Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (Modern War Studies)
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Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.54217092
EAN: 9780700614172
ISBN: 0700614176
Label: University Press of Kansas
Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 421
Publication Date: 2005-09-19
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Studio: University Press of Kansas
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One of the least-known stories of World War II, Operation Mars was an epic military disaster. Designed to dislodge the German Army from its position west of Moscow, Mars cost the Soviets an estimated 335,000 dead, missing, and wounded men and over 1,600 tanks. But in Russian history books, it was a battle that never happened--a historical debacle sacrificed to Stalin's postwar censorship. David Glantz now offers the first definitive account of this forgotten catastrophe, revealing the key players and detailing the major events of Operation Mars. Using neglected sources in both German and Russian archives, he reconstructs the historical context of Mars and reviews the entire operation from High Command to platoon level. Orchestrated and led by Marshal Georgi Kostantinovich Zhukov, one of the Soviet Union's great military heroes, the twin operations Mars and Uranus formed the centerpiece of Soviet strategic efforts in the fall of 1942. Launched in tandem with Operation Uranus, the successful counteroffensive at Stalingrad, Mars proved a monumental setback. Fought in bad weather and on impossible terrain, the ambitious offensive faltered despite spectacular initial success in some sectors: Zhukov kept sending in more troops and tanks only to see them decimated by the entrenched Germans. Illuminating the painful progress of Operation Mars with vivid battle scenes and numerous maps and illustrations, Glantz presents Mars as a major failure of Zhukov's renowned command. Yet, both during and after the war, that failure was masked from public view by the successful Stalingrad operation, thus eliminating any stain from Zhukov's public image as a hero of the Great Patriotic War. For three grueling weeks, Operation Mars was one of the most tragic and agonizing episodes in Soviet military history. Glantz's reconstruction of that failed offensive fills a major gap in our knowledge of World War II, even as it raises important questions about the reputations of national military heroes. This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.
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Summary: Aesthetic review: Slavish Sycophancy meets Knavish Worship of Statistics
Comment: To the best of this reviewer's knowledge, there aren't any books on Operation Mars of which to speak of.
That said, the general style of the text is affectedly mellifluous, in decided sycophantic awe and adoration of the Red Army, Soviet Russia et. al. A brief glance at his other titles makes the oft noted 'grandiosity' of both Hitler and Stalin manifest in his own aims as well. Glantz's wife translated the book, and one hopes that she was not also the editor: frankly, the intellectual-aesthetic artifices that are very generously dispersed through the book are shamelessly pro-Soviet; the academic veneer notwithstanding. What is more, is Mrs. Glantz's book (FDR And The Soviet Union: The President's Battles Over Foreign Policy) achieves an even greater level of slavishness:
"This book is by no means a well balanced history book as a reviewer has claimed. All major characters stressed in the book were all pro-Soviet sympathizers. Those who opposed the pro-Soviet view are viewed as opponents of FDR's foreign policy. I would welcome a really well balanced foreign policy study of FDR. But I'm not holding my breath considering the disposition of our academia." (From OH)
"This is the worst pro-Soviet propaganda I have read in the last 15 - 20 years. The basic assumption of the author is, that FDR sought peace and co-operation with an equally peace loving Stalin. The reader learns that lower-level State Department and military officials sabotaged FDR's intentions all the way." (From Austria)
http://www.amazon.com/FDR-Soviet-Union-Presidents-Battles/dp/070061365X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221315149&sr=1-2
John Mosier gets it right: Glantz habitually takes Soviet casualty data at face value while 'critically' increasing estimates regarding German ones as suits his needs. Fudging statistics is easier in translation, especially from the Russian, especially from Soviet archives, and most especially in the Anglo-American West.
Given the statements above, several doses of salt and magnanimous patience (or toleration), and this book is well recommended, though by no means authoritative, definitive or editorially disciplined with regard to paroxysms and intellectual conscience in general.
Minus three stars for Stalinism.
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Summary: Demolishes Zhukov's reputation as a Soviet military hero
Comment: Colonel Glantz has furnished us an excellent account of MARS ,codeword which stood for Red Army operation to annihilate Rhzhev salient in the winter of 1942.The salient held by General Walter Model's 9th Army pointed like a dagger at the heart of Soviet capital. As author explains , the offensive conceived, planned ,executed by Marshal Zhukov was complex multi front operation involving several armies. Attacks launched by Kalinin and Western fronts from multiple axes delivered converging blows, one aimed at the apex of the salient and others at base. Defending Germans would be enveloped in a wall of fire and perish .
Unfortunately for the Soviets the operation did not unfold in this manner. Why was that so ? Firstly, German defences in the approach axes of Red Army were anchored in depth. They erected complex web of defences involving pillboxes,bunkers,barbed wire entanglements several of which had interlocking fields of fire.To exacerbate matters, poor weather[ area blanketed by thick fog] prevented adequate reconnaissance. Consequently, several German dug-in strong points which remained obscured escaped destruction from preparatory Soviet artillery fire. Further no air support could be given as fog grounded all ground-attack aircraft.
Soviets launched massed frontal assaults into the teeth of German defences and the result was horrible carnage. Despite staggering losses ,Russians kept on pressing attacks relentlessly. Here and there they made minor tactical gains gradually fighting degenerated into a brutal slugfest. From the nature of fighting , it could be seen that Soviet resources appeared virtually infinite. They could take any amount of losses and still keep on attacking . Such a tactic appears crude by all means .To the contrary, Germans displayed superior fighting skills. For weeks they kept superior Red Army forces at bay. Wehrmacht formed combat detachments which served as shock troops.
German commanders dexterously manoeuvred armor along flaming cauldron parrying Soviet thrusts.Only gain Soviets gained from this botched offensive ,as author explains, they managed to exhaust their enemy. General Model realised he had no chance of withstanding a fresh Soviet assault and decided to vacate the Rhzhev salient. Fuehrer always averse to abandoning any territory grudgingly gave his approval.
Marshal Zhukov grudgingly admitted defeat Author dubs it as Zhukov's greatest defeat. Latter conveniently suppressed this fact in his memoirs. Zhukov has projected it as an operation to pin down Wehrmact in the central front while great Soviet counter-offensive unrolled in the south. However Glantz after digging deep into the Soviet archives, scrupulously researching recently de classified documents offers a fresh interpretation. Far from being a minor operation ,MARS was a large-scale offensive which opened in conjunction with Stalingrad counter-offensive: URANUS,SATURN. Author's research shows, Zhukov lavished extraordinary armor,artillery,engineer support for the offensive. Stavka thought crumbling German defence around Stalingrad would force Wehrmact to send armored reserves south thereby denuding Rhzhev salient . This will pave the way for huge success along the Moscow-Berlin axis in the critical central sector.
Closing chapter of the book contains some startling revelations. Glantz says .Red Army after Stalingrad has potrayed its combat record as an unbroken succession of triumphs leading towards final destructuion of Nazi Germany. Such an argument is at best disingenuous and a blatant lie. Author's research shows Red Army successes has often been punctuated by defeats. Among the list of failures include first Kursk offensive February- March 1943, Byelorussian operation on the fall of 1943 and winter of 1944, East Prussian operation October 1944. More study needs to be done to uncover the full extent of these defeats and its implications on the execution of Soviet war effort.
To sum up, Glantz has done an excellent job by exposing MARS as a military fiasco of unprecedented proportions which radically revises our understanding of eastern front in World War II.
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Summary: Welcome to the Meatgrinder
Comment: ZHUKOV'S GREATEST DEFEAT is an exhaustive and exacting study of one of the biggest and least-known land battles in history, the Battle for the Rzhev Salient, which took place west of Moscow over three weeks in late 1942. It was written by David M. Glantz, the director of the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office, who also penned two other Red Army studies, WHEN TITANS CLASHED and STUMBLING COLOSSUS. Like Mr. Glantz's other works, it is notable primarily for its extensive use of Soviet and Russian-language sources, which with the fall of the Soviet Union are becoming increasingly available to Western historians. Thanks to his diligent research, this gigantic clash of Nazi and Soviet armies that produced 400,000 (mostly Soviet) casualties, for decades effectively covered up by postwar Communist historians and generally ignored by westerners obsessed with the simultaneously-occurring Battle of Stalingrad, has now been lifted out of historical obscurity.
Glantz's book primarily covers the period between November 25 and December 15, 1942, when the Red Army launched Operation Mars, a massive offensive on the northern-central sector of the Eastern Front to destroy two German armies poised in a 50 x 30 mile bulge that pointed threateningly towards Moscow. This so-called Rzhev Salient was viewed by Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the ablest of the Soviet generals, as a perfect staging ground for an massive encirclement operation of the type that was being carried out at that moment at Stalingrad. The two operations, it was hoped, would annihilate not merely one German army, but two complete Army groups, and caused a frontwide collapse of Nazi forces in Russia. Zhukov made pain-staking preparations and was fully confident that the cold, dispirited and understrength German divisions in the Salient would quickly fall prey to his massive pincer attack. As Glantz shows us, he was wrong. Poor weather, unsuitable terrain and a tenacious German resistance turned the glorious offensive into an enormous bloodbath. One Soviet brigade after another was shattered, driven back or wiped out completely, only to be replaced by still more who met the same fate. German lines were bent but obstinately refused to break as the Nazi commander, Walther Model, hurled in his last reserves to stem the enemy tide. Long after it was clear that Mars would not achieve any of its objectives, the pathologically stubborn Zhukov continued the attack, as if, in Glantz's words, "to punish" his armies for their failure. The result was 100,000 Russian dead, 235,000 wounded and missing and an incalculable amount of equipment destroyed or captured, for gains that nowhere exceeded more than a few kilometers. It was not for nothing the Soviet soldier dubbed the area of the Salient "the Rzhev meat-grinder."
ZHUKOV'S GREATEST DEFEAT is an important book on the Nazi-Soviet war, but it is clearly meant for hard-core fans of military history only. Glantz is a diligent, thorough, and methodical researcher, but unfortunately, his writing style has these same qualities. There is no attempt to edit, filter or streamline the vast amount of information which marches past on every densely-written page: we are treated to every brigade movement, every redeployment of a grenadier battalion, every argument between unit commanders over tactics and supplies. Stylistically, this reads like a military publication -- extremely heavy on tactical and logistical details, light on prose style. As a result, I often found myself in a Rzhev-like struggle to finish certain parts of the book. Many times I found myself longing for the stylistic skills of a John Keegan, Stephen Ambrose, David Irving or Alan Clark, and instead got fact-stuffed passages talking about how the 3rd Battalion of the 173rd Grenadier Regiment, 12th Panzer Division was replaced in the line by the 1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment, Grossdeutschland Motorized Division. Obviously this type of detail is necessary here and there in any battle-book, but after a couple hundred pages it wears on the eyes.
Having said this, I think ZHUKOV'S GREATEST DEFEAT is still something of a triumph. Mr. Glantz has done nothing less than resurrect a forgotten battle and reconstruct it before our eyes down to its smallest details. He may not be the most asthetically pleasing historian around, but he brings the same type of grim determination to tell the story that Zhukov displayed trying to win the battle. Unlike Zhukov, however, he succeeds.
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Summary: Thank Goodness for David Glantz !
Comment: For those who forget the past are condemned to relive it. The supression of knowledge of Operation MARS as military history because of its failure can be dangerous. Failure can be just as instructive as success if not more so. With the addition of this book, we can place the Eastern Front in the broader context that has been missing. This book allows an examination beyond the dogmatic explanation from Soviet sources.
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Summary: Detailed account of the (virtually unknown) Rzhev operation
Comment: This is an interesting and detailed account of Operation Mars, the Soviet offensive around the Rzhev salient in the fall of 1942. This massive attack was contemporaneous with the counterattack further south that ultimately led to the encirclement of Stalingrad, and of similar scale in terms of men and material. According to Glantz, this operation was a colossal failure and was largely covered up by the Soviet government. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with this assessment, but little has been written about this operation, and this book nicely fills a longstanding void. It may well have been the Soviet plan for the Stalingrad offensive to be the secondary front, but they would not have succeeded there without the tremendous sacrifice by the Red Army around Rzhev.
This book has several strengths, and I generally recommend this book to any student of the Eastern front. The operation is explained at both the strategic and operational level, and there are detailed maps to show the positions of the larger units (regiment and above) relative to each other and geographic features. The text is divided into five sections. The strategic situation of both sides is outlined in the first, the initial attack in the second, the containment of the offensive by the Germans in the third, the subsequent futile Soviet attacks and ultimate failure in the fourth, and an epilogue and summary in the fifth. This was a rather complex, multi-directional attack to reduce a salient, and the text could easily have been a muddled mess. Glantz does a good job (through the text and the maps) of keeping everything straight so the reader can follow events in both time and space. One feature I thought was particularly useful was that some maps are zoomed in on small regions of the front. Other reviewers expressed a dislike for the maps and symbols, but I thought they were fine.
There are several serious drawbacks to this book that prevent me from giving it 5 stars. First, Glantz's position is VERY pro-Soviet (this is common throughout virtually everything he writes). He pulls no punches here. Historians are often looking for balance, and admittedly for fifty years much of the history about the Eastern front in the West came from German sources, so that our knowledge been skewed. Glantz certainly references many German sources and is clearly very knowledgable in this area, but he has done a great disservice by taking such an evident pro-Soviet position. There is a blatant lack of balance in this work. Second, Glantz often refers to the detailed inner thoughts of commanders. I find it hard to believe that such extensive knowledge of the personal thoughts and feeling of the participants is known. This seriously detracts from this work as history. I got the impression that Glantz is directly putting his own views and interpretations into the narrative by claiming such detailed knowledge of the participants.
I give this book four stars because it is a solid effort written about a virtually unknown operation on the Eastern front. I would not argue with anybody who gave this three stars though, this work does have some serious problems. I found this book easy to read, although I admit that I'm obsessed with this era. This is a dense book packed with information and may not be to everyone's taste. For any serious student of the era, this is really a must have, even given its limitations. There is a wealth of information here, much of it taken from Soviet sources, that is likely to be unknown to the most well read student. For the more casual reader of this epoch, I cannot recommend this book, and suggest that you spend your money elsewhere.
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