Why Normandy Was Won: Operation Bagration and the War in the East 1941-1945

by Ken Weiler

Here at last is the long-awaited story of the contributions of the Red Army in assisting in the success of the Allied invasion at Normandy. Operation Bagration was the massive Soviet assault on June 22, 1944 against Germany's Army Group Center in Byelorussia. Germany lost over 300,000 men in twenty-two divisions in just five weeks; this was a blow from which the Ostheer (the German Army in Russia) never recovered. In order to stabilize the front, the German command was forced to transfer forty-six divisions and four brigades to Byelorussia from other sectors, taking some of the pressure off the British and American troops in France.

488 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published July 1, 2010

Reviews

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Definitely an amateurish work-in sore need of an editor. The amount of awkwardly phrased sentences and paragraphs made this a difficult read. Often, I’d have to read and reread a sentence out loud to determine exactly what the author was referring to. Then there were the errors, and blanket assertions:

“For the first time in history they [armor and aircraft] were employed together, in mass…” (10) That’s not true. In World War I at the Battle of Amiens the British deployed both armor and aircraft in strength together precipitating what Ludendorff called “the black day of the German Army.” The concepts that Germany would exploit in Poland and France did not come from a vacuum and certainly was not the child of the German General Staff.

“Although, not an original idea, the Revolutionary French had used conscription…however this was an interesting viewpoint considering that all wars heretofore had been fought between professional armies and rarely involving civilian populations.” (23) This is not just an example of the author’s odd phrasing it is also patently false. In the Napoleonic Wars there was the Spanish Ulcer where civilian populations were heavily involved in the strategic situations of both French and Coalition forces. The American Civil War featured guerrilla bands engaging with professional armies and in the instance of Quantrill against civilian populations. The list is actually pretty substantial: the Boer War, the Philippine Insurgency, the Boxer Rebellion, the German Army’s treatment of civilians in Belgium, and France during World War I, the Japanese Invasion of China, the Spanish Civil War…
In fact, I think you would be hard pressed to find many (or probably any) examples where war was simply a conflict between professional armies rarely involving civilian populations. Even the Iliad features a war where civilian populations are involved alongside professional armies.

“It was Stalin’s style of management based on the stresses caused by the war and the Communist system in general…” (24) LOL, what?
As well as being an example of a bizarrely constructed sentence this was just such a weird statement to write. I admit that I’m more sympathetic to communism than most but what is this? Twenty four pages in, the author has not presented their own or, better yet, a reliable source’s analysis of either Stalin’s “management style” (like a quarterly review?), or Soviet style communism that justify this blanket statement. David Glantz- an historian who is known to author- could have provided both but, such a reputable source is not utilized.

The book’s central claim: that Operation Bagration was critical to the success of the Normandy Campaign is justified, and almost certainly correct. If the author had limited themselves to that claim instead of getting caught up on minutiae such as “Stalin’s management style,” it could have succeeded despite the terrible writing style.

[Philippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book for somebody (like most Americans) who has no idea what happened on the Eastern front and how the Russians exhausted and eventually annihilated the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front. If you are familiar with the war east you do get a few interesting facts but the book is not a great revelation. At times the information is repetitive and seems to be just material to fill pages.
All in all a good solid book.

[George Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed in this book, which had surprisingly little material actually describing Operation Bagration, the Red Army offensive in Belarus in the summer of 1944 that destroyed the largest German Army Group - a mere 21 pages. I also had significant issues with the author's arguments on causality. Rather than Bagration creating the situation for the Allied breakout from Normandy as he argues, I would say the evidence better supports the argument that the diversion of much of the Panzer divisions that formed the mobile reserves for Army Group Center and Army Groups North and South Ukraine to Normandy as a response to the threat of invasion left the Germans without the flexibility and mobility to respond to Zhukov's offensive - the Germans had redeployed 10 Panzer and Panzergrenadier Divisions to the Channel coast, and had eight deployed in Italy facing Alexander's Army Group. This represented a shift of 10 Divisions - approximately 1/4 of the total German Mechanized force, primarily from Army Group Center in the months leading up to Bagration. Rather than drawing troops away from Normandy, the threat of and actual invasion a month before Stalin launched Bagration drew troops way from the Belarus front, leading to catastrophic results for the Germans.