Customer Reviews

To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942 (Modern War Studies)

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I don't usually use superlatives but its hard not to with this book. This book has amazing coverage of the military aspects of the first phases of Operation Blue. The book ends just as the bulk of 6th Army reaches Stalingrad limits where the fighting for the city intensifies. The book is broken down into ten chapters by chronological order and sector. The scale of new information that is presented makes this book a must read for serious students of the war.

The first two chapters state the condition of each army as of the end of January 1942. Both sides were hurting but were determined to regroup and prepare for the spring and summer offensives. The two sides start making plans.
It also gives background info on key commanders on both sides. The appointment to command the 6th Army and his promotion to general was Paulus's first major combat field command. Working under Hitler was not easy but I seriously wonder if it was a mistake for Paulus to be the commander of 6th Army. Manstein or Guderian were available and were certainly more experienced and more aggressive than Paulus. There's much more to say about Paulus's command ability but it will have to wait until the 2nd volume is out.
The third chapter covers preliminary actions that lead up to Operation Blue. The Germans wanted to eliminate several Russian strongpoints that might interfere with the success of Operation Blue. This includes the Crimea, Kharkov, the elimination of the Southwestern Front west of the Oskol River and several smaller engagements. The Germans had inflicted heavy casualties on the retreating Southwestern Front but they had failed to encircle entire armies as they did the prior year. It was an ominous precedent that would haunt Paulus as he nears Stalingrad. Hitler, by this point, had already decided the Red Army was finished and begin considering changing the battle plan.
The summary of the battle of Kharkov with the German counterattack of 6th Army in the north and von Kleist in the south that encircled large numbers of men and materiel was excellent and sets the stage for the upcoming Operation Blue. Another important aspect covered concerns Stalin's fortifying the Bryansk Front with new tank corps that would put pressure on the German advance to Stalingrad or to block the way to Moscow if Paulus turned north at the Don River. There is an extensive accompanying table of troop disposition for both sides that shows the Soviets greatly outnumbered their enemy in tanks in this sector.

The fourth chapter covers the Voronezh battle and the ramifications of the battle concerning Hitler, Bock, Paulus and the Russian Army. The retreating Soviets put up stiff resistance for the city that surprised Hitler who thought the Soviets were finished but didn't alarm him enough to become more cautious for his plans for Stalingrad.
The fifth chapter concerns AG A and the Donbas battles as the German war machine moves south and east. The engagements include Millerovo and the advance on Rostov to the south. It also describes Hitler's changing attitude toward the retreating Red Army and changing of Operation Blue time table by issuing his infamous Directive 45 which will play a big part in 6th Army's destruction.. Hitler also fires Bock for being argumentative and too cautious. In the end, Bock will be proven right in most of his arguments
The sixth chapter deals with the confrontations in the Don Bend in late July. Even though the Russian defenses at the river were poorly planned and their counterattacks poorly timed and coordinated, the resistance of the 62nd Army at the Bend and the 64th Army to the south increased against 6th Army to the point that Paulus had to ask for reinforcements. This was another bad omen that taking Stalingrad would be difficult but Hitler didn't seem to notice.
The seventh chapter concludes the Don Bend battles with the capture of the important city of Kalach. It also includes the moving into the land corridor by 14th PzC heading toward the Volga River.

The eighth chapter extends the coverage of 6th Army as well as Hoth's panzers approaching Stalingrad and the increasing resistance the Russians put up as well as the punishment they are receiving. It includes the massive Luftwaffe raid on the 23rd as well as its daily support.
The ninth chapter breaks away from Stalingrad and covers the Caucasus campaign during August and September. The author spends a surprising amount of time covering 17th Army and 1st PzA driving south into the Caucasus capturing the Black Sea ports as well as the oil fields in the south. The oil was just as important to Stalin as it was to Hitler and went to great lengths to keep it out of German control. The tactical coverage in the Caucasus is good but its not comprehensive. Books by Tieke and Grechko are good supplements. The author also covers the fighting in the Rzhev salient and the Demyansk Pocket in August which are also of great importance to both sides.
The last chapter is the author's conclusions about the campaign, Hitler's impatient and poor strategy, the Soviet's changing tactics etc. Most of the chapter is an evaluation of the German side of the offensive. Mr Glantz is critical of Hitler of trying to do too much at the same time. AGA and AGB were not sufficiently manned or supplied to successfully accomplish their assignments. You would think he would learned from his Moscow debacle. The chapter closes with Glantz highlighting the three fallacies the Soviets and some historians have promoted since the battle and then presents the truth.

There is an appendix that covers Russian Tank commanders and their career accomplishments of all the tank corps of the four Fronts. There is a 90 page Notes section which is pretty amazing in itself that adds a wealth of additional info to your reading experience and is worth the investment in time to study it. The 13 page Bibliography has mostly German or Russian titles. There are also 23 Status Tables that are spread out throughout the book that provide quick read summaries of the condition of certain Armies or Divisions. Its a nice way to reacquaint yourself to specific units among the blizzard of information that's presented. Finally there is a comprehensive 46 page Index that makes it fairly easy to find specific concerns.

I've saved my criticism for last. There are 87 maps and most have a wealth of information concerning troop dispositions and movements etc on them. The problem is you need a magnifying glass to read many of them and a few are unreadable. its a shame for these maps, for the serious student, would be invaluable if they were more user friendly. I wish Mr. Glantz would create a huge atlas that would be widely distributed and reasonably priced with a key selection of maps of the different campaigns of the war. He could link the maps to his books. It should be easier to read and infinitely more helpful. There are a few photos; some are German related but most are Russian related. I particularly liked the picture of Karl, the 600mm mortar used at Sevastopol, Crimea.

This book is a challenging read but its definitely worth it in understanding Operation Blue itself and as a harbinger of what was to come at Stalingrad. You have to be truly interested in the campaign to take the time to digest the wealth of information of all the many regiments, divisions and corps described as well as all of their movements in addition to all the background info on Hitler, Stalin, the generals etc. I highly recommend it for the serious reader.

Glantz, a veritable book producing factory, has definitely set a new standard in literature on Stalingrad. This book, the first of three, follows the Wehrmacht after the Moscow-Counter offensive of 1941/1942 through the Soviet Kharkov offensive and into Operation Blau. In doing so Glantz aims to establish three facts that have been glossed over in general histories of both the Eastern Front and the battle for Stalingrad specifically: Soviet forces did not simply retreat when confronted with Army Groups South, and after Army Groups A and B, to take the fight to Stalingrad, as if pre-planned; STAVKA did not abandon the Donbas region to preserve its forces; and the Red Army soldiers that the Sixth army finally met inside Stalingrad were not the same troops who retreated throughout the summer and finally decided, or were forced, to stand and fight. In reality the Red Army put up resistance to German advances from day one. Glantz takes the time to go through many of these operations and point out exactly how much damage Soviet troops were able to inflict on the Wehrmacht and why the Germans were still able to overcome forces that more often than not outnumbered them in either men, artillery, or armor, and sometimes in all three categories. Of personal interest to myself was the chapter on Army Group A's incursion into the Caucasus region. This is an entire campaign long ignored due to the limelight Stalingrad encompasses.

In the end it seems the Red Army was still committing mistakes they should have learned from in 1941; piecemeal attacks by mechanized and tank forces, lack of command and control in the field, failure to institute combined arms operations utilizing artillery, tanks, infantry, engineers, and the air force, etc. The Germans, however, are also guilty in that they once more overestimated their abilities and underestimated that of the Red Army. The final result is a detailed and highly needed study that not only provides context to the eventual clash that occurred in Stalingrad, but also highlights the actions that led up to the battle and the many battles, and even campaigns, that have gone long ignored due to Stalingrad's ever growing shadow.

Frankly, this is the best book that Glantz (with House) has written. He/They usually approach Eastern Front operations from the Soviet side, but this one is fairly even-handed.

What makes these volumes so outstanding today is their incorporation of recently released records and materials from the Soviet side as well as the official German history of WWII, "Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg", most specifically, Volume 4, Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, with its accompanying maps in a separate binding.

Two factors stand out: that if the German Army was unable to destroy/capture large formations of the Red Army in the summer campaign of 1942 as well as capturing the resources necessary to continue the war (in particular, working or repairable oil fields and refining capacity) then the war was lost, and secondly, not until the fall of 1942 was the Red Army able to effect proper combined arms coordination and develop its combat leadership sufficiently to win battles under non-winter conditions. The first was specifically spelled out in "Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg", and the second in Glantz's publications based on releases from the Russian archives. But here these aspects are presented and developed so as to reach the average reader.

Excepting the victory by Manstein in the Crimea (Operation Bustard Hunt) that was reported by him as a true battle of annihilation (Vernichtungskampf), none of the German victories in 1942 resulted in large numbers of Soviet prisoners as in 1941. The Soviet armies were defeated but not annihilated and were able to fight another day (although the Soviet victories in the fall of 1942 were won by new formations.) The German weakness in infantry allowed large numbers of Soviet soldiers to escape encirclement and capture, and this weakness was endemic and not to be solved subsequent to the German losses in the winter of 1941. Time and again, this fatal defect shows up in Glantz's discussions of the battles of 1942. In addition, the Soviets learned readily from the Germans in 1942 and were able to turn the tables on an ever-weakening Wehrmacht in the later Stalingrad battle and post-Citadel operations in 1943.

A side point on this excellent volume is that the German formations were blessed with extremely good leadership, particularly the armored units. The extreme cohesiveness in the German units and their sticking together under very adverse conditions time and again pulled victory out of what threatened to become a catastrophy. Although this phenomenon haas been studied at length by the American military, our political structure and policies have prevented the introduction of the training and unit cohesion needed to achieve a similar high level of effectiveness in the American Army. German units often experienced open flanks and non-continuous lines yet were still able to persevere under the most adverse conditions.

The review by David Shrank is excellent in depicting the extent of this volume and I recommend that any prospective purchaser read his review. I offer my comments only in addition to his. Please note that this work is extremely scholarly -- the various appendices, end notes, bibliography and index take up no less than 169 pages. I recommend the end notes to be read right along with the text, and as such, would have wished the authors to have included them with the text as foot notes.

I heartily recommend this very fine work to all readers interested in the military history of World War II.

This book re-writes the history of the German Offensive in 1942 known as operation Blue. Previous histories of the campaign have broadly stated that after the failure of the Kharkov offensive the Soviets adopted a cautious policy of withdrawl. The Germans did not have the big successes that they did in the previous year of surrounding big bags of prisoners. Rather Stalin thinking that the main German attack would be towards Moscow carefully safeguarded his forces untill the Stalingrad counter offensive.

All this it turns out was wrong. Whilst the Soviets did not have the same disasters as they had in the first year of the war they lost plenty. The idea of the peaceful March to Stalingrad is also a myth. Rather what happened was after Kharkov the Germans had two intial offensives to set up their break though operation Blue 1. After that success they started to move in two directions. One was to conquer the Caucus oil fields as a means of strategically winning the war. The other was to move towards Stalingrad to cover the Caucus operations and to take out the main transport hub in Southern Russia.

The advance was far from peaceful with the Soviets launching attack after counter attack on the German covering force the Sixth Army. Although the Sixth Army won all of these battles it suffered ongoing attrition. In addition its advance was also slowed by the need to obtain fuel and ammunition. The Soviets were able to generate new armies to cover their losses whilst the German strength fell away the further they moved into Russia. It will be interestign to read the next two volumes to see if there is further changes to what has been accepted so far as history of the period.

The book illustrates the ongoing poor performance of the Red Army due to the inexperiance of its troops and serious issues around command. The Germans performed far better but the strategy they adopted streched their rescources. As they advanced they became more dependant on the allied troops, Italian, Roumanian and Hungarian to cover their flanks. One of the ominous developments in this period was the relative ease the Soviets had in offensive operations against the Italians.

The book is a boost for the reputation of Paulus as a commander. He was able to mount offensive operations despite the fact that he was always outnumbered and he had to fight each step of the way. Hitler and Stalin also come out as considerably more intelligent and on top of militiary issues than as sometimes portrayed.

Glantz and House are scholars par excellence.They have combined to produce another excellent book. Rich and lavishly documented account of combat which preceded the arrival of Wehrmacht on the approaches to Stalingrad.

I have read books on Operation Case Blau. Paul Carrel's 'Hitler moves East'gives detailed narration but does not go to the extent of this work. Most Historians have been obsessed with explaining Red army's epic defence of Stalingrad while paying scant attention to operations which preceded it. This book ably fills that void. Authors have thoroughly combed official records of both sides including hitherto neglected sources. As a result they have shed new light which profoundly expands and alters our understanding of the subject.

Wehrmacht launched Case Blau on June 28,1942.This was Hitler's bid to seize Stalingrad and oil resources of Grozny ,Maikop in the Caucasus. prelude to it Germans launched a string of preliminary operations: Friedrichus I,II,Wilhelm there by gained additional territory which served as a springboard to unleash their grand offensive. Meanwhile Manstein's 11th army had broken the siege of Sevastopol in Crimea and evicted Soviets from Kerch peninsula: Operation Bustard Hunt.This opened the backdoor to Caucasus but Hitler by shifting Manstein's forces to Leningrad did not exploit opportunity that beckoned him.

From Soviet perspective ,Stalin thought Germans in summer of 1942 will renew their bid to seize Moscow. Author's have argued Reichel incident had no effect on Stalin's thinking. Soviet dictator disposed his best forces along the Moscow axis. At the same time he did not shrink from bolstering soviet defences in the south.

Authors have divided the Blau operation into 4 phases.Phase 1 was an absolute success.Within a span of 15ays panzer groupings of Armeegroup Weichs and Paulus Sixth army in a pincer move smashed and shattered the armies of Soviet Briansk and Southwestern fronts to reach Voronezh on the western bank of river Don.Phase 2 Hoth's forth panzer armyand army Group As first panzer army completed the encirclement and destruction of soviet forces in the Donbas region.Phase 3 involved fourth panzer army now under the operational command of army group A with 3 of Army group Bs panzer corps co-operating with Kleist First panzer army in outflanking and defeating Soviet southern Front which defended the approaches to Rostov. By this time Hitler had split the army Group South into two:A and B.Fourth phase saw penetration of Wehrmacht into Caucasus,a zone of war again ignored by most historians. Authors focus attention on futile German drive to seize Stalingrad in a rapier-like thrust. Stalin managed to slow the Wehrmacht by erecting a wall of armies along the western bank of Don river.

Judging from a strategic perspective Blau operation cannot be deemed an unqualified success.Why? Hitler elated by the fall of Rostov chopped the battle into two halves.He now wanted Wehrmacht to seize Stalingrad and oil resources of Caucasus simultaneously which entailed the dissipation of German strength across a sprawling territory. I feel this ruined the campaign. Splitting of effort resulted in Germans being strong nowhere.

Secondly, Red army's ability to raise fresh divisions . As authors point out no sooner Germans smash 25 Soviet divisions another 50 divisions take their place. Sounds startling! Yes,Germans underestimated Russian colossus. You cannot defeat an enemy which keeps raising and fielding fresh armies. It is like trying to tear card pack. You can tear a card but not a card pack.Because pack which is formed by cards protects the card. So quantity generates its own quality.

Attrition became so debilitating so much so when Wehrmacht neared key objectives of the operation it had lost its cutting edge.It's precisely here this book makes a radical departure from previous works.Earlier books have emphasized Red Army practising elastic defence when German attack opened. Authors have shown this to be false. Though defeated everywhere Red Army continued to resist stubbornly.

Thirdly, Germans lacked strategic air power.This would have made big difference to the campaign. Strategic bombers could have ranged deep and wide behind the Soviet fronts. By bombing railroad networks they could have blocked the movement of red army reserves to the battle zone. Key to German victory lay in isolating the latter from Soviet rear just as allies did in Normandy.

Book is divided into 12 chapters. Each chapter is impeccably researched.Back pages contain extensive research notes.Few pages feature charts ,tables showing composition of forces and force ratios.Some pages carry illustrations seen for the first time.My only grudge is about maps few of which look smudged. There is interesting biographical sketch of top Soviet and German commanders.

Finally. a word of advice. This book is meant only for serious-minded.Authors say Sixth army reached Stalingrad only in successive spurts. I finished reading it in similar fashion.

This is an important addition to the histories of the Eastern Front battles, particularly in being able to look at both German and Russian sources for some of the lesser-studied aspects of the Stalingrad campaign. I'm reading through at present about the opening moves prior to Fall Blau, and it's good to see the coverage of the Voronezh area.

It's definitely worth a read, and has the usual copius notes: very strong on biographic detail for human interest. The only failings I see are lack of detail on the coverage of Luftwaffe and VVS operations such as sortie and casualty figures per operational period, and the quality of the printed maps is scratchy, certainly not up to Glantz's best offerings like Mars or Kursk.

Having just finished reading Glantz's latest offering I feel compelled to offer my opinions. Previously I have found Glantz's books on Operation Mars & Zitadelle to be among his best works & I must admit to not entirely looking forward to this widely covered subject & to being sceptical about any new information that could emerge. However although this is only volume 1, I couldn't have been more wrong. Most books on Stalingrad gloss over Operation Blau (in it's many phases) & arrive pretty quickly at the battle for the city itself, such as Anthony Beevor's "Stalingrad" book. Glantz bring to life many relatively unknown parts of the summer offensive & splits it down in to smaller phases such as Wilhelm, Blau I, Blau II, Blau III. It starts on the front-line after the failed Soviet Kharkov offensive, where the objective was Voronezh. Here the fighting was extremely fierce & the Soviets far from running to escape & avoiding battle threw large amounts of men & material to stop the Germans & suffered huge losses. But due to a lack of armour & infantry the Germans failed to bag large amounts of prisoners as they had done in 1941. This was because the Soviets this time did not, follow a policy of not retreating & allowing no territory to be captured. Still they lost over 150,000 men. Glantz now explains Hitler's folly having already launched the offensive with barely enough men, splits his army group into two & diverts part into the Caucasus, prematurely. With the Soviets wearing down the Germans in a battle of attrition & constantly raising new armies & equipment, the inevitable had to happen. This books gives the most comprehensive covering of the Operation Blau that I have come across to date. It is recommended reading to anyone enthusiast of the Soviet/German struggle in WWII. While probably not for the casual reader, it offers in depth analysis of this phase of the war & I for one cannot wait for volume II.

This is an extremely complete and detailed analysis of the actions leading up to the German siege of Stalingrad.

Note, however, that this book is concerned almost exclusively with large unit movements, along with command decisions at the highest levels military and political. It contains almost no account of small unit manoeuvres such as the company or platoon level, and no accounts of the experiences of individual soldiers.

The maps are superb and that with the other details make this essentially a reference book. Because of that many may find the reading rather boring and tedious. I know I did and I did not find it a pleasant read for this reason.

But because of the complete nature of the work it does deserve 4 stars, IMO.

If you are looking for a book on the nature of the combat as it relates to individual small units or individual soldiers, and how they dealt with it or reacted to it, look elsewhere.

I am fascinated by the battle of Stalingrad, and have read most everything I can get my hands on about it. Glantz has produced a masterpiece. It contains a fresh perspective and an ENORMOUS amount of information. There are lots of maps. I should love this book. Instead, I like it, and have enormous respect for the author. But I don't love it.

The problem, I think, is information overload. There is so much unit information that paragraph after paragraph is devoted to what is essentially order-of-battle information on every action. If you are looking for that, this book is what you want. If you want a smooth-flowing narrative, you won't find it.

The maps are mostly far too small, so I strongly recommend you read the book with a magnifying glass in hand. Otherwise, the maps won't add much.

Having said that, Glantz presents a fresh view of the campaign. The Russians fought harder than others have suggested, and did much to wear-down the Germans. It was not a cake-walk followed by a sudden stiffening of resistance. Like everything else in the East, it was hard-fought.

Several years ago David M. Glantz wrote a book titled, 'Kharkov 1942 Anatomy of a Military Disaster' about the Soviets disastrous (from every angle) attack which came to be known as The Second Battle of Kharkov (which is actually covered in the first chapters of this book, as well). This is that story German style as my title professes.
While reading this book I was utterly SHOCKED about almost every aspect of the German conducted of this ever-growing nightmare called the Battle of Stalingrad (and this book is only about their APPROACH to Stalingrad, not even the battle itself!). To say this train wreck was fought on a shoestring is just simply not enough, the Germans dove into the very mouth of hell and trusted the equivalent of a string of dental floss tied around their waistlines to pull them back out...Unbelievable!

I am thoroughly impressed by the scale of this book and the very readable way David Glantz has presented it all to us, the readers (and don't be intimidated by the number of pages shown, almost two hundred of the pages are needed for Mr. Glantz to put in his notes and the books index). The attention to detail is absolutely amazing and second-to-none and I am not exaggerating when I say you get a real 'on-the-ground, being-there' feel from this book. You'll honestly get the sense of what it was like on that vast, empty steppe with balkas here and there, anyone of them possibly hiding a Soviet Shock group.

The work-ups on the various players in this game is exceptional and I've actually come to see Paulus in a different light: he wasn't the Hitler lackey who was just given an important field position which he didn't deserve, he actually did seem to be a fairly competent general who was thrown into a situation in which NO general could have made much better of. The fact that the enormous 6th Army had to not only take the city, but pretty much also had to secure its own expanding flank AND attempt to encircle and destroy the Soviet forces that it had to batter through with a limited amount of supply is unreal, the fact Paulus got to the city in the first place should redeem him to some degree in the eyes of some.

Many myths about this battle will be cleared up, as well, and many a previous documentary will become obsolete (or just rendered plain wrong) by this book. Army Group South (let alone Army Groups A & B) had no business undertaking such an action as this(even if Hitler did not send the severed army group into two directions when he did it STILL should not have been tasked with such a goal). The distances covered are incredible and the sheer fact that the area was covered with rivers going in every direction and scorching hot make the very conception of a plan like this lunacy.

You really will get a final birds-eye view of the often wondered, but still never really pinned down Battle of Stalingrad. Even though this book only talks about the initial approach to the city, you can already see why the entire thing not only failed, but was leading to sheer catastrophe (and I can't wait to read the remaining two books when they come out). David M. Glantz has written many books (not all of which I've liked), but this one, I must say, is his best, which is a good thing because I truly feel (especially after reading it) that it is his most important.