again and again he decides to run back and forth across the North African desert with a Corps sized force trying to make a nuisance of himself as the British repeatedly realize that he's a thorn in their side and send in reinforcements every time he decides to undertake another reckless advance without any regard for logistics or his orders which ultimately lead to him either retreating or eventually losing all his troops.

There are three things which made me give this book 4 stars: I didn't like that every now and then some 'what if' ideas would be thrown in. They aren't discussed in detail but they are there and in my opinion I'd rather find out what happened than what could have happened, especially since the author himself asserts that such ideas are a waste of time in the introduction. Secondly, the Soviet side is lacking, I would say heavily at times, in the representation it gets in this book. Yes, it is heavily reliant on German sources and it is after all a book on the Wehrmacht, but it would simply be nice to see an even account from the Soviet side for a change. This can be easily overlooked if you take the authors ideas and analysis of the Soviet side with a grain of salt. Lastly, I think the editing in this book is lacking, there are incorrect words here and there, misplaced words, etc and they occur far more often that I'd expect and at times take away from the reading experience. For example, on pg. 173 we have order 227, "Not a step back!" being discussed, the transliteration offered is "Ne shagu zapad" which should read as "Ne shagu nazad", 'zapad' is Russian for west. A small error but one that could easily have been avoided. Another detail error can be found on pg. 252 when the author claims that Pavlov, famous for being the soldier "Pavlov's House" was named after, was a Captain. In fact he was a sergeant and the truth behind Pavlov's House can be found in Mike Jones's "Stalingrad." Otherwise this book does offer some fresh insight into the war and especially the Wehrmacht. And for that, I'd recommend it.

A very good reading indeed. Citino's idea to trace the origins of German art of war back through the centuries is very original and finally brings it all into place. After finishing this book, I immediately bought his German Way of War and enjoy it even more.

Why only 4 stars? Well, I took one full star off for ignoring the other battles of 1942 on the Eastern front. Yes, there was much more than just Blau going on there: at least 2 major attempts to relieve Leningrad, and several Soviet offensives against Army Group Center (at Sukhinichi, at Kozelsk, "The Summer Rzhev," "The Winter Rzhev,") along with some German counter-action, like Operation Wilberwind. Of course, these battles were closer in their nature to trench warfare of WWI and could not be of much interest to the author, who is focused on battles of manoeuvre in the South of USSR and Africa. However, although Red Army achieved little and these battles cost Russians dearly, these "forgotten battles" also bled white Army Group Center and severely depleted German reserves. Two of the Panzer divisions originally intended for Blau, the 9th and the 11th, were left in the 2nd Army sector. Most of the remaining Army Group's Panzer divisions were mauled so badly that none would be available for the effort to relieve Stalingrad kessel, except for the 17th Panzer, at battalion strength. None would be available later, after Stalingrad, when the Red Army conducted two successful operations, crushing the open Southern flank of the German line at Rossosh' and Voronezh. Only by the "3d Battle of Kharkov" did the Germans recover and restore the balance. So part of the reason why did Blau fail with such a loud bang was that nothing was quiet on the Eastern front.

I took off another half star for not checking details. The story of how two Soviet mechanized corps, the 8th and the 13th, collided at the very start of the war, "creating a traffic jam of epic proportions," and how the Germans smashed them both while they were still sorting themselves out, comes from Pleshakov's "Stalin's Folly," and Citino copy-pasted this paragraph into the book from his own review of SF in the April 2006 issue of World War II. Well, the glory of the moment fades once you learn that the corps with the number 13 was not a Mechanized, but a Rifle corps (the 13th Mechanized was assigned to the 10th Army in the Western front sector); that there was no traffic jam at all (general Ryabyshev, the commander of the 8th Mechanized, noted in his memoirs that the marching troops of the 13th Rifle corps slowed him down and "his vehicles could not go at full speed"); and, most important, that the Germans did not smash the two corps at the moment. The 8th Mechanized later counter-attacked against the 57th Infantry and 16th Panzer divisions on June 26th and 27th near Dubno. It was practically destroyed and later reorganized into a tank division. The 13th Rifle corps kept marching on and was trapped much later in the Uman pocket. Such a blunder is inexcusable for a historian of Robert Citino's talent.

Anyway, since there is no 3.5 star rating here, I round it up to 4 stars, with hopes that these minor flaws would be corrected in the 2nd edition of this book.

This is another superb work by author Citino, although the publisher's editor did a poor job of filtering out typos and spelling mistakes. Nonetheless, I recommend this book to any person who wishes to understand why the Germans were able to do so well, so many times, throughout World War II.

This book should be read AFTER reading Citino's "Path To Blitzkrieg" and "The German Way Of War" in that order. Unfortunately, "The Path To Blitzkrieg" is now out of print, but it is absolutely necessary for the reader to comprehend the nature of German officer training, as well as leadership training down to the Assistant Squad Leader level, No other army in history has been so thorough in training its leaders; the American Army being no exception in spite of incorporating much of the Wehrmacht's leadership training techniques in its training regimen after World War II. Unfortunately, American officer training is a mere shadow of the German even today, particularly in staff functions, both due to far-foreshortened courses and missing a General Staff for guidance and espirit. Please read my reviews of both books here on Amazon.

This work applies the lessons learned from other two books to the year of 1942 for the Germans on two fronts, the Soviet Union and North Africa. Both fronts demonstrate the same principles of waging war from the German side with aggressive and capable commanders, excellent staff support, and incredible performances by the ordinary soldiers doing their duty.

In many respects the North African campaign was a unimportant sideshow (to the Germans, but not to the Italians or British), and the inability of the Italians to successfully supply Rommel's army across the Mediterranean Sea (due to Ultra decoding of sailings and convoy information) not only prevented Rommel from taking Egypt, but brought him within an ace of losing his entire army. Citino's analysis of Rommel's actions and the slow, even almost dim-witted British methodology in waging war was brilliant. Montgomery turned all his battles into ones of attrition using overpowering resources, and the German tactics of using movement to compensate for inferior numbers and material became a non-starter. Nonetheless, when the Germans could accomplish rapid movements and bring adequate power to its main point of effort, the Wehrmacht could still win local victories against the British (& Americans) as late as the winter of 1944/45.

On the Eastern Front, the campaign of 1942 was decisive. Citino presents the recovery of the Wehrmacht in the Spring of 1942, not as fully regaining its 1941 strength, but to a level whereby it could regain the initiative. Citino correctly points out the recent official German history as containing prescient discussions by already knowing the outcome when the information available at the time would not lead to those conclusions. As the author stresses, believing that the superior leadership of the German officer corps and the superior training and bravery of German troops would overcome gross deficiencies in men and material might have been hubris, but the German officers and men apparently actually believed it. As a result, they were able to push far beyond the culmination point, and achieve much more than could reasonably be expected. In many situations the results were achieved by the smallest of formations, -- a handful of tanks or a few hundred men left effective out of a whole division. In a sense, the Germans pushed themselves to win with the last man standing, something no other army has consistently attempted to do in modern times. Author Citino marvels that the Germans were able to come within two miles of their objective in the Caucasus, and even De Gaulle was similarily impressed. When De Gaulle remarked while touring Stalingrad after the war that the fight there was unbelievable, a Soviet general agreed that the Soviet troops had performed great heroics. "No, no," De Gaullle said, "That the Germans got so far."

Citino correctly did not put all the blame on Hitler for the debacle, but he should have lessened the influence from Megargee and Wette when it came time to spread the blame lower than Halder and the OKW/OKH. The operational command system began to fall apart when the traditional independence of German commanders was restricted by headquarters. These were new rules, and the German field commanders were unable to adjust for the good of their commands and the conduct of the war. Of course it did not help that tanks, ammunition, food, manpower, air support, and especially fuel were in desperately short supply, but these were problems that the Wehrmacht had surmounted before. In the 2nd half of 1942 it could not. The whys and wherefors make up this book.

The author did not overlook the effect of the Soviet retreats before the Wehrmacht became stretched to the limit, and that too was known to the German high command. But the attack simply could not be stopped -- German tradition required that it be pressed to the limit. It was, and defeat resulted.

Although Manstein would achieve a monumental success in February and March of 1943 in destroying or crippling four Soviet armies and retaking Kharkov and Belgorod, the German bolt had been shot. From Kursk onward, only localized successes were possible when the Wehrmacht was able to maneuver -- remaining in fixed positions meant certain eventual defeat. Eisenhower would adopt a similar strategy as the Soviets and grind down the German army without giving it a chance to maneuver. The German way of war could not cope nor adjust. A not-so-modern army in command thinking and warrior attitudes could not ultimately prevail against a modern army (or armies) fighting battles of attrition and using overwhelming superiorities in the air, on the ground, and in industrial production of military supplies and equipment.

Purchase and read this book.

Cetino is a master at his craft. His knowledge is deep and his research is thorough. I really enjoyed his book. He is not in the usual vein of triumphalist American authors. He places blame and credit where it is due and he is even handed in his assessment of all participants.

His selection of campaigns is the key to his success and his discourse on why the Germans fought the way they did and why the Russians and the British fought the way they did is both incisive and highly readable.

His coverage of the German campaign in the Crimea and the Caucasus is a very interesting coverage of a little known but very important and major campaign.

His analysis of Alamein, while shorter, is also quite brilliant in its lucidity. he is the first author I know who has identified, quite so clearly, that Montgomery's WW1 experience taught him what worked for the British and what did not. He explains why Montgomery fought the Afrika Corps the way he did. The British way - slow and deliberate and with the application of massive force - especially artillery. Montgomery was indeed pedestrian but within these constraints he knew what he was doing and he did it passably well. Cetino explains how and why.

Cetino spells out the relevant circumstances with clarity and makes fairly the telling point that the Russians paid for their eventual success with massive casualties. In the African campaign it was logistics, much of it from the US, that helped the British win at Alamein.

The book is a very good read and a very balanced one also.

Professor Citino recounts here the 1942 German campaigns in North Africa and South Russia from the victories in early 42 (Kerch, Kharkov, Tobruk) to the defeats in late 42 (Stalingrad, El Alamein, Ordzhonikidze) and analyzes those campaigns in terms of the 1942 German capability in Russia for- and success in- "Blitzkrieg", much more accurately in "BewgungsKrieg und Kesselschlacht". The material is interesting as it covers battles and decisions that are only covered in passing, if at all, by more general histories of WWII. The analysis is sound and thought provoking, such as the reflection as to whether the strategy employed was maybe the best or even the only available to Germany at the time given her limited resources. The numerous notes yield additional information of interest and good references for additional reading.

I would have rated this book higher had it not been for the following two shortcomings.

The maps in a military history book should allow the reader to follow the operations and troop movements. Unfortunately many of the maps here fall short. For example, besides a very simplified (map 3 on page 73) map of the Kerch peninsula, the book does not offer a map of the Crimea which makes it difficult to follow the description of the Crimean campaign. Another example is map 11 on page 225 which does not show Kalach and the thrusts of 14 and 24 Panzer Corps, even though the author stresses the importance of the early August 1942 German encirclement and cauldron victory there (see page 246: "The Kalach Kessel, almost forgotten today, was the first real encirclement of the 1942 campaign and led to high hopes"). To be fair, Kalach appears on map 15 on page 295 but in the context of the November 1942 Russian operation Uranus. The author in his notes makes reference to books with relevant maps but unless one has those books on the shelves that is not of immediate assistance.

It is unfortunate that this book has a large number of typographical errors such as "control of the saw" instead of "control of the sea" on page 53. Those errors are quite distracting and inhibit a smooth reading of the book. Sometimes those errors are more than just distracting because they alter the facts, such as:
* "Mackensen...analyzed it (the victory)...attributing it to "low morale" and bravery of the German troops" on page 111. Clearly it must read "high morale", not "low morale".
* Or "Mackensen coming "up from the North"" on page 109. Clearly it must read "up from the South".
* Or "The Yugoslav army...numbered nearly "10,000,000" men" on page 21. At some 30 divisions, that number is obviously one order of magnitude too high and should read "1,000,000".

The title "Death of the Wehrmacht" is misleading: it suggests that 1942 was the point of no return, but the Wehrmacht had one last shot: the Battle of Kursk, summer 1943;
the importance of the much-neglected Battle of Kursk is stressed in e.g. The Battle of Kursk.
The book itself is concise and well-written. A plus is that the author relates the Wehrmacht's conduct of war to the old Prussian-German tradition.

An earlier review (Biggest Problem is the Constant Re-Statement of the Same Premise) included much of what I felt about Death of the Wehrmacht, but I felt the problems went even deeper than that review discussed. Citino argues that the strategic practices of the German army became obsolescent by 1942, and weren't able to cope with modern warfare. Honestly, his point doesn't make sense; the German army continued to punch far above its weight class into 1945, and Citino even acknowledges the spectacular performance and ferocious tenacity of the German army in the later sections of his book. What Citino really says is essentially this : The side with the overwhelming advantage in men, weapons, and fuel won. Duh. This is not to say that Death has no value; it was a fascinating account of the year, battle by battle, and does actually shed some light on Rommel's bad decision making skills in his dive for the Nile, but in the end, Citino is trying to write a history of weight overwhelming merit, which I felt was better accomplished in an economic history (The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze is a fantastic book that covers much of this same history in a much more sensible way). Ultimately, I would read this only for its history, not for its interpretation, and read Wages or perhaps Chris Bellamy's Absolute War (if you really want to read about the Soviets).

In this interesting book, the author shows the frequency with which Prussian/German armies gained success from the 17th century onwards while being outnumbered, with poor supply and transport and inadequate intelligence regarding their opponents. He then goes on to suggest that the deficit was made up through intensive training, pushing responsibility down the command chain and an extreme aggressive attitude that would result in the enormous WW2 victories of 1939-1941.

Citino's thesis is that the whole situation changed in 1942. As he says, "What happened in the summer and fall campaigns of 1942 was something far more significant. In those brief six months and entire way of war that dated back centuries had come to an end. The German traditions of maneuver-based Gewegungskrieg, the notion that "war is an art, a free and creative activity," the belief in the independence of the subordinate commander within his own sphere of competency: each and every one of these bedrock beliefs had taken a pounding in the last six months, and in fact had revealed themselves to be no longer valid."

He describes the overwhelming material superiority of the allied armies in tanks, aircraft, guns, supplies, logistics, intelligence (Ultra) and not least manpower, and the strategic impossibility of the situation for the Germans.

This isn't really anything new, but he does write at some length about the remarkable German successes despite these handicaps, and in my opinion, undermines his whole idea when evaluating the last German offensives in southern Russia. As he says, "For all the ink spilled over its fundamental deficiencies, there was nothing wrong with Blue - its complexity, its size, its maneuver scheme - that a thousand or so extra tanks would not have fixed. But that was precisely the problem."

In other words the Germans could have attained their objectives with a still relatively small (relative to their opponents) increase in equipment and no one would be questioning their maneuver-based Gewegungskrieg?