Defeat of Operation Mars
- PanzerKing
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Defeat of Operation Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mars
What do you think about this description of the battle. I know Wikipedia is a bad source for history information, but I was curious of your thoughts. I don't know much about this German success.
What do you think about this description of the battle. I know Wikipedia is a bad source for history information, but I was curious of your thoughts. I don't know much about this German success.
Re: Defeat of Operation Mars
As is pointed out there is an ongoing controversy about which of the operations, Mars or Uranus, was the main offensive operation against the Germans in November of 1942. I tend to think it was operation Uranus that was the main effort by the Red Army, why sacrifice so many men in Stalingrad only to launch the main offensive somewhere else? They knew the Romanian and Hungarian troops on the flanks were not the quality of the German soldiers, but to keep the Germans from reinforcing their forces in the South operation "Mars" was created and launched, Sudaplatov also supports this view in his book, "Special Tasks" (he was a member of the NKVD at the time and talked about the disinformation being sent to Germany about Red Army operations).PanzerKing wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mars
What do you think about this description of the battle. I know Wikipedia is a bad source for history information, but I was curious of your thoughts. I don't know much about this German success.
No, I don't have the numbers in front of me but a mistake Glantz made was counting all forces in the fronts involved in the operation instead of just the forces that were actually used by the fronts in the operation.JoseFrancis wrote:I don't know much about Operation Mars so I'm unable to talk about it in details but wasn't Mars 2x bigger than Operation Uranus?
IIRC, there was 2 million men compared to 1,1 million..
Wouldn't that mean Operation Mars being the main Russian offensive in winter of '42?
~Shc~
When titans clashed gives 1,143,500 for Uranus and 1,400,000 for Mars in Table B. Isn't Table B comprised using Krivosheev?Kunikov wrote:
No, I don't have the numbers in front of me but a mistake Glantz made was counting all forces in the fronts involved in the operation instead of just the forces that were actually used by the fronts in the operation.
Krivosheev's strengths figures, while they give an indication of the size of an operation, are of very limited value if one seeks a detailed answer to that question - it provides only the strength of the forces present on the first day of the operation. These were both major operations of long duration, where very significant forces were added during the course of it (and not neccessarily to the same extent in both cases). Hence, if Krivosheev quotes a strength figure for Mars of 1.4 million, then the number of troops involved in it was considerably larger than this. Ditto for the Stalingrad operation.
cheers
cheers
Yes - something that is the case also in several other operations listed by Krivosheev, such as f.e. the Smolensk battle in the summer of 41. In the Sevastopol operation (much due to its great length), the listed strength is barely a quarter of the losses.Thanks Qvist. Now it becomes clear why the numbers of troops involved in the defense of Odessa is smaller than the losses suffered.
cheers
Hi Kunikov
I'm not really in a position to judge the issue of Stalingrad vs Mars as the major effort, but:
Incidentally, is anyone considering the possibility that Mars and Uranus were both conceived as major simultaneous efforts?
cheers
I'm not really in a position to judge the issue of Stalingrad vs Mars as the major effort, but:
Couldn't one just as well say "why sacrifice so many men at Rzhev just to launch the main offensive elsewhere?" ?why sacrifice so many men in Stalingrad only to launch the main offensive somewhere else?
Incidentally, is anyone considering the possibility that Mars and Uranus were both conceived as major simultaneous efforts?
cheers
I figured someone would bring that up, but the answer is of course that the Germans in the south were being worn down, while those at Rzhev did not suffer as much, and 2) the allies that the Germans had were also in the south, not at Rzhev. As for 'simultaneous efforts' in 1942 they were not experienced enough for that.Qvist wrote:Hi Kunikov
I'm not really in a position to judge the issue of Stalingrad vs Mars as the major effort, but:
Couldn't one just as well say "why sacrifice so many men at Rzhev just to launch the main offensive elsewhere?" ?why sacrifice so many men in Stalingrad only to launch the main offensive somewhere else?
Incidentally, is anyone considering the possibility that Mars and Uranus were both conceived as major simultaneous efforts?
cheers
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im of the opinion that mars and uranus were simultaneous operations rather than one main and one diversionary....it is possible the soviet high command waited to see which develpoed the more favourably and then would use the other if less successful to tie down enemy forces and prevent the germans from moving large forces to meet the any large scale breakthroughs.
this became a common tatic later on in 1943 and early 1944..as the red army would launch large scale offensives in different areas, thus keeping the germans off blalance.
this became a common tatic later on in 1943 and early 1944..as the red army would launch large scale offensives in different areas, thus keeping the germans off blalance.
As of now I have the English edition only as well, I ordered the Russian version, but still don't have it. But, I looked it up online, and the casualties Krivosheev gives are 70373 for dead, while wounded, sick, etc are a bit over 145,000.Qvist wrote:Kunikov, could I ask you what casualty figure Krivosheev provides for Mars? I have only the english edition, which ignores mars altogether.
cheers
- PanzerKing
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