On Reading Glantz's Red Storm over the Balkans

Discussions on WW2 in Eastern Europe.
pitman
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#16

Post by pitman » 30 Nov 2006, 18:51

Benoit Douville wrote:Uh? Who are you to criticize Glantz? He is probably the best when it come to the Eastern Front, his research is totally outstanding.

Regards
Actually, his research is not totally outstanding. In particular, it tends to look only at Soviet sources and easily available German sources. In the incident I mentioned above, for example, he wrote about the breakthough against the Italian 8th Army in December 1942-January 1943, utilizing Soviet sources and a couple of easily accessible German sources, but his use of Italian sources--even very widely available ones (such as the official history)--was virtually non-existent (he did, though, use an outdated 1946 Italian study). This is particularly unforgivable given the relative wealth of such resources. As a result, his accounts of those actions were riddled with errors. At one point, for example, he suggests that a major grouping of Italian forces were surrounded and destroyed by the Soviets, when in fact the grouping successfully broke through the Soviet ring and eventually made it back to German lines.

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#17

Post by mars » 30 Nov 2006, 21:38

pitman wrote:
Benoit Douville wrote:Uh? Who are you to criticize Glantz? He is probably the best when it come to the Eastern Front, his research is totally outstanding.

Regards
Actually, his research is not totally outstanding. In particular, it tends to look only at Soviet sources and easily available German sources. In the incident I mentioned above, for example, he wrote about the breakthough against the Italian 8th Army in December 1942-January 1943, utilizing Soviet sources and a couple of easily accessible German sources, but his use of Italian sources--even very widely available ones (such as the official history)--was virtually non-existent (he did, though, use an outdated 1946 Italian study). This is particularly unforgivable given the relative wealth of such resources. As a result, his accounts of those actions were riddled with errors. At one point, for example, he suggests that a major grouping of Italian forces were surrounded and destroyed by the Soviets, when in fact the grouping successfully broke through the Soviet ring and eventually made it back to German lines.
ptiman, have to ask, which Glanz's book are you talking about ?


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#18

Post by pitman » 01 Dec 2006, 22:58

Don't have books handy, so I can't tell you the exact title, but it was his book looking at operations in the south in the winter of 1942-1943. Don to the Dnepr? I can't remember the title offhand.

Incidentally, my copy of his new book came in the mail last night, and I had a little bit of time to peruse it. I guess not surprisingly, it does not use a single Romanian source. Perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, it was strange to read through the footnotes and realize how few archival sources were cited. I did not have a chance to read through the footnotes of every chapter yet, but the ones I did look at were overwhelmingly based on secondary sources, printed primary sources, and the standard captured German documents collection. In one chapter, Glatnz repeatedly cited a military encyclopedia as his source. Actual Russian archival sources were few.

I admit, too, to having a certain amount of skepticism towards his thesis. Essentially what he argues is that whereas historians believe a certain section of the front was basically quiet in the spring of 1944, actually major battles raged there but were covered up by Soviet historians because the offensives failed, and thus became "forgotten battles" that Glantz is uncovering.

That's an interesting notion, but it makes me wonder how major these offensives really could have been if the German literature didn't reflect them. German historians would have no interest in protecting the reputation of Soviet generals or Stalin's infallibility. If a major offensive had transpired, one would think that it would be at least reflected in the German literature of the war. It will be interesting to see how Glantz explains that.

In previous works, Glantz has referred to other "forgotten battles" he claimed existed, but there he was on firmer ground in this regard because many of them were attempted Soviet counter-offensives early in the war that were only partially carried out or were so easily crushed by the Germans that the Germans did not readily realize what Soviet intentions actually were. But in the spring of 1944, the Germans would definitely recognize a major Soviet offensive had one took place.

Well, I guess I'll see if Glantz pulls it off when I get into it.

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#19

Post by mars » 02 Dec 2006, 02:21

pitman wrote:Don't have books handy, so I can't tell you the exact title, but it was his book looking at operations in the south in the winter of 1942-1943. Don to the Dnepr? I can't remember the title offhand.
hi, pitman, I asked this question was because I myself read Glantz's "From Don to the Dnepr", in which he rarely mentioned Italians
And for the battle of Tirgu-Frumos fought in May 1944, I believe the main purpose for Soviet to launched this particular offensive was to convince German that the main thrust of their great summer offensive would point to the south Ukrain direction. For sure, at that direction,the Soviet army were exhaust after months of hard combat, and they were allowed no rest and received virtually no reserved before this offensive, their tank army could only field around 200 tanks BEFORE the offensive began, not a guarrentee for victory, but by taking carefull calculation, Soviet stavaka believed that Germans and Rumaina army they faced their were in bad shape too, so they still had a chance, even thing went worse than they wished, they still had a chance to win over some more favorable territory so that their next offensive, which would be well-prepared and well supplied, would be successful. Even they got nothing from this offensive, from a big picture, they still won, because Red army would "show" to German virtually every single one of their tank army, because of the rule "where tank army goes, the main offensive goes", Germans would be conviced to keep their reserve to a wrong direction right before Soviet Great summer offensive began.

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#20

Post by Nucleicacidman » 02 Dec 2006, 03:57

pitman wrote: That's an interesting notion, but it makes me wonder how major these offensives really could have been if the German literature didn't reflect them.
Actually, German literature is decisively richer on information on the battle of Targul Frumos in May, 1944. AFAIK, both von Luck's and von Manteuffel's memoirs have good descriptions of the battle. The battle itself was used by NATO as a textbook example of an active and flexible tactical defense, and it has been used in both Richard E. Simpkin's Tank Warfare and the more recent (at least in English) Panzer Tactics by Wolfgang Schneider.

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#21

Post by mars » 02 Dec 2006, 05:23

Nucleicacidman wrote:
pitman wrote: That's an interesting notion, but it makes me wonder how major these offensives really could have been if the German literature didn't reflect them.
Actually, German literature is decisively richer on information on the battle of Targul Frumos in May, 1944. AFAIK, both von Luck's and von Manteuffel's memoirs have good descriptions of the battle. The battle itself was used by NATO as a textbook example of an active and flexible tactical defense, and it has been used in both Richard E. Simpkin's Tank Warfare and the more recent (at least in English) Panzer Tactics by Wolfgang Schneider.
Nucleicacidman, that NATO article used NO Soviet source, and it considered those worn out Soviet Tank army as Full size ones, which made it had little value

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#22

Post by Nucleicacidman » 02 Dec 2006, 21:09

No Soviet sources were open at the time that Manteuffel wrote those monographs for the U.S. army. But that wasn't the point. The point is that the battle is well known according to German/Western sources.

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#23

Post by pitman » 03 Dec 2006, 03:37

If true, that certainly weakens Glantz's contention that these were forgotten battles.

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#24

Post by Uncle Joe » 03 Dec 2006, 04:16

Where in the book does Glantz claim that the new book covers a "forgotten battle"?

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#25

Post by mars » 03 Dec 2006, 06:12

Joe, in his last volum of "Forgotten battles", Glantz did included this battle as one of the forgotten battle

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#26

Post by Uncle Joe » 03 Dec 2006, 14:01

It should be noted that AFAIK Glantz uses the word forgotten to describe specifically Soviet historiography, whatever the battle´s status is in Western sources.

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#27

Post by Nucleicacidman » 03 Dec 2006, 20:30

It also denotes that even if the battle does exist in Western sources it's not a very well known battle to the general public.

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#28

Post by Andreas » 03 Dec 2006, 23:04

I think the latter part is not as relevant. I can e.g. think of the Toropets-Kholm Operation, which does not count as a forgotten battle, since it is well known in Soviet historiography, but it is still not well known to the general public.

In any case, the spring 1944 battles in Romania appear to fulfill both counts.

All the best

Andreas

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#29

Post by Kim Sung » 04 Dec 2006, 17:54

I'm still waiting for this book.

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#30

Post by Kim Sung » 08 Dec 2006, 13:39

I've got it today at last! I just began to read the book. It was a long wait~ :wink:

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