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Modern War Studies
Stalingrad
The long awaited one-volume campaign history from the leading experts of the decisive clash of Nazi and Soviet forces at Stalingrad; an abridged edition of the five volume Stalingrad Trilogy
Praise for The Stalingrad
David Glantz has done something that very few historians achieve. He has redefined an entire major The Russo-German War of 1941—1945. His exploration of newly available Russian archive records has made him an unrivaled master of Soviet sources. His command of German material is no less comprehensive. Add to this perceptive insight and balanced judgment, and the result is a series of seminal and massive volumes that come as close as possible to ‘telling it like it was.&’ Glantz has done some of his best work with Jonathan House. The Stalingrad Trilogy is the definitive account of World War II’s turning point."*#8212; World War II
"Undoubtedly, the best researched narrative of Soviet-German battle during the period. . . . Thorough, informative, scrupulously accurate, and told with remarkable precision and reliability."— Journal of Military History
Glantz and House have produced seminal studies of major events on the Eastern Front. In terms of research, insight, and revision, this is their best yet [reflecting] an unrivalled access to and mastery of written and human Russian sources on the Great Patriotic War."— Slavic Review
"No literature review of the Nazi-Soviet war could be complete without the outstanding work done by David Glantz and Jonathan House. What they have done is illustrate how much more there is to the Battle of Stalingrad and why their more comprehensive account changes our understanding of the campaign. The late John Erickson wrote that the research of Glantz and House reflected an ‘encyclopedic knowledge’ of the Nazi-Soviet war and constituted a benchmark for excellence in the field."— War in History
"Glantz and House [have written] the definitive history of the Stalingrad campaign. Their trilogy, backed by meticulous scholarship and refreshingly fair-minded, significantly alters long-accepted views of several important aspects of the campaign. . . . A monumental work that is unlikely to be surpassed as an account of the most important single campaign of the Second World War."— Ewan Mawdlsey , author of Thunder in the the Nazi-Soviet War, 1941—1945
Praise for The Stalingrad
David Glantz has done something that very few historians achieve. He has redefined an entire major The Russo-German War of 1941—1945. His exploration of newly available Russian archive records has made him an unrivaled master of Soviet sources. His command of German material is no less comprehensive. Add to this perceptive insight and balanced judgment, and the result is a series of seminal and massive volumes that come as close as possible to ‘telling it like it was.&’ Glantz has done some of his best work with Jonathan House. The Stalingrad Trilogy is the definitive account of World War II’s turning point."*#8212; World War II
"Undoubtedly, the best researched narrative of Soviet-German battle during the period. . . . Thorough, informative, scrupulously accurate, and told with remarkable precision and reliability."— Journal of Military History
Glantz and House have produced seminal studies of major events on the Eastern Front. In terms of research, insight, and revision, this is their best yet [reflecting] an unrivalled access to and mastery of written and human Russian sources on the Great Patriotic War."— Slavic Review
"No literature review of the Nazi-Soviet war could be complete without the outstanding work done by David Glantz and Jonathan House. What they have done is illustrate how much more there is to the Battle of Stalingrad and why their more comprehensive account changes our understanding of the campaign. The late John Erickson wrote that the research of Glantz and House reflected an ‘encyclopedic knowledge’ of the Nazi-Soviet war and constituted a benchmark for excellence in the field."— War in History
"Glantz and House [have written] the definitive history of the Stalingrad campaign. Their trilogy, backed by meticulous scholarship and refreshingly fair-minded, significantly alters long-accepted views of several important aspects of the campaign. . . . A monumental work that is unlikely to be surpassed as an account of the most important single campaign of the Second World War."— Ewan Mawdlsey , author of Thunder in the the Nazi-Soviet War, 1941—1945
640 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 2017
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242 people want to read
About the author
David M. Glantz
100 books220 followersDavid M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies.
Glantz received degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Defense Language Institute, Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, and U.S. Army War College. He entered active service with the United States Army in 1963.
He began his military career in 1963 as a field artillery officer from 1965 to 1969, and served in various assignments in the United States, and in Vietnam during the Vietnam War with the II Field Force Fire Support Coordination Element (FSCE) at the Plantation in Long Binh.
After teaching history at the United States Military Academy from 1969 through 1973, he completed the army’s Soviet foreign area specialist program and became chief of Estimates in US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (USAREUR ODCSI) from 1977 to 1979. Upon his return to the United States in 1979, he became chief of research at the Army’s newly-formed Combat Studies Institute (CSI) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1979 to 1983 and then Director of Soviet Army Operations at the Center for Land Warfare, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from 1983 to 1986. While at the College, Col. Glantz was instrumental in conducting the annual "Art of War" symposia which produced the best analysis of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War in English to date. The symposia included attendance of a number of former German participants in the operations, and resulted in publication of the seminal transcripts of proceedings. Returning to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, he helped found and later directed the U.S. Army’s Soviet (later Foreign) Military Studies Office (FMSO), where he remained until his retirement in 1993 with the rank of Colonel.
In 1993, while at FMSO, he established The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, a scholarly journal for which he still serves as chief editor, that covers military affairs in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union.
A member of the Russian Federation’s Academy of Natural Sciences, he has written or co-authored more than twenty commercially published books, over sixty self-published studies and atlases, and over one hundred articles dealing with the history of the Red (Soviet) Army, Soviet military strategy, operational art, and tactics, Soviet airborne operations, intelligence, and deception, and other topics related to World War II. In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Society of Military History’s prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Prize for his contributions to the study of military history.
Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best western military historians of the Soviet role in World War II.[1] He is perhaps most associated with the thesis that World War II Soviet military history has been prejudiced in the West by its over-reliance on German oral and printed sources, without being balanced by a similar examination of Soviet source material. A more complete version of this thesis can be found in his paper “The Failures of Historiography: Forgotten Battles of the German-Soviet War (1941-1945).” Despite his acknowledged expertise, Glantz has occasionally been criticized for his stylistic choices, such as inventing specific thoughts and feelings of historical figures without reference to documented sources.
Glantz is also known as an opponent of Viktor Suvorov's thesis, which he endeavored to rebut with the book Stumbling Colossus.
He lives with his wife Mary Ann Glantz in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Glantzes' daughter Mary E. Glantz, also a historian, has written FDR And The Soviet Union: The President's Battles Over Forei
Glantz received degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Defense Language Institute, Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, and U.S. Army War College. He entered active service with the United States Army in 1963.
He began his military career in 1963 as a field artillery officer from 1965 to 1969, and served in various assignments in the United States, and in Vietnam during the Vietnam War with the II Field Force Fire Support Coordination Element (FSCE) at the Plantation in Long Binh.
After teaching history at the United States Military Academy from 1969 through 1973, he completed the army’s Soviet foreign area specialist program and became chief of Estimates in US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (USAREUR ODCSI) from 1977 to 1979. Upon his return to the United States in 1979, he became chief of research at the Army’s newly-formed Combat Studies Institute (CSI) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1979 to 1983 and then Director of Soviet Army Operations at the Center for Land Warfare, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from 1983 to 1986. While at the College, Col. Glantz was instrumental in conducting the annual "Art of War" symposia which produced the best analysis of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War in English to date. The symposia included attendance of a number of former German participants in the operations, and resulted in publication of the seminal transcripts of proceedings. Returning to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, he helped found and later directed the U.S. Army’s Soviet (later Foreign) Military Studies Office (FMSO), where he remained until his retirement in 1993 with the rank of Colonel.
In 1993, while at FMSO, he established The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, a scholarly journal for which he still serves as chief editor, that covers military affairs in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union.
A member of the Russian Federation’s Academy of Natural Sciences, he has written or co-authored more than twenty commercially published books, over sixty self-published studies and atlases, and over one hundred articles dealing with the history of the Red (Soviet) Army, Soviet military strategy, operational art, and tactics, Soviet airborne operations, intelligence, and deception, and other topics related to World War II. In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Society of Military History’s prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Prize for his contributions to the study of military history.
Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best western military historians of the Soviet role in World War II.[1] He is perhaps most associated with the thesis that World War II Soviet military history has been prejudiced in the West by its over-reliance on German oral and printed sources, without being balanced by a similar examination of Soviet source material. A more complete version of this thesis can be found in his paper “The Failures of Historiography: Forgotten Battles of the German-Soviet War (1941-1945).” Despite his acknowledged expertise, Glantz has occasionally been criticized for his stylistic choices, such as inventing specific thoughts and feelings of historical figures without reference to documented sources.
Glantz is also known as an opponent of Viktor Suvorov's thesis, which he endeavored to rebut with the book Stumbling Colossus.
He lives with his wife Mary Ann Glantz in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Glantzes' daughter Mary E. Glantz, also a historian, has written FDR And The Soviet Union: The President's Battles Over Forei
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April 14, 2018
With this abridgement of his series on the Wehrmacht’s 1942 summer/fall campaign, Col Glantz still gives the reader a very good overview of both sides of the fighting. He explores Germany’s strategic decisions that led to probably the most important battle of the Second World War. He also details the growth of the combat capability of the Red Army the led to the surrender of the better part of two German field armies in February of 1943.
Starting with the planning for the Wehrmacht’s 1942 summer offensive, the author looks at the basic goals for that offensive, the different options the Germans had – try and capture Moscow or roll the dice and go for the Oil Fields of the Caucasus. To the Soviets surprise, the Germans choose the Caucasus’ oil fields. According to the author, as the plans were being prepared, Stalingrad wasn’t even a subsidiary goal. The main goal was Baku and the oil fields. If the Germans could capture them, there oil troubles would be over and it would deny the Soviets 80% of their oil. Stalingrad was mentioned only as a good place to cut the Volga and stop the supplies going up river to the rest of the USSR. He also makes the point that the Germans were not strong enough to attack on two major axis.
In describing the early battles, he looks at the improvement of the war making skills of the Red Army. Time and time again the great encirclements that the Wehrmacht had achieved the previous year, evaded them. As the Germans advance, they decide to attack on two axis, continuing to advance towards Baku and the oil field while deciding Stalingrad would be a plumb in the Wehrmacht's cap. Col Glantz reiterates they did not have the combat power to do both, virtually inviting the disaster that coming winter.
In discussing the leadership of the two armies, the author surprisingly gives Paulus benefit of the doubt in many of his decisions. While not a military genius, he is presented as a competent commander and doing the best with what he has. He is also presented as someone who wouldn’t disobey orders from on high, in spite of his professional opinion.
When the orders are given to capture Stalingrad, the author does a good job of detailing just what that entailed. He looks at urban combat in Stalingrad itself, for which the Wehrmacht was not really trained or prepared, did to the various units of the 6th Army. While Col Glantz does not go into great first person detail about the fighting in the city, he does illustrate just what it did to the infantry and panzer battalions of the 6th and 4th Panzer Armies.
The author also do a superb job of telling the Soviet side of the story. From the 62 Army’s desperate struggle to hold on the west bank of the Volga with insufficient man power. He tells of why the Stavka, the Soviet High Command, didn’t release more men to Chuikov. They gave the 62nd just enough replacements so that the city would not fall. Col Glantz also does a commendable job of telling the story of the growth of the Soviet Army’s ability to conduct offensive operations. The author makes a point of telling of the Soviet counter attacks all throughout the German advance to Stalingrad, the how their failures taught the Soviets many important lessons and how those lessons were applied during Operation Uranus in November/December.
Finally when the author reaches the battles of Operation Uranus, he goes against the conventional view and says the Italian and the Romanian Armies put up a good fight and didn’t collapse at the first sign of Russian T-34s. However, they were completely out gunned and did not have the antitank weapons to be much more than a minor hindrance to the Soviets. Col Glantz also has a slightly revisionist take on the relief attempts made by the Germans. By the time the pocket closed around Stalingrad, the Germans were almost totally immobile. They had sent almost 2/3rds of their horses out of the battle zone for the winter and the vehicles were almost totally out of fuel. According to Glantz, this made a breakout attempt almost totally impossible. To retreat from Stalingrad would have entailed leaving their heavy equipment behind. He also accuses Von Manstein of cooking the books in his reports about the relief attempts, starting a few days later than he claimed. In addition, Glantz looks at Goring’s and by extension the Luftwaffe’s claims to be able to supply the trapped armies. The Col cites figure that it would have taken 750 tons of supplies and ammo/day to keep the pocket fighting and 300/day just to keep them alive. Every Ju-52 the Luftwaffe owned could have barely supplied the 750 tons. He makes a point that on the best day the Luftwaffe delivered just under 120 tons.
In summery, this is an extremely well researched, slightly revisionist and probably more importantly, unlike some of Col Glantz' other works, readable look at the major turning point of WW II. One critique - while the author includes lots and lots of maps, I found many of them unreadable. I would hate to think what they would look like on a nook or kindle. I found it a solid 4 star read.
Starting with the planning for the Wehrmacht’s 1942 summer offensive, the author looks at the basic goals for that offensive, the different options the Germans had – try and capture Moscow or roll the dice and go for the Oil Fields of the Caucasus. To the Soviets surprise, the Germans choose the Caucasus’ oil fields. According to the author, as the plans were being prepared, Stalingrad wasn’t even a subsidiary goal. The main goal was Baku and the oil fields. If the Germans could capture them, there oil troubles would be over and it would deny the Soviets 80% of their oil. Stalingrad was mentioned only as a good place to cut the Volga and stop the supplies going up river to the rest of the USSR. He also makes the point that the Germans were not strong enough to attack on two major axis.
In describing the early battles, he looks at the improvement of the war making skills of the Red Army. Time and time again the great encirclements that the Wehrmacht had achieved the previous year, evaded them. As the Germans advance, they decide to attack on two axis, continuing to advance towards Baku and the oil field while deciding Stalingrad would be a plumb in the Wehrmacht's cap. Col Glantz reiterates they did not have the combat power to do both, virtually inviting the disaster that coming winter.
In discussing the leadership of the two armies, the author surprisingly gives Paulus benefit of the doubt in many of his decisions. While not a military genius, he is presented as a competent commander and doing the best with what he has. He is also presented as someone who wouldn’t disobey orders from on high, in spite of his professional opinion.
When the orders are given to capture Stalingrad, the author does a good job of detailing just what that entailed. He looks at urban combat in Stalingrad itself, for which the Wehrmacht was not really trained or prepared, did to the various units of the 6th Army. While Col Glantz does not go into great first person detail about the fighting in the city, he does illustrate just what it did to the infantry and panzer battalions of the 6th and 4th Panzer Armies.
The author also do a superb job of telling the Soviet side of the story. From the 62 Army’s desperate struggle to hold on the west bank of the Volga with insufficient man power. He tells of why the Stavka, the Soviet High Command, didn’t release more men to Chuikov. They gave the 62nd just enough replacements so that the city would not fall. Col Glantz also does a commendable job of telling the story of the growth of the Soviet Army’s ability to conduct offensive operations. The author makes a point of telling of the Soviet counter attacks all throughout the German advance to Stalingrad, the how their failures taught the Soviets many important lessons and how those lessons were applied during Operation Uranus in November/December.
Finally when the author reaches the battles of Operation Uranus, he goes against the conventional view and says the Italian and the Romanian Armies put up a good fight and didn’t collapse at the first sign of Russian T-34s. However, they were completely out gunned and did not have the antitank weapons to be much more than a minor hindrance to the Soviets. Col Glantz also has a slightly revisionist take on the relief attempts made by the Germans. By the time the pocket closed around Stalingrad, the Germans were almost totally immobile. They had sent almost 2/3rds of their horses out of the battle zone for the winter and the vehicles were almost totally out of fuel. According to Glantz, this made a breakout attempt almost totally impossible. To retreat from Stalingrad would have entailed leaving their heavy equipment behind. He also accuses Von Manstein of cooking the books in his reports about the relief attempts, starting a few days later than he claimed. In addition, Glantz looks at Goring’s and by extension the Luftwaffe’s claims to be able to supply the trapped armies. The Col cites figure that it would have taken 750 tons of supplies and ammo/day to keep the pocket fighting and 300/day just to keep them alive. Every Ju-52 the Luftwaffe owned could have barely supplied the 750 tons. He makes a point that on the best day the Luftwaffe delivered just under 120 tons.
In summery, this is an extremely well researched, slightly revisionist and probably more importantly, unlike some of Col Glantz' other works, readable look at the major turning point of WW II. One critique - while the author includes lots and lots of maps, I found many of them unreadable. I would hate to think what they would look like on a nook or kindle. I found it a solid 4 star read.
March 11, 2022
"Well, uhm, aaaaactualllly there were 12 regiments deployed west of the Don at that particular time of day, not 11. That's a common misnomer." - Mr. Maximus Correctus
You know who I'm talking about. The picky, specialist nerd ... the "'Actually' Guy" --who corrects you if you're pretty close, buuut not quite 100 percent there; not quite tooled to the most precise diamond tolerance in your knowing of things. Like the Civil War re-enactor who says you're a phony re-enactor unless you soil yourself and slog around in your squishy feces-laden mangy military trousers stinking out everyone within musket range ... or unless you chow down on hardtack with actual worms in it... or unless you get your leg cut off without anesthesia when you get hurt. Like the guys who watch the movie Patton and can't get past the minutiae, such as "those tanks aren't the kind that were actually at the battle of Kasserine Pass," or they don't have the correct markings, or the epaulets or medals on the officers' lapels weren't made by the actual foundry at Fort Lee, New Jersey, or that the riding crop is not made from true Kentucky filly horsehair, or whatever. Yeah, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
Anyway ... the people who can't see the forest for the trees and just enjoy shit. Them folks.
David Glantz is for those folks.
Here, we have the battle formation, deployment and sundry such details up the wazoo, all laid out in impeccable order. All spit and polished like Gomer Pyle's shoes, and quadruple-checked against all the archives in Europe, Russia, the USA and elsewhere. Every brigade and division accounted for. Fair and balanced. The Soviets did this, the Germans did that. All 50-50; no hint of favoritism or nationalistic taint. Let's bust a myth or two. Cool. He is the military historian's military historian. No fanciful tales of war heroics or blood-and-guts drama here. No sir. This here stuff is ACCURATE. I'd set my watch to it, if I had one -- and even then it would have to be an atomic clock made with dilithium crystals. There's nothing wrong with any of this; if orders of battle and troop movements ad nauseum are your thing. I used to think a pincer movement was a sex trick, but no, it's in this book so much that now I'm going to be thinking about Comrade Zhukov when I'm laying pipe. This is the kind of lit crafted for the top officer cadets at West Point, and it gives me flashbacks of cramming for college tests. The word, "moreover," is in it ... a LOT.
The 'Actually Guy' is never going to put one over on Glantz and Co. -- because that would be the worst possible fate for a military historian's military historian and the 'actually' guys who love him.
So if you're one of those armchair guys who wants to re-fight World War II, and be armed with the straight facts as you go into the verbal battle of wits and strategy, and out-'actually' all comers, this is where you can get them. Outflank and encircle your foes and figure out how to make Hitler win this time, because, oddly, that always seems to be the objective of such arguments. Which makes me wonder about whether you're maybe, I dunno, a Nazi or something?
For military heads, Glantz is the non plus ultra the nirvana and the holy om of military history. His work is the "book of record," and say no more. I've noticed this trend in recent years, to distinguish one's works by leaving no stones unturned, no myth unshattered, no good story busted, no nit not picked, particularly in the realm of biography. So now, every two-bit celebrities' biography traces his or her origins back to the Magna Carta...
Well, I love war books, but, I have to admit, I like my war books to feel like something more than a relentlessly ticked off laundry list. I need some stories, some heroics, some drama, some characters, some sweat and cursing to go with the x's and o's on the battle maps ("Actually, there aren't any x's and o's on a battle map. That's love letters; something I know nothing about." Me: "Shut up, Actually Guy!").
For me, you can pony up a smattering of straight-up BS, a few unsubstantiated legends, a bit of poetic artistic license once in awhile. If you tell me a guy had to drink brackish water out of a rusty canteen or wipe his butt with poison ivy, I'll remember that. But if you tell me the 53rd regiment had two engineers and four sappers at 0600 hours on the morning of July 26, and keep telling me details like that over and over for hundreds of pages, I ain't gonna remember that.
So, I get where the adherents are coming from, Glantz is the go-to guy. History is important, accuracy is essential, understanding is paramount. I do not argue with any of this. On the other hand, I'm just a book reader, an average book-reading guy looking for a good yarn or two. This is a review of me, not the eminent Mr. Glantz. But here, I think I've hit the barrier of advanced studies on a particular subject beyond which I will not go. In this book, one of the great tragedies and epic events of human history carries the emotional weight of a skinned knee.
I guess Antony Beevor and the like are my speed after all.
Interpretation and overlaid meaning and a flourish or two get a (Kasserine?) pass from me, because, I just like a well-written, sweeping yarn and I ain't out looking to "actually" anyone to the point of annoyance.
Not that I haven't, though.
KR@KY 2021
Addenda/Note: This book is actually a one-volume reduction edition of Glantz's massive five-volume work on Stalingrad, which obviously has even MORE detail than this, and this is pretty damned detailed.
Disclaimer -- before you fidgety ones get the itch to 'actually' me-- :
I respect what Glantz and serious historians do; their work is valuable and necessary, and it helps other authors. This review is by no means a pan of the book; it's simply an amusing take on my own tastes, really. Take it in a spirit of joshing, japery, hijinks and risible rapscallery, if I may coin a phrase. Thank you.
You know who I'm talking about. The picky, specialist nerd ... the "'Actually' Guy" --who corrects you if you're pretty close, buuut not quite 100 percent there; not quite tooled to the most precise diamond tolerance in your knowing of things. Like the Civil War re-enactor who says you're a phony re-enactor unless you soil yourself and slog around in your squishy feces-laden mangy military trousers stinking out everyone within musket range ... or unless you chow down on hardtack with actual worms in it... or unless you get your leg cut off without anesthesia when you get hurt. Like the guys who watch the movie Patton and can't get past the minutiae, such as "those tanks aren't the kind that were actually at the battle of Kasserine Pass," or they don't have the correct markings, or the epaulets or medals on the officers' lapels weren't made by the actual foundry at Fort Lee, New Jersey, or that the riding crop is not made from true Kentucky filly horsehair, or whatever. Yeah, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
Anyway ... the people who can't see the forest for the trees and just enjoy shit. Them folks.
David Glantz is for those folks.
Here, we have the battle formation, deployment and sundry such details up the wazoo, all laid out in impeccable order. All spit and polished like Gomer Pyle's shoes, and quadruple-checked against all the archives in Europe, Russia, the USA and elsewhere. Every brigade and division accounted for. Fair and balanced. The Soviets did this, the Germans did that. All 50-50; no hint of favoritism or nationalistic taint. Let's bust a myth or two. Cool. He is the military historian's military historian. No fanciful tales of war heroics or blood-and-guts drama here. No sir. This here stuff is ACCURATE. I'd set my watch to it, if I had one -- and even then it would have to be an atomic clock made with dilithium crystals. There's nothing wrong with any of this; if orders of battle and troop movements ad nauseum are your thing. I used to think a pincer movement was a sex trick, but no, it's in this book so much that now I'm going to be thinking about Comrade Zhukov when I'm laying pipe. This is the kind of lit crafted for the top officer cadets at West Point, and it gives me flashbacks of cramming for college tests. The word, "moreover," is in it ... a LOT.
The 'Actually Guy' is never going to put one over on Glantz and Co. -- because that would be the worst possible fate for a military historian's military historian and the 'actually' guys who love him.
So if you're one of those armchair guys who wants to re-fight World War II, and be armed with the straight facts as you go into the verbal battle of wits and strategy, and out-'actually' all comers, this is where you can get them. Outflank and encircle your foes and figure out how to make Hitler win this time, because, oddly, that always seems to be the objective of such arguments. Which makes me wonder about whether you're maybe, I dunno, a Nazi or something?
For military heads, Glantz is the non plus ultra the nirvana and the holy om of military history. His work is the "book of record," and say no more. I've noticed this trend in recent years, to distinguish one's works by leaving no stones unturned, no myth unshattered, no good story busted, no nit not picked, particularly in the realm of biography. So now, every two-bit celebrities' biography traces his or her origins back to the Magna Carta...
Well, I love war books, but, I have to admit, I like my war books to feel like something more than a relentlessly ticked off laundry list. I need some stories, some heroics, some drama, some characters, some sweat and cursing to go with the x's and o's on the battle maps ("Actually, there aren't any x's and o's on a battle map. That's love letters; something I know nothing about." Me: "Shut up, Actually Guy!").
For me, you can pony up a smattering of straight-up BS, a few unsubstantiated legends, a bit of poetic artistic license once in awhile. If you tell me a guy had to drink brackish water out of a rusty canteen or wipe his butt with poison ivy, I'll remember that. But if you tell me the 53rd regiment had two engineers and four sappers at 0600 hours on the morning of July 26, and keep telling me details like that over and over for hundreds of pages, I ain't gonna remember that.
So, I get where the adherents are coming from, Glantz is the go-to guy. History is important, accuracy is essential, understanding is paramount. I do not argue with any of this. On the other hand, I'm just a book reader, an average book-reading guy looking for a good yarn or two. This is a review of me, not the eminent Mr. Glantz. But here, I think I've hit the barrier of advanced studies on a particular subject beyond which I will not go. In this book, one of the great tragedies and epic events of human history carries the emotional weight of a skinned knee.
I guess Antony Beevor and the like are my speed after all.
Interpretation and overlaid meaning and a flourish or two get a (Kasserine?) pass from me, because, I just like a well-written, sweeping yarn and I ain't out looking to "actually" anyone to the point of annoyance.
Not that I haven't, though.
KR@KY 2021
Addenda/Note: This book is actually a one-volume reduction edition of Glantz's massive five-volume work on Stalingrad, which obviously has even MORE detail than this, and this is pretty damned detailed.
Disclaimer -- before you fidgety ones get the itch to 'actually' me-- :
I respect what Glantz and serious historians do; their work is valuable and necessary, and it helps other authors. This review is by no means a pan of the book; it's simply an amusing take on my own tastes, really. Take it in a spirit of joshing, japery, hijinks and risible rapscallery, if I may coin a phrase. Thank you.
February 22, 2025
I am a WWII unprofessional historian (I define “unprofessional”as a non-degreed person with a lot of knowledge about a subject. Since my 4th grade, I’ve read innumerable books (I estimate around 200) about WWII. Yes when young, the books would be considered Young Adult reader level. But by the time I’d hit 6th grade, my voracious WWII reading habits had exceeded the young adult holdings of my school and I was borrowing books from the High School and public library.
I write all of this for this reason: until recently, my knowledge of WWII’s Eastern Front (Germany vs Soviet Union) was minimal. So I’ve decided to address that through both non-fiction and fictional reading. This is at least the 5th book I believe in the last couple of years to help me address this.
Also as a reminder: in my military service in the US Army, I was at the end a commissioned officer. Part of that service included frequent discussions and classes about past military strategies and the why behind them. The Eastern Front was always intriguing for the elementary fact that Germany/Hitler came so close to capturing the USSR but yet so far. And because they had stretched themselves out so thinly there, they could not hold back the Allies elsewhere, especially when the United States entered with its industrial might to support not only itself but all the other Allied combatants.
Stalingrad was the farthest east Germany was able to push. The city was literally destroyed but the Soviets prevailed. The numbers of dead and wounded on both sides were astronomical. Germany lost in surrender a whole army. And at the end, the battles were fought in the dead of one of the worst Soviet winters ever. This was the battle when finally the Soviet Union got its political and military leadership and tactical collaboration together. The Germans never came close to prevailing again.
The continuous battle lasted approximately 6-1/2 months from July 17, 1943 to February 2, 1943.
Best estimates on total military dead: 1.2 million. Military casualties: approximately 2.0 million. Civilian dead and wounded: estimated between 40,000 and 70,000 but I believe that number is way too low.
This book is a day to day tactical voyage. It especially impacted me by the level of senseless deaths incurred by the average soviet soldier because of the incompetence of his/her leader in the beginning and by the senseless leadership of Hitler and his military hierarchy to withdraw the German troops before they were surrounded and they were subjected to a month long siege to force their ultimate surrender.
I write all of this for this reason: until recently, my knowledge of WWII’s Eastern Front (Germany vs Soviet Union) was minimal. So I’ve decided to address that through both non-fiction and fictional reading. This is at least the 5th book I believe in the last couple of years to help me address this.
Also as a reminder: in my military service in the US Army, I was at the end a commissioned officer. Part of that service included frequent discussions and classes about past military strategies and the why behind them. The Eastern Front was always intriguing for the elementary fact that Germany/Hitler came so close to capturing the USSR but yet so far. And because they had stretched themselves out so thinly there, they could not hold back the Allies elsewhere, especially when the United States entered with its industrial might to support not only itself but all the other Allied combatants.
Stalingrad was the farthest east Germany was able to push. The city was literally destroyed but the Soviets prevailed. The numbers of dead and wounded on both sides were astronomical. Germany lost in surrender a whole army. And at the end, the battles were fought in the dead of one of the worst Soviet winters ever. This was the battle when finally the Soviet Union got its political and military leadership and tactical collaboration together. The Germans never came close to prevailing again.
The continuous battle lasted approximately 6-1/2 months from July 17, 1943 to February 2, 1943.
Best estimates on total military dead: 1.2 million. Military casualties: approximately 2.0 million. Civilian dead and wounded: estimated between 40,000 and 70,000 but I believe that number is way too low.
This book is a day to day tactical voyage. It especially impacted me by the level of senseless deaths incurred by the average soviet soldier because of the incompetence of his/her leader in the beginning and by the senseless leadership of Hitler and his military hierarchy to withdraw the German troops before they were surrounded and they were subjected to a month long siege to force their ultimate surrender.
March 14, 2018
Another excellent chapter of Germany's war with Russia. The personal drama that other books on Stalingrad emphasize is replaced by a narrative of the operational level.
Appreciated the authors taking the reader thru the events that led up to the battle and the lacing of consequences of actions taken by both sides.
Appreciated the authors taking the reader thru the events that led up to the battle and the lacing of consequences of actions taken by both sides.
August 28, 2021
Book: Stalingrad
Author: David M. Glantz, Jonathan M. House
Publisher: University Press of Kansas; Abridged edition (30 July 2019)
Language: English
Paperback: 640 pages
Item Weight: 849 g
Dimensions: 15.24 x 3.56 x 22.61 cm
Country of Origin: USA
Price: 2715/-
“Approaching this place, soldiers used to say: ‘We are entering hell.’ And after spending one or two days here, they say: ‘No, this isn't hell, this is ten times worse than hell.’” – Soviet general Vasily Chuikov
Stalin chose his most excellent general, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, to lead the more than one million soldiers who would stand between Germany and the prized city.
Stalin made sure that they were recurrently supplied with every reasonable military equipment available, from tanks and aircraft to guns and ammunition.
Zhukov, who had never been defeated, held the line until November 19, when Stalin ordered him to attack the now weary Germans.
In a watchfully planned pincer maneuver, the Soviet armies attacked from both the north and the south, charily encircling the German troops until the German general, Friedrich Paulus, begged Hitler to allow him to withdraw.
But by then the Fuhrer was obsessed with capturing the city that he refused his general’s pleas, so the Germans attempted to hold on, losing thousands of additional men without taking the city.
When the remains of the German 6th Army finally surrendered in February 1943, they had lost about 1.5 million men and over 6,000 tanks and aircraft in a little more than 5 months of fighting.
The Soviets lost a staggering number as well, with estimates of over 1 million casualties.
In this abridged edition of the five volume ‘Stalingrad Trilogy’, David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House have fruitfully shown that altogether, the Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest battle in the history of warfare, and the Soviets’ decisive victory there is considered one of the biggest decisive moments in the entire war, and undoubtedly in the European theater.
Over the next two years, the German gains in Russia were progressively reversed, and the Red Army eventually began pushing west towards Berlin. Fittingly, the importance of Stalingrad was commemorated in several ways, from Churchill presenting Stalin with a “Sword of Stalingrad” to the Russians’ decision not to rebuild parts of the battle scarred city as a reminder of what happened there.
This abridged version at length covers the entire military situation that led up to the battle, examines the choices made by the battle’s most important leaders, and elucidates the aftermath of the Soviet victory.
Along with a hefty bibliography and hundreds pictures of important people and places, the reader will learn about the Battle of Stalingrad like he has never before.
The battle was the greatest military bloodbath in recorded history. Well over a million men and women died because of Stalingrad, a number far surpassing the previous records of dead at the first battle of the Somme and Verdun in 1916.
The toll breaks down as follows:
*Conversations with official Russian sources on a not-for attribution basis (and it must be remembered that the Russians have never officially admitted their losses in World War II) put the loss of Red Army soldiers at Stalingrad at 750,000 killed, wounded, or missing in action.
*The Germans lost almost 400,000 men.
*The Italians lost more than 130,000 men out of their 200,000-man army.
*The Hungarians lost approximately 120,000 men.
*The Rumanians also lost approximately 200,000 men around Stalingrad.
As for the civilian population of the city, a prewar census listed more than 500,000 people prior to the outbreak of World War II. This number increased as a flood of refugees poured into the city from other areas of Russia that were in danger of being overrun by the Germans.
A portion of Stalingrad's citizens were evacuated prior to the first German attack but 40,000 civilians were known to have died in the first two days of bombing in the city. No one knows how many died on the barricades or in the antitank ditches or in the surrounding steppes.
Official records show only one stark fact: after the battle ended, a census found only 1,515 people who had lived in Stalingrad in 1942.
The book unfolds over four hundred and ninety eight pages and includes countless maps, and is followed by 61 pages of notes which are sorted by the books twenty chapters.
An eleven page bibliography then precedes a comprehensive index. Glantz and House present a thorough addition to the volumes of prior books that cover the Battle of Stalingrad.
What do we learn from this abridged version? Well, we learn the following points:
1) Battered for more than a year by the Nazi juggernaut, most soldiers in the Soviet Army had become convinced the Germans were unbeatable. Thousands of them streamed into enemy lines to ask for succour. Thousands more bolted from the front lines and ran away.
2) In unoccupied Russia, the civilian population fell victim to the same despair. With millions dead or under German control, with food, clothing, and shelter in increasingly short supply, the majority of the Russian people had begun to doubt their leadership and their armies.
3) The surprising victory over the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad changed that negative attitude. Psychologically buoyed by this magnificent triumph against the "Nazi supermen" both civilians and military braced for the grueling tasks ahead. And though the ultimate destruction of the Third Reich would prove to be a long and costly struggle, the Russians never again doubted they would win.
4) After Stalingrad, they moved resolutely westward, straight to Berlin, and the legacy of their arduous passage into the heartland of Germany remains with us to this day. For the Soviet Union, the path to its present role as a superpower began at the Volga River, where, as Winston Churchill described it, "the hinge of fate had turned. . . ."
5) For the Germans, Stalingrad was the single most traumatic event of the war. Never before had one of their elite armies succumbed in the field. Never before had so many soldiers vanished without trace in the vast wilderness of an alien country. Stalingrad was a mind-paralyzing calamity to a nation that believed it was the master race.
6) A creeping cynicism began to invade the minds of those who had chanted "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" at Hitler's rallies, and the myth of the Führer's genius slowly dissolved under the impact of the reality of Stalingrad. In furtive conversations, men once too demure to move against the regime began to make concrete plans to overthrow it. Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.
7) The story changed with the passing days—as does all history. The brilliant German offensive to the Volga paled in relation to the inspired defense of Stalingrad by the Russians.
8) Beyond that, most gripping of all, was the gradual moral and physical disintegration of the German soldiers as they realized they were doomed. In their struggle to cope with the unthinkable, lies the ultimate drama of the event.
9) Viciousness, brutality, and spinelessness are undeniably prominent in the story. Jealousy, overriding ambition, and callousness to human suffering occur with shocking frequency.
And,
10) The origins of the Red Army’s victory in World War II lay in the stupendous struggle on the Volga conducted between 13 September 1942 and 2 February 1943. As Alexander Werth wandered about the shattered city of Stalingrad in February 1943 in the days following 6th Army’s annihilation, he stood in awe at the scale of the destruction: Trenches ran through the factory yards; through the workshops themselves; at the bottom of the trenches there still lay frozen green Germans and frozen grey Russians and frozen fragments of human shape, and there were tin helmets, German and Russian, lying among the brick debris, and the helmets were half-filled with snow. There was barbed wire here, and half-uncovered mines, and shell cases, and more rubble, and fragments of walls, and torturous tangles of rusty steel girders. How anyone could have survived here was hard to imagine. The 6th German Army commanded by Colonel-General Friedrich Paulus had not survived: it had been destroyed.
Man desires to greatness, but all too often his hopes are submerged by the primitive instinct to survive at any cost. What happens is not pleasant reading. No book that deals with widespread slaughter can be. At Stalingrad we are witnesses to monumental human tragedy.
On 3 February 1943 the news of 6th Army’s defeat was released to the German people. Although Hitler’s regime acknowledged that 6th Army had been beaten, it refused to admit that many German officers and soldiers had surrendered rather than fight to the death. In an official communique, as misleading as it was revealing, ‘The supreme command of the Wehrmacht announces that the battle of Stalingrad has come to an end.
True to its oath of allegiance, the Sixth Army under the exemplary leadership of Field Marshal Paulus has been annihilated by the overwhelming superiority of enemys numbers.’ Stalingrad was not simply a military defeat; it was a catastrophe. The eyes of the world had been fixed upon the drama unfolding on the Volga, and the Wehrmacht’s aura of invincibility was shattered forever as the scale of the German defeat became apparent.
Two German armies, Paulus’s 6th Army and Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army, had been destroyed and Richthofen’s Air Fleet 4 brought to the point of collapse. In Germany, three days of national mourning were declared and a deep conviction in the superiority of German arms was replaced by a profound, if rarely acknowledged, fear of defeat.
To the peoples of the Soviet Union, Stalingrad represented the first moment of triumph in a bitter war for survival, replacing dark nightmares of defeat at the hands of the Nazis with the conviction that victory, although it would not come easily, would eventually come. Although the war was far from over, it had taken a decisive turn against Nazi Germany.
I am tempted to investigate a citation of a critic who upholds that the book's dynamisms are, in large part, its flaws. The weaknesses of this book are as follows:
1) The accessibility of Soviet/Russian archives offer a standpoint upon the battle that one can now say is equal and balanced when combined with the German histories.
2) One becomes mislaid amid the numerous diverse Soviet formations, especially in regard to flank coverage of the major units.
3) The maps provided add to the confusion as units are not listed, or cannot be found, as well as many of the towns, rivers, hills etc that would prove beneficial to the reader in regard to when and where units are moving and contacting their foes. Of the 104 maps provided, many fall far short of illustrating the phases of the battle, nor add to the reader's ability to digest what transpires during the time period covered in the books pages.
4) This book is NOT meant for a beginner.
For yours truly, individually, this abridged version was profitably able to drive home the following points:
A) Stalingrad in the fall of 1942 and the distasteful campaign the Red Army conducted in the winter of 1942–43 were indeed critical moments in the Soviet-German War. At Stalingrad, for the second time in the war, the Red Army succeeded in halting a major German offensive and, thereafter, mounted a successful counteroffensive of its own during which, for the first time in the war, multiple Red Army tank and mechanized corps succeeded in exploiting deep into the Germans’ rear area, subsequently defeating, encircling, and destroying an entire German army.
B) As a result, the battle of Stalingrad became the most important of three identifiable turning points in the war. The first of these turning points had occurred the year before, at Moscow in December 1941, when, by halting and defeating Hitler’s Barbarossa juggernaut, the Red Army proved that Nazi Germany could not win the war on Hitler’s original terms.
C) The second turning point, the Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad in November 1942, indicated that Hitler could not win the war on any terms favorable to the Third Reich. The war’s third turning point, the climactic battle fought at Kursk in July and August 1943, confirmed that Germany would indeed lose the war.
D) After Kursk, the only unanswered question was, “How long would it take for the Red Army to win final victory?”
E) After achieving victory in the Stalingrad region during late November 1942, in December 1942 and January and February 1943, the Red Army expanded its counteroffensive into a full-fledged offensive campaign, which ultimately encompassed the entire southern wing of the Soviet-German front and endured until late March 1943.
F) As is the case with the war as a whole, the fighting during this period of the war is fraught with stereotypes fashioned and passed on to us by multiple generations of postwar German, Soviet, and other Western historians.
The book is innovative and batshit exasperating at the same time.
Grab a copy if you’re an advanced reader. Else, you could give it a skip.
Author: David M. Glantz, Jonathan M. House
Publisher: University Press of Kansas; Abridged edition (30 July 2019)
Language: English
Paperback: 640 pages
Item Weight: 849 g
Dimensions: 15.24 x 3.56 x 22.61 cm
Country of Origin: USA
Price: 2715/-
“Approaching this place, soldiers used to say: ‘We are entering hell.’ And after spending one or two days here, they say: ‘No, this isn't hell, this is ten times worse than hell.’” – Soviet general Vasily Chuikov
Stalin chose his most excellent general, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, to lead the more than one million soldiers who would stand between Germany and the prized city.
Stalin made sure that they were recurrently supplied with every reasonable military equipment available, from tanks and aircraft to guns and ammunition.
Zhukov, who had never been defeated, held the line until November 19, when Stalin ordered him to attack the now weary Germans.
In a watchfully planned pincer maneuver, the Soviet armies attacked from both the north and the south, charily encircling the German troops until the German general, Friedrich Paulus, begged Hitler to allow him to withdraw.
But by then the Fuhrer was obsessed with capturing the city that he refused his general’s pleas, so the Germans attempted to hold on, losing thousands of additional men without taking the city.
When the remains of the German 6th Army finally surrendered in February 1943, they had lost about 1.5 million men and over 6,000 tanks and aircraft in a little more than 5 months of fighting.
The Soviets lost a staggering number as well, with estimates of over 1 million casualties.
In this abridged edition of the five volume ‘Stalingrad Trilogy’, David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House have fruitfully shown that altogether, the Battle of Stalingrad was the deadliest battle in the history of warfare, and the Soviets’ decisive victory there is considered one of the biggest decisive moments in the entire war, and undoubtedly in the European theater.
Over the next two years, the German gains in Russia were progressively reversed, and the Red Army eventually began pushing west towards Berlin. Fittingly, the importance of Stalingrad was commemorated in several ways, from Churchill presenting Stalin with a “Sword of Stalingrad” to the Russians’ decision not to rebuild parts of the battle scarred city as a reminder of what happened there.
This abridged version at length covers the entire military situation that led up to the battle, examines the choices made by the battle’s most important leaders, and elucidates the aftermath of the Soviet victory.
Along with a hefty bibliography and hundreds pictures of important people and places, the reader will learn about the Battle of Stalingrad like he has never before.
The battle was the greatest military bloodbath in recorded history. Well over a million men and women died because of Stalingrad, a number far surpassing the previous records of dead at the first battle of the Somme and Verdun in 1916.
The toll breaks down as follows:
*Conversations with official Russian sources on a not-for attribution basis (and it must be remembered that the Russians have never officially admitted their losses in World War II) put the loss of Red Army soldiers at Stalingrad at 750,000 killed, wounded, or missing in action.
*The Germans lost almost 400,000 men.
*The Italians lost more than 130,000 men out of their 200,000-man army.
*The Hungarians lost approximately 120,000 men.
*The Rumanians also lost approximately 200,000 men around Stalingrad.
As for the civilian population of the city, a prewar census listed more than 500,000 people prior to the outbreak of World War II. This number increased as a flood of refugees poured into the city from other areas of Russia that were in danger of being overrun by the Germans.
A portion of Stalingrad's citizens were evacuated prior to the first German attack but 40,000 civilians were known to have died in the first two days of bombing in the city. No one knows how many died on the barricades or in the antitank ditches or in the surrounding steppes.
Official records show only one stark fact: after the battle ended, a census found only 1,515 people who had lived in Stalingrad in 1942.
The book unfolds over four hundred and ninety eight pages and includes countless maps, and is followed by 61 pages of notes which are sorted by the books twenty chapters.
An eleven page bibliography then precedes a comprehensive index. Glantz and House present a thorough addition to the volumes of prior books that cover the Battle of Stalingrad.
What do we learn from this abridged version? Well, we learn the following points:
1) Battered for more than a year by the Nazi juggernaut, most soldiers in the Soviet Army had become convinced the Germans were unbeatable. Thousands of them streamed into enemy lines to ask for succour. Thousands more bolted from the front lines and ran away.
2) In unoccupied Russia, the civilian population fell victim to the same despair. With millions dead or under German control, with food, clothing, and shelter in increasingly short supply, the majority of the Russian people had begun to doubt their leadership and their armies.
3) The surprising victory over the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad changed that negative attitude. Psychologically buoyed by this magnificent triumph against the "Nazi supermen" both civilians and military braced for the grueling tasks ahead. And though the ultimate destruction of the Third Reich would prove to be a long and costly struggle, the Russians never again doubted they would win.
4) After Stalingrad, they moved resolutely westward, straight to Berlin, and the legacy of their arduous passage into the heartland of Germany remains with us to this day. For the Soviet Union, the path to its present role as a superpower began at the Volga River, where, as Winston Churchill described it, "the hinge of fate had turned. . . ."
5) For the Germans, Stalingrad was the single most traumatic event of the war. Never before had one of their elite armies succumbed in the field. Never before had so many soldiers vanished without trace in the vast wilderness of an alien country. Stalingrad was a mind-paralyzing calamity to a nation that believed it was the master race.
6) A creeping cynicism began to invade the minds of those who had chanted "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" at Hitler's rallies, and the myth of the Führer's genius slowly dissolved under the impact of the reality of Stalingrad. In furtive conversations, men once too demure to move against the regime began to make concrete plans to overthrow it. Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich.
7) The story changed with the passing days—as does all history. The brilliant German offensive to the Volga paled in relation to the inspired defense of Stalingrad by the Russians.
8) Beyond that, most gripping of all, was the gradual moral and physical disintegration of the German soldiers as they realized they were doomed. In their struggle to cope with the unthinkable, lies the ultimate drama of the event.
9) Viciousness, brutality, and spinelessness are undeniably prominent in the story. Jealousy, overriding ambition, and callousness to human suffering occur with shocking frequency.
And,
10) The origins of the Red Army’s victory in World War II lay in the stupendous struggle on the Volga conducted between 13 September 1942 and 2 February 1943. As Alexander Werth wandered about the shattered city of Stalingrad in February 1943 in the days following 6th Army’s annihilation, he stood in awe at the scale of the destruction: Trenches ran through the factory yards; through the workshops themselves; at the bottom of the trenches there still lay frozen green Germans and frozen grey Russians and frozen fragments of human shape, and there were tin helmets, German and Russian, lying among the brick debris, and the helmets were half-filled with snow. There was barbed wire here, and half-uncovered mines, and shell cases, and more rubble, and fragments of walls, and torturous tangles of rusty steel girders. How anyone could have survived here was hard to imagine. The 6th German Army commanded by Colonel-General Friedrich Paulus had not survived: it had been destroyed.
Man desires to greatness, but all too often his hopes are submerged by the primitive instinct to survive at any cost. What happens is not pleasant reading. No book that deals with widespread slaughter can be. At Stalingrad we are witnesses to monumental human tragedy.
On 3 February 1943 the news of 6th Army’s defeat was released to the German people. Although Hitler’s regime acknowledged that 6th Army had been beaten, it refused to admit that many German officers and soldiers had surrendered rather than fight to the death. In an official communique, as misleading as it was revealing, ‘The supreme command of the Wehrmacht announces that the battle of Stalingrad has come to an end.
True to its oath of allegiance, the Sixth Army under the exemplary leadership of Field Marshal Paulus has been annihilated by the overwhelming superiority of enemys numbers.’ Stalingrad was not simply a military defeat; it was a catastrophe. The eyes of the world had been fixed upon the drama unfolding on the Volga, and the Wehrmacht’s aura of invincibility was shattered forever as the scale of the German defeat became apparent.
Two German armies, Paulus’s 6th Army and Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army, had been destroyed and Richthofen’s Air Fleet 4 brought to the point of collapse. In Germany, three days of national mourning were declared and a deep conviction in the superiority of German arms was replaced by a profound, if rarely acknowledged, fear of defeat.
To the peoples of the Soviet Union, Stalingrad represented the first moment of triumph in a bitter war for survival, replacing dark nightmares of defeat at the hands of the Nazis with the conviction that victory, although it would not come easily, would eventually come. Although the war was far from over, it had taken a decisive turn against Nazi Germany.
I am tempted to investigate a citation of a critic who upholds that the book's dynamisms are, in large part, its flaws. The weaknesses of this book are as follows:
1) The accessibility of Soviet/Russian archives offer a standpoint upon the battle that one can now say is equal and balanced when combined with the German histories.
2) One becomes mislaid amid the numerous diverse Soviet formations, especially in regard to flank coverage of the major units.
3) The maps provided add to the confusion as units are not listed, or cannot be found, as well as many of the towns, rivers, hills etc that would prove beneficial to the reader in regard to when and where units are moving and contacting their foes. Of the 104 maps provided, many fall far short of illustrating the phases of the battle, nor add to the reader's ability to digest what transpires during the time period covered in the books pages.
4) This book is NOT meant for a beginner.
For yours truly, individually, this abridged version was profitably able to drive home the following points:
A) Stalingrad in the fall of 1942 and the distasteful campaign the Red Army conducted in the winter of 1942–43 were indeed critical moments in the Soviet-German War. At Stalingrad, for the second time in the war, the Red Army succeeded in halting a major German offensive and, thereafter, mounted a successful counteroffensive of its own during which, for the first time in the war, multiple Red Army tank and mechanized corps succeeded in exploiting deep into the Germans’ rear area, subsequently defeating, encircling, and destroying an entire German army.
B) As a result, the battle of Stalingrad became the most important of three identifiable turning points in the war. The first of these turning points had occurred the year before, at Moscow in December 1941, when, by halting and defeating Hitler’s Barbarossa juggernaut, the Red Army proved that Nazi Germany could not win the war on Hitler’s original terms.
C) The second turning point, the Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad in November 1942, indicated that Hitler could not win the war on any terms favorable to the Third Reich. The war’s third turning point, the climactic battle fought at Kursk in July and August 1943, confirmed that Germany would indeed lose the war.
D) After Kursk, the only unanswered question was, “How long would it take for the Red Army to win final victory?”
E) After achieving victory in the Stalingrad region during late November 1942, in December 1942 and January and February 1943, the Red Army expanded its counteroffensive into a full-fledged offensive campaign, which ultimately encompassed the entire southern wing of the Soviet-German front and endured until late March 1943.
F) As is the case with the war as a whole, the fighting during this period of the war is fraught with stereotypes fashioned and passed on to us by multiple generations of postwar German, Soviet, and other Western historians.
The book is innovative and batshit exasperating at the same time.
Grab a copy if you’re an advanced reader. Else, you could give it a skip.
October 3, 2020
It was a bit of a dry read to me because the book included lots of operational detail. Being illiterate in matters of war, I felt like I would have needed visual aid to be able to follow.
January 12, 2022
Gave up after about 1/4 of the book.
Very dry analytical day by day account.
A compendium of dates, units, tanks active and no personal narrative at all.
Just a boring read.
Very dry analytical day by day account.
A compendium of dates, units, tanks active and no personal narrative at all.
Just a boring read.
March 17, 2024
A Very Good and Thoroughly Researched High-Level Analysis of this Campaign from both Sides
The below is a review of the audiobook edition of David Glantz’s single volume book on the Stalingrad (this is an abridged version of the multi-volume set of books that Dr. Glantz has previously published on that campaign).
Any review of this book would have to start out with a few words about the author, Dr. David Glantz. He is an academic who has spent considerable time at the US War College in Carlyle, PA. Not surprisingly, the book is academic in nature and geared towards the expected audience, students of the War College. Hence it covers its topic from a very high level, with coverage being almost exclusively at the strategic and operational level. Little is provided at the tactical battlefield or of the experiences of individuals on the personal level.
Having said that, the book’s coverage of the strategic and operational is excellent. This applies not only to a historical narrative of how the campaign progressed but of logistics and factors that played a role in its decision. This is true for both sides. With respect to the German, overextension on both the logistical supply front, exhaustion of forces and overstretched German forces on the entire southern front all were critical, as well as German underestimation of the Soviets and a lack of caution. On the Soviet, the improving command experience level (in particular with respect to coordinating troop and armor movements as well as logistics), their increasing material base in terms equipment and their wearing down of German forces before their counter-offensive. Dr. Glantz examines these factors, and more, through his very in-depth and extensive use of large quantities of the original German and Russian language literature. Little of the research in this book is presented is of a secondary nature.
All of this is not to say that the book does not have weaknesses. One is that the book discusses, very extensively, movement. This poses a serious problem to the audiobook edition of this work. However, for those familiar with Dr. Glantz’s other works, the lack of maps is also a typical problem in his written books too. This is such a shame considering how much movements are discussed. He really needs to include more maps in his books. A second problem is that he does not discuss, in enough detail, the context of this campaign in terms of the entire eastern front. Readers of this book would have no idea that the main Soviet efforts were being made, simultaneously, to the West of Moscow. They would not know, based on the book, that the Stalingrad campaign was not intended as the main Soviet thrust at the time but only as a subsidiary one. Nor that the forces dedicated to the Stalingrad campaign were considerably less than those dedicated
to the fronts further north. Lastly, there is no discussion or analysis regarding Soviet supply chains. This is important considering that the Germans were at the end of their supply lines (a fact that the book makes clear) but the Soviets right on their own. This factor was one of the most important determinants of the campaign.
Despite the aforementioned weaknesses, still a very good book that provides the reader with a first rate historical narrative and analysis of the major factors that determined why the Soviets won and the Germans lost. Four stars.
The below is a review of the audiobook edition of David Glantz’s single volume book on the Stalingrad (this is an abridged version of the multi-volume set of books that Dr. Glantz has previously published on that campaign).
Any review of this book would have to start out with a few words about the author, Dr. David Glantz. He is an academic who has spent considerable time at the US War College in Carlyle, PA. Not surprisingly, the book is academic in nature and geared towards the expected audience, students of the War College. Hence it covers its topic from a very high level, with coverage being almost exclusively at the strategic and operational level. Little is provided at the tactical battlefield or of the experiences of individuals on the personal level.
Having said that, the book’s coverage of the strategic and operational is excellent. This applies not only to a historical narrative of how the campaign progressed but of logistics and factors that played a role in its decision. This is true for both sides. With respect to the German, overextension on both the logistical supply front, exhaustion of forces and overstretched German forces on the entire southern front all were critical, as well as German underestimation of the Soviets and a lack of caution. On the Soviet, the improving command experience level (in particular with respect to coordinating troop and armor movements as well as logistics), their increasing material base in terms equipment and their wearing down of German forces before their counter-offensive. Dr. Glantz examines these factors, and more, through his very in-depth and extensive use of large quantities of the original German and Russian language literature. Little of the research in this book is presented is of a secondary nature.
All of this is not to say that the book does not have weaknesses. One is that the book discusses, very extensively, movement. This poses a serious problem to the audiobook edition of this work. However, for those familiar with Dr. Glantz’s other works, the lack of maps is also a typical problem in his written books too. This is such a shame considering how much movements are discussed. He really needs to include more maps in his books. A second problem is that he does not discuss, in enough detail, the context of this campaign in terms of the entire eastern front. Readers of this book would have no idea that the main Soviet efforts were being made, simultaneously, to the West of Moscow. They would not know, based on the book, that the Stalingrad campaign was not intended as the main Soviet thrust at the time but only as a subsidiary one. Nor that the forces dedicated to the Stalingrad campaign were considerably less than those dedicated
to the fronts further north. Lastly, there is no discussion or analysis regarding Soviet supply chains. This is important considering that the Germans were at the end of their supply lines (a fact that the book makes clear) but the Soviets right on their own. This factor was one of the most important determinants of the campaign.
Despite the aforementioned weaknesses, still a very good book that provides the reader with a first rate historical narrative and analysis of the major factors that determined why the Soviets won and the Germans lost. Four stars.
March 20, 2022
According to the preface, the authors set out to write this book in 1998, but soon realized that they would need more than one book to cover everything that needed to be covered. Eventually they would go on to write a four volume “trilogy” plus an additional fifth companion volume of primary source material.
After completing that epic work, they returned to the project that they had originally set out to do by distilling it down to this single volume.
Having read 3 of the 4 volumes of the Stalingrad “Trilogy”, I recommend starting with this volume, and then moving on to that larger work if you are interested in yet more detail. Indeed, if you have no previous knowledge of the battle, you’d be best off starting with an even more abbreviated summary of events, such as Stalingrad 1942 by Osprey Publishing, or something similar.
The biggest weakness of the book, as in the larger volume it summarizes, is the use of what I assume are primary source maps shrunk down to fit into book format, leading to an often unreadable mess that offers little to no help in understanding the situation being described in the text. I eventually just stopped even trying to figure out the maps, and skipped over most of them.
Overall, I think this volume is not for someone who has just a passing interest in the subject, but is for anyone with more than a passing interest, whether or not they then go on to read the larger “trilogy”. Just be warned that it’s a dry read, but if you’ve read anything else by David Glantz, then you know what you are getting into.
After completing that epic work, they returned to the project that they had originally set out to do by distilling it down to this single volume.
Having read 3 of the 4 volumes of the Stalingrad “Trilogy”, I recommend starting with this volume, and then moving on to that larger work if you are interested in yet more detail. Indeed, if you have no previous knowledge of the battle, you’d be best off starting with an even more abbreviated summary of events, such as Stalingrad 1942 by Osprey Publishing, or something similar.
The biggest weakness of the book, as in the larger volume it summarizes, is the use of what I assume are primary source maps shrunk down to fit into book format, leading to an often unreadable mess that offers little to no help in understanding the situation being described in the text. I eventually just stopped even trying to figure out the maps, and skipped over most of them.
Overall, I think this volume is not for someone who has just a passing interest in the subject, but is for anyone with more than a passing interest, whether or not they then go on to read the larger “trilogy”. Just be warned that it’s a dry read, but if you’ve read anything else by David Glantz, then you know what you are getting into.
December 29, 2025
okay listen - this was so detailed. like a blow-by-blow of the battle for Stalingrad. i understand that this was actually 3 volumes condensed into one, so obviously there was even more detail that i missed, but at this point in my life i feel like i can live with that. I'm not really as interested in the troop formation part as much as the political part, but this provided a good bit of both. it was occasionally difficult to keep the different divisions straight in my brain, but again I'm not really a military history buff. definitely more for folks who are interested in the actual warfare bit over the cultural stuff, but very cool and informative regardless
May 6, 2022
I couldn't really finish this because it was so heavy on the tactical, purely military history of the battle and didn't leave much room for accounts of the human experiences. If you like accounts of where this and that army group went to and how many men and tanks and such each side had, this is for you. Couldn't be me, though.
November 17, 2019
Bizarrely reminds me of book three of 2666. The accumulation of details of troop movements, tank and troop losses, reserve numbers and tactical changes paint a hyper-realist image of this horrific but pivotal battle.
March 15, 2022
A fantastic single volume history of the campaign. The gold standard I would say.
abandoned-or-hiatus
May 15, 2023Abandoned. Some deep dives are too deep.
March 21, 2024
Well researched and very detailed.
February 16, 2025
A bit dry
September 23, 2025
A very detailed account of the battle of Stalingrad, not the best for audio as it's a little hard to follow all the different unit names and got confusing at points, a reference map would also help while reading, great book.
April 10, 2025
So dry it's practically flammable - lots of detail about units and not much about people - but it gave me a much better sense of how complicated the whole mess was, and that was absolutely worth the price of admission.
ETA: Upping my rating from 4 to 5 stars after rereading. Along with all the gory details of all the units and what they all did, it provides a far more nuanced perspective on why the leaders (Hitler and Stalin of course, but also the military top brass) made the decisions they did than what most WW2/Stalingrad books provide.
ETA: Upping my rating from 4 to 5 stars after rereading. Along with all the gory details of all the units and what they all did, it provides a far more nuanced perspective on why the leaders (Hitler and Stalin of course, but also the military top brass) made the decisions they did than what most WW2/Stalingrad books provide.
November 29, 2017
An exhaustive study of the Battle of Stalingrad, that actually focuses upon the battle itself and does not spend excessive amounts of time on other elements of the war. Easy to read and fun for a WW2 bibliophile.
August 8, 2025
Great book; god awful maps.
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