Thunder on Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and the Defeat of Hitler's Blitzkrieg [Hardcover]

Bryan Fugate (Author), Lev Dvoretsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 1997

The authors claim that the failure of the Wehrmacht to conquer Russia during the campaign of 1941 was due to the brilliant planning of Marshals Zhukov and Timoshenko.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bryan Fugate is a well-known authority on the Eastern Front and author of Operation Barbarossa. Lev Dvoretsky is a retired Russian colonel and expert on Russian military history. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Presidio Press; First edition (March 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891415297
• ISBN-13: 978-0891415299
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,897,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stalin knew Hitler was coming?, January 27, 2004

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thunder on Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and the Defeat of Hitler's Blitzkrieg (Hardcover)

There's an old saw about the aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg. Supposedly, some years after the battle, George Pickett was asked why his famous charge had failed. The questioner was no doubt expecting one of the stereotypical Virginian answers: lack of proper artillery support, lack of support from soldiers from other states, etc. Instead, Pickett responded that he thought the Union army had something to do with it.

Much the same debate goes on in the analysis of the early days of the German army in its campaign in the Soviet Union. Most of the discussion of what occurred and why is focused on the Wehrmacht and their choices, what objectives they strove for, which units were sent where, things like that. Relatively little discussion is directed towards the Soviets, who are seen as helpless, inert automatons, terrified of doing anything that would enrage Stalin. Bryan Fugate has been directly challenging this view of things for some years now, starting with his book Operation Barbarossa, and this current book is a further entry in his campaign.

Operation Barbarossa concluded that Stalin and the Soviet high command knew that Hitler was going to attack in the summer of 1941, and were at least somewhat prepared for the attack. The problem with that book was the lack of evidence proving his point. This current book makes pretty much the same argument, but with better (though still not completely convincing) evidence. Since the publication of his first book, Fugate has apparently come across recently-opened archives in the Soviet Union which seem to prove his point, notably the accounts of three wargames held by the Stavka in early 1941. The first two games are apparently well-documented, while the third is very mysterious and murky. Fugate believes that the third game predicted that the Germans would penetrate far into the interior of the Soviet Union, and showed that it would be wise for the Soviets to station a strong army behind the Pripyet Marshes where it could attack the southern flank of such an army as it advanced towards Moscow. Near as I can tell, co-author Dvoretsky helped Fugate find his evidence, and perhaps helped with the writing and analysis of this book also.

This supposition makes up the first quarter or third of the book, and the rest of the text discusses how the author sees Army Group Center's advance into the Soviet Union in 1941. Most of the narrative follows Guderian's Panzer Group and Fugate's fabled 21st Army as they fight in the southern region of Army Group Center's sector of the front. Zhukov, Fugate and Dvoretsky's hero, comes in for a considerable amount of praise as he supposedly makes few if any mistakes (while watching the collapse of the Soviet army) and outwits the Germans time after time. Stalin, even, turns out to be if not exactly a master strategist, then certainly more clever than Hitler.

The difficulty with all of this is that the authors' evidence for what they're saying is very thin to say the least. The supposed February wargame that predicted the campaign that summer was apparently kept so secret that no records of it have survived, except for some partial material that *may* relate to it which was captured by the Germans. Everything else is supposition and guesswork. Similarly, when it comes to the actual campaigns involved, the author attributes motive and intent to the various personalities involved, often with thin evidence, at best. For whatever reason, while he's sometimes hard on the Soviets, he's very tough on the Germans, especially Guderian, who comes off as a preening fool.

There is some value to this book in that the authors' analysis of why the campaign went the way it did (the actual causes on the battlefied, not the Generals' intentions) is rather good, and intelligent. Fugate and Dvoretsky make a plausible case for their supposition, but unfortunately supposition it must remain, at least until further archives are opened which prove one way or the other if these things happened, or what their affect was.

One further note. The prose here is very stilted and dry, and the books is pretty heavy sledding as a reading experience. Fugate is a historian (he has a doctorate from a university, in German and Russian military history) and Dvoretsky is a Russian soldier. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone unless they already know a great deal about the Eastern Front in World War II, and want to know more about the campaign in 1941.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book with interesting insights into this conflict, April 13, 1998

By 

Steve Barrett (San Diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thunder on Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and the Defeat of Hitler's Blitzkrieg (Hardcover)

This book has caused me to re-evaluate my views of the 1941 part of the Great Patriotic War and my approach to creating a simulation of this campaign. The defense of the upper Dnepr has been documented in other books, but, that this defense was pre-conceived and not just spur-of-the-moment or last-ditch scrambling has never been made clear before now. I'm not sold on everything the author(s) contend. (E.g., rather than believe Pavlov was set up for failure, I'm more inclined to believe that Stalin allowed Zhukov and Timoshenko to start preparing a defense in depth in case Pavlov was wrong, which possibility showed up from the wargames, and/or in case the Germans struck while the Red Army was still being re-organized.) I perceive there were a number of reasons why the blitzkrieg failed in the Soviet Union. It is evident from the information in this book, that Soviet strategy for a defense in depth was a contributor. Overall I'm very pleased with the presentation of information in this book. The fresh perspective is both interesting and rewarding.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Red Army did have a plan in 1941 after all!, April 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Thunder on Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and the Defeat of Hitler's Blitzkrieg (Hardcover)

The authors have reconstructed, from circumstantial evidence, a revisionist interpretation of Red Army prewar planning and early war strategy. This is an excellent attempt to look at "the other side of the hill" (95% of what's out there being narrated from the German point of view. The authors know their material well, but the specifics of their case (a Soviet master plan based on February 1941 wargames kept secret from all but a handful of generals) hinges on only a few collateral documents. They can document a general similarity of Soviet operations with what they believe was the outcome of the wargame, but cannot conclusively link the two, except by arguing that Zhukov and Timoshenko were at the wargame and conducted grand strategy--ergo they must have employed the strategy from the game. This is dangerous ground upon which to rest your entire thesis. Nonetheless, this book is valuable for approaching the first weeks and months of the war from a Soviet perspective, and makes the point quite strongly that the Red Army had already thrown German operations off their timetable within the first month of the war.