What do you think?
Rate this book
Soviet Blitzkrieg: The Battle for White Russia, 1944
Two weeks after the Americans, British, and Canadians invaded Western Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, its massive attempt to clear German forces from Belarus. In one of the largest military campaigns of all time, involving 2 million Soviets and 800,000 Germans, the Red Army advanced 170 miles in two weeks and destroyed German Army Group Center. Using recently declassified Soviet documents as well as German and Soviet unit histories, Dunn recounts this landmark operation of World War II.
272 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 2008
34 people want to read
About the author
Walter S. Dunn Jr.
14 books3 followersWALTER S. DUNN, JR. had a 40-year career directing museums, including the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society and the Iowa Science Center. His books include The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945 (1995), Hitler's Nemesis: The Red Army (1994), and Second Front Now, 1943 (1981).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 11, 2024
This book falls in the category of books over which armchair generals and analysts (because I have lost any hope that actual military people read history at all following the events of the last few years) drool. It is a sort of material that I can see used for numerous reenactments and "wise" what-if scenarios (out of which majority would be on the side of Germans). This is a shame because this book portrays two things very good - sheer expanse of Eastern front and limitations of WW2 most famous theme - Blitzkrieg - which got confirmed in last few years. There is no wonder weapon that can help, and all manouvering of the world can not save the side without fire power to put on the enemy. In large areas, especially ones with lots of towns and cities, manouver warfare is a recipe for getting blown away if one does not produce fuel and ammunition within the columns themselves (as events of week when this is written show very well). You can pretend to be Mad Max, but that does not help when a 1-and-a-half ton bomb blows up in the middle of the column or barrage of artillery and ATGMs strike from beyond. All of this was case 80 years ago and will be case 100s of years in the future.
Back to the book.
Contents are divided into introduction, actual offensive, and fnally the conclusion.
Introduction shows that at the time of the offensive Red Army was already on a level way beyond German's capacity. Technologically and in a warfighting scope, they were already outmatching the Germans. We can talk how Germans were excellent tactically but that is BS if you ask me - if you are constantly fighting a combat retreat and then after 2 days your entire combat ready troop falls into disarray because of catastrophic losses and general loss of leadership - you are not mythical army post-1945 talks would like you to be.
Part of the book concerning the offensive is very intensive and covers multiple assault directions used by the Red Army, almost on a day to day basis, from bringing the forces to the frontline, initial push, breakthrough and then advancements into German rear area. One reviewer has already noted that there are not enough maps, and it is true to a degree - every chapter covering certain directions of offensive has opening and closing maps. If you want to see maps describing advancements all the time, that would be like book page animation, and the book would probably be as thick as the Bible. For me, I could manage to track the various advancements and battles, although after a while, some things do get repetitive, but this is because events from previous chapter overlap (both in time period and geography) with the respective current chapter. Again, not much of a problem, at least for me.
The author belongs to the manouver school of warfare because as chapters go and the main offensive push starts encountering more resistance from Germans' reserves, war becomes slower and more bloody. Interestingly, the author does not discuss how Germans were in attrition type of war for a long period already and they accepted it because they were aware that there is just no way of launching any high manouver strikes in a theater of operations of this size with the forces they have. After advancing almost 300km soviet forces had to stop and adjust the speed, and this caused a return to grind approach to warfare. But in all honesty, is this so difficult to predict considering the density of forces in the field, in some cases multiple divisions on a front, maybe 50km long? Look at todays combat in the very same area - there are no corps or divisions entering fray with hundreds of guns or rocket systems, we are talking about at most brigades and again there are no massive breakthroughs because of satellite coverage, early detection systems (that NATO is providing almost constantly) - breakthroughs do happen but after destroying the defenses to the limit when they have to retreat. There will definitely be developments on camouflaging activities from the sky monitoring systems, one of the easiest being termination of all satellites above certain areas (since all commercial satellites are used for military purposes too) but this is just yet encountered and will take some time to mature.
Thankfully, the author does not go into so cliche discussions of the human wave approach to warfare -most probably because both sides engaged in it with large infantry formations. events form last few years show that Western command is not above using human wave approach in what seems to be very costly and experimental attacks with absolutely no gains and huge technical loss. This just shows that realities of conventional war are much different from what proponents of technology would like us to think (although to be honest these Western commanders are not deploying their troops but sacrifice the proxy troops to which I do not believe they have any emphatic link).
All in all, a very good presentation of intensive combat and challenges set before both parties. The greatest value is that it shows that when fighting peer enemy war is not just buzzing around.
Conclusion, though, was sort of a revelation for me. The author gives one explanation on why the Soviets started the rush towards the Berlin and accepted casualties as they were (although I dont think casualties would be any lower either case). Apparently UK had a plan to repeat the WW1 Allied intervention using (wait for it) remobilized German army (after German surrender) in order to impose the will of UK and USA on Soviet Union (this is from the official documents that can be found online). Even if this was just one of the reasons for Soviets behaving as they did, I can only say that the UK never stopped their wars with Russia, either Imperial Russia, Soviet Union, and today's Russia. There seems to be an attempt every 20-30 years to rekindle strife (let's not forget that war against Ukrainian UPA lasted to the beginning of the 1950s and was supported by the UK). Some grudges never die, I guess.
Excellent book, sometimes a little bit too many participants in the events, but author definitely managed to capture the intensity of combat and elements that enabled Red Army to break the German Army Group Center. And definitely resonates even today.
Highly recommended.
Back to the book.
Contents are divided into introduction, actual offensive, and fnally the conclusion.
Introduction shows that at the time of the offensive Red Army was already on a level way beyond German's capacity. Technologically and in a warfighting scope, they were already outmatching the Germans. We can talk how Germans were excellent tactically but that is BS if you ask me - if you are constantly fighting a combat retreat and then after 2 days your entire combat ready troop falls into disarray because of catastrophic losses and general loss of leadership - you are not mythical army post-1945 talks would like you to be.
Part of the book concerning the offensive is very intensive and covers multiple assault directions used by the Red Army, almost on a day to day basis, from bringing the forces to the frontline, initial push, breakthrough and then advancements into German rear area. One reviewer has already noted that there are not enough maps, and it is true to a degree - every chapter covering certain directions of offensive has opening and closing maps. If you want to see maps describing advancements all the time, that would be like book page animation, and the book would probably be as thick as the Bible. For me, I could manage to track the various advancements and battles, although after a while, some things do get repetitive, but this is because events from previous chapter overlap (both in time period and geography) with the respective current chapter. Again, not much of a problem, at least for me.
The author belongs to the manouver school of warfare because as chapters go and the main offensive push starts encountering more resistance from Germans' reserves, war becomes slower and more bloody. Interestingly, the author does not discuss how Germans were in attrition type of war for a long period already and they accepted it because they were aware that there is just no way of launching any high manouver strikes in a theater of operations of this size with the forces they have. After advancing almost 300km soviet forces had to stop and adjust the speed, and this caused a return to grind approach to warfare. But in all honesty, is this so difficult to predict considering the density of forces in the field, in some cases multiple divisions on a front, maybe 50km long? Look at todays combat in the very same area - there are no corps or divisions entering fray with hundreds of guns or rocket systems, we are talking about at most brigades and again there are no massive breakthroughs because of satellite coverage, early detection systems (that NATO is providing almost constantly) - breakthroughs do happen but after destroying the defenses to the limit when they have to retreat. There will definitely be developments on camouflaging activities from the sky monitoring systems, one of the easiest being termination of all satellites above certain areas (since all commercial satellites are used for military purposes too) but this is just yet encountered and will take some time to mature.
Thankfully, the author does not go into so cliche discussions of the human wave approach to warfare -most probably because both sides engaged in it with large infantry formations. events form last few years show that Western command is not above using human wave approach in what seems to be very costly and experimental attacks with absolutely no gains and huge technical loss. This just shows that realities of conventional war are much different from what proponents of technology would like us to think (although to be honest these Western commanders are not deploying their troops but sacrifice the proxy troops to which I do not believe they have any emphatic link).
All in all, a very good presentation of intensive combat and challenges set before both parties. The greatest value is that it shows that when fighting peer enemy war is not just buzzing around.
Conclusion, though, was sort of a revelation for me. The author gives one explanation on why the Soviets started the rush towards the Berlin and accepted casualties as they were (although I dont think casualties would be any lower either case). Apparently UK had a plan to repeat the WW1 Allied intervention using (wait for it) remobilized German army (after German surrender) in order to impose the will of UK and USA on Soviet Union (this is from the official documents that can be found online). Even if this was just one of the reasons for Soviets behaving as they did, I can only say that the UK never stopped their wars with Russia, either Imperial Russia, Soviet Union, and today's Russia. There seems to be an attempt every 20-30 years to rekindle strife (let's not forget that war against Ukrainian UPA lasted to the beginning of the 1950s and was supported by the UK). Some grudges never die, I guess.
Excellent book, sometimes a little bit too many participants in the events, but author definitely managed to capture the intensity of combat and elements that enabled Red Army to break the German Army Group Center. And definitely resonates even today.
Highly recommended.
October 12, 2018
Technical book about Bagration Operation, the biggest defeat of Germany in the WWII. Full of details, few maps.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews