Which are the 'early books'? His original Barbarossa book for example is just a write-up of a NATO seminar on the operation, with a lot of German veterans participating, if I recall correctly.Mr.No one wrote:I agree that his early books relied too much on Soviet secondary source material for information on both the Red Army and the Ostheer. That is not to say that they did not include valuable and correct information, however. And with the main question being whether his work has improved I think it is difficult for anyone to disagree, with especially his Stalingrad Trilogy utilising the respective combatants' primary source material to a great degree.
Regards - Sean
Has Glantz improved?
Re: Has Glantz improved?
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41
The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42
The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42
Re: Has Glantz improved?
Well, if there is nothing else it's by definition the gold standard (unter den Blinden...)Jan-Hendrik wrote:Well, Glantz was one of the first to publish on eastern front in english. And yes, his work on Operation Mars was a good one. But most of his work was much overrated because there was NOTHING to compare in english language. Now he is in many points outdated....
I actually prefer Ziemke, if only because he's easier to read. Erickson is quite shoddy in my view. Glantz was to my recollection the first offer of operational rather than strategic analysis of the Eastern Front, it's by definition an important and valuable contribution just because of that.Fully agree, furthermore the reliance on Soviet general officer memoirs published during Communist times is also not helping, since these are highly distorted recollections. I think he got going when he got access to the archives.Jan-Hendrik wrote:And his denying to use german primary sources does not make it better...
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41
The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42
The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42
Re: Has Glantz improved?
The link is from 2002. I think is about the "battle of kursk" bookkrichter33 wrote:I thought Stalingrad was good too. I guess maybe his early work is what is being criticized.
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krimsonglass51
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Re: Has Glantz improved?
Apologies for bringing up this thread again, but having recently received Glant's The Battle of Leningrad 1941-1944, he does go into detail about the summer battles on the Karelian Isthmus and acknowledges that the Soviets were halted by July 1944. Obviously, those with more knowledge about that sector will pick out any errors.
What I found odd was that in the last edition of When Titans Clashed was published in 2015, the summer battles in Karelia were still erroneously chronicled.
However, in a previous article I posted in a different topic http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/publication/s ... 503/07.pdf, also published in 2015, he correctly notes that the offensive failed in it's objective to knock Finland out of WWII (he notes that it was the deteriorating Axis situation that did it).
So I guess with regards to this detail of the Eastern Front, Glantz did improve.
What I found odd was that in the last edition of When Titans Clashed was published in 2015, the summer battles in Karelia were still erroneously chronicled.
However, in a previous article I posted in a different topic http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/publication/s ... 503/07.pdf, also published in 2015, he correctly notes that the offensive failed in it's objective to knock Finland out of WWII (he notes that it was the deteriorating Axis situation that did it).
So I guess with regards to this detail of the Eastern Front, Glantz did improve.
Re: Has Glantz improved?
What is Glantz's next book about?
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Sid Guttridge
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- Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19
Re: Has Glantz improved?
Hi Guys,
Glantz may not be perfect, but he is far more important than the vast majority of military history authors because he gives us a glimpse "on the other side of the hill".
He receives criticism for early over reliance on Soviet sources, but without him, and a very few other Russian-speakers like John Ericsson, 99.9% of English speakers would have no access to Soviet sources at all.
There seems to be no equivalent criticism of, say, books on the 1939 Polish campaign that are entirely reliant on German sources.
Glantz deserves enormous credit for making so much material available to us that would otherwise be the preserve of a few specialists. As a result, a lot of other military history books have benefitted from his work. Could anyone nowadays write a ballanced, English-language, campaign history about the Eastern Front without reference to his work? I doubt it.
Cheers,
Sid.
Glantz may not be perfect, but he is far more important than the vast majority of military history authors because he gives us a glimpse "on the other side of the hill".
He receives criticism for early over reliance on Soviet sources, but without him, and a very few other Russian-speakers like John Ericsson, 99.9% of English speakers would have no access to Soviet sources at all.
There seems to be no equivalent criticism of, say, books on the 1939 Polish campaign that are entirely reliant on German sources.
Glantz deserves enormous credit for making so much material available to us that would otherwise be the preserve of a few specialists. As a result, a lot of other military history books have benefitted from his work. Could anyone nowadays write a ballanced, English-language, campaign history about the Eastern Front without reference to his work? I doubt it.
Cheers,
Sid.