David Glantz's books

[otlichnik]

[This is New World's post on Glantz's books which I just moved here to consolidate the bibliogrpahy section. It is easier to have all bibliographic posts in one thread. Shawn]

I put together bibliography of published books by David Glantz, as he was highly recommended on this board.

Also, the experts who read most of his books - you are wellcomed to suggest the order in which these books should be read.

If I missed anything - please add to the list.

Best regards,

William




Here's the list in alphabetical order:

1) Belorussia, 1944: The Soviet Staff General Study
David M. Glantz; Harold S. Orenstein
» Hardcover, 2001

2) Fallen Soviet Generals
Aleksander A. Maslov; David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1998

3) From the Don to the Dnepr: Soviet Offensive Operations December 1942-August 1943
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover Textbook, 1999

4) Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences, 1942-1945
David M. Glantz; Helmut Heiber
» Hardcover, 2002

5) Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front, June-August 1941
David M. Glantz
» Paperback, 1993

6) Kharkov, 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1998

7) Soviet Documents on the Use of War Experience: The Initial Period of War 1941
David M. Glantz; Harold S. Orenstein
» Hardcover Textbook, 1991

8) Soviet Documents on the Use of War Experience: The Winter Campaign, 1941-1942
David M. Glantz; Harold S. Orenstein
» Hardcover Textbook, 1991

9) Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover Textbook, 1989

10) Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover Textbook, 1991

11) Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945: August Storm
David M. Glantz
» Paperback, 2003

12) Soviet Operations in the Initial Period of War, 22 June-August, 1941
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, Reprint, 1997

13) Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1998

14) The battle for Kursk, 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study
David M. Glantz, Harold S. Orenstein
» Hardcover, 1999

15) The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 2002

16) The Battle of Kursk
Jonathan M. House, David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1999

17) The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan
Lester W. Grau, David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1998

18) The Evolution of Soviet Operational Art, 1927-1964
David M. Glantz
» Paperback, 1995

19) The Evolution of Soviet Operational Art, 1927-1991, the Documentary Basis: Operational Art, 1965-1991
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1995

20) The Evolution of Soviet Operational Art: 1965-1991
David M. Glantz
» Paperback, 1995

21) The History of Soviet Airborne Forces
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1994

22) The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union: A History
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1992

23) The Role of Intelligence in Soviet Military Strategy in World War II
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1990

24) The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver: Spearhead of the Offensive
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover Textbook, 1991

25) The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: August Storm
David M. Glantz
» Paperback, 2003

26) When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler
Jonathan M. House, David M. Glantz
>> Hardcover, 1998

27) Winter Warfare: Red Army Orders & Experiences
David M. Glantz; Richard N. Armstrong; Joseph G. Welsh
» Hardcover, 1997

28) Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942
David M. Glantz
» Hardcover, 1999

[otlichnik]

This is a reply to New World’s excellent Glantz bibliography posted above. It appears under my name because I moved it from another thread and I am too incompetent to figure out how to do it keeping it in his name. (If another moderator can change it back to New World go ahead.)

Anyway, here goes.

Before commenting on the list I want to comment on sources. The most important thing any researcher (university or grad student, author, political or intelligence analyst) can do is to carefully examine and evaluate any source - including a person, book or on-line post.

Who is the author? What have they done before in this area? What other stuff have they done? What is their profession? What is there actual experience in this area? How reliable have they proven themselves to be in the past? What do they have to gain from this?

There are several fallacies to avoid when doing this. One is to separate so-called expertise from directly applicable expertise. So 8 out of 10 doctors choose Corn Flakes - if those happen to be doctors of philosophy and history their experience has no bearing on the question at all! If you want a good book on the Soviets at Berlin would you pick the author whose previous book was on: a) the Soviets at Kursk, b) the Germans at the Bulge, c) Napoleon’s biography or d) a History of the London Underground. “Generalists” can often write good book, but they rarely are fully informed of all the nuances and historiographical debates surrounding an issue, of the latest research, etc. Usually, only a dedicated specialist knows all this.

Also beware the authors who have something to gain. It is surprising how many authors may be too much pro- or anti- German or pro- or anti- Soviet. Are they part of the winning (Zhukov) or losing (Guderian) clique? Are they using their work to attack another personality - as Zhukov, Khrushchev and many other Soviet figures did - or even to attack another contemporary author? Anyone who has been in academia knows the kind of juvenile hissy-fits and jealousies that are sadly too common.

I bring all this up here to explain why Glantz is so great a source. It is not simply that he wrote (or read) lots of books, that he speaks Russian, that he can ID a T-34 from a flash-card or that he has “colonel (retired)” behind his name.

First I must admit my bias. I know and like David Glantz and he helped me during my graduate studies. I credit him with showing me that the Soviet military can be studied at the same level as any other academic topic - an idea not widely accepted at universities today where military studies are very neglected and where most Soviet history really examines 1917-1941 and 1945-1991 but neglects the most important single event in Soviet history.

Glantz

For those who don’t know, Glantz is a retired US Army Colonel. He spent most of the 1980s and 90s studying the Soviet military, in particular the WWII era - with the end goal of gathering lessons learned and other insights into contemporary and future conflict. He set up the SASO - Soviet Army Studies Office of the US Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, which later became the FMSO - Foreign Militaries Studies Office. He is fluent in Russian and other key languages. He has had unparalleled access to closed and classified Soviet military archives, libraries, academies and to Soviet researchers and senior military figures. Few other authors can say they have lectured on Soviet WWII history at the Russian General Staff Academy.

Glantz has done many great things. But in my opinion there are two main areas he has led in. He pioneered the concept of examining East Front battles by comparing key Soviet and German sources. Others, like Erikson, had done it with generally available sources such as official war histories, memoirs, etc - giving a good overall picture of the war. But Glantz did it with the best, official, formerly classified reports of both sides - war diaries, general staff maps, etc. He exposed what was accurate and inaccurate on the two sides and the result is the best combined picture - although he does concentrate on the Red Army’s experience it comes from examining both sides’ records. His work revealed the excellent Soviet sources coming available - it also showed the weaknesses of the German records which almost every other historian was relying on and which continue to perpetuate myths to this day.

In carrying out this work Glantz was able to perform his other great success - the discovery and examination of the “forgotten battles” of the war. The most famous of these is Operation Mars - until Glantz’s work Mars was almost unknown even among East Front specialists. There were a few small hints in Soviet war studies - all of which portrayed it as either a feint to draw attention away from the real effort at Stalingrad or as a small action. We now know, thank’s to Glantz’s painstaking reconstruction, that it was a huge operation, meant basically to be Stalingrad’s equal and it failed totally - in a large part due to Zhukov’s planning and leadership.

The Books

Glantz’s books fall into several groups.

Overviews

Read these first

Stumbling Colossus - what the Red Army was really like on the eve of the war and a good examination of its problems. The title says it all. Of course, the Red Army changed greatly during the war. This book provides the basis that they it changed from. Too many authors and readers assume that the Red Army was still a stumbling colossus at the end of the war when, in fact, by then it was still a colossus, still rather clumsy, but had a big sharp sword and knew how and when to use it.

When Titans Clashed - Glantz’s one volume overview of the war. Not super detailed but all the key points and arguments are there. This should be book number one to read.

War History

Books detailing certain battles or campaigns, can be read in chronological order, just what you are interested in, or whatever. However, it is good to have read Colossus and Titans first.

Initial Period of War, Kharkov, Leningrad, Mars, Kursk, Don to Dnepr, Dnepr to Vistula, Vistula to Oder, August Storm: Manchuria (two volumes - strategic and tactical).

Kharkov, Leningrad, Mars and Kursk are more recent and more polished than the others.

Published Soviet Studies

These are translations of formerly classified Soviet general staff studies from during and shortly after the war. Excellent but they are primary sources and not analysed. It is best to read them with the relevant war history books listed above

Kursk, Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy, Belorussia, Lvov-Sandomierz

Special Topics

Books on single topics

Fallen Generals (good reference), Deception, Deep Battle, Operational Art, Airborne Forces, Intelligence, Tactical Manoeuver, Winter Warfare

Other

Glantz also has some very detailed self-published stuff - 6 volumes so far on forgotten battles, two volumes on the Red Army in 1943, several Atlases with annotated German and Soviet maps, etc.

My starting pick would be: Titans, Colossus, Mars and Kursk (the book by him not the translated general staff study).

Shawn

[Tal Inbar]

Russia began a series of offensive operations which continued unabated into February 1943. In these offensives the Soviet High Command attempted to smash German resistance and encircle the bulk of two German army groups. For two months the German forces struck back. In a well co-ordinated counterstroke they inflicted a major operational defeat on the Soviets and stabilized the front until the summer.

The two-month period of Soviet offensive activity during the winter of 1942-1943 saw the Red Army test new operational and tactical techniques and experiment with forces and methods for conducting mobile armoured warfare. Through victory and defeat the Red Army learnt its lesson well. Out of this period, and the three month period of relative calm that followed, emerged the new Red Army, which would defeat blitzkreig at Kursk and would achieve two years of virtually uninterrupted battlefield success, culminating in their defeat of Nazi Germanu.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction - the Red Army 1941-1945 - tragedy and rebirth of an army
- operation "Little Saturn" - the Soviet offensive on the Middle Don - December 1942
- operation "Gallop" - the Donbas operation - 29 January-6 March 1943
- operation "Star" - the Khar'kov operation - 2 February-23 March 1943
- operation "Polkovodets Rumyanstev
- - the Belgogod-Khar'kov operation - August 1943. Appendices
- order of battle - Middle Don operation (December 1942)
- order of battle - Khar'kov-Donbas operation and Manstein's counterattack (January-March 1943)
- order of battle - Belgorod-Khar'kov operation (August 1943).

[Tal Inbar]

This volume begins with an investigation of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. It draws upon eye-witness German accounts of what occurred, and supplements these with German archival and detailed Soviet materials. The Soviet government has released extensive amounts of formerly classified archival materials from the period. This material has been incorporated into the maps and text.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction - prelude to Barbarossa
- the Red Army in 1941
- Soviet war planning
- the German Army in 1941
- Plan Barbarossa. The border battles on the Siauliai Axis - 22-26 June 1941
- German operations in the Baltic region - the Siauliai Axis
- 6th Panzer Division operations
- 1st panzer Division operations
- reflections on XXXXI Panzer Corps operations. The border battles in the Vilnius Axis - 22-26 June 1941
- XXXIX Motorized Corps operations. The border battles on the Bialystok-Minsk Axis - 22-28 June 1941
- 12th Infantry Division operations
- 28th Infantry Division operations
- 3rd Panzer Division operations. The border battles on the Lutsk-Rovno Axis - 22 June-1 July 1941
- German operations on the Lutsk-Rovno Axis
- a perspective from the Army High Command (OKH)
- III Panzer Division operations. The Smolensk Operation - 7 July-7 August 1941
- Smolensk - reflections on a battle
- overview, Phase 1 to 20 July 1941
- 7th Panzer Division operations
- 3rd Panzer Division's advance to Mogilev
- 4th Panzer Division's crossing of the Berezina river
- 4th Panzer Division's crossing of the Denpr river and the advance to Roslavl
- overview, Phase 2 20 July-20 August 1941
- 3rd Panzer Division battles in the Smolensk area
- 28th Infantry Division operations. Conclusions
- conclusions from the Soviet perspective
- conclusions from the German perspective
- the lessons of 1941 and implications for the future.

[Tal Inbar]

Armed revolution and civil war gave birth to the Soviet Union, world War II propelled it to global pre-eminence, and the Cld War contributed to the Soviet Union's demise. Given Marxism-Leninism's idological preoccupation with war and threats of war, it is understandable that the spectre of war should play a vital role in the life and fate of the Soviet state.

This study of Soviet military strategy is based upon the twin pillars of Soviet political-military actions and Soviet writings on the subject of military strategy. Thanks to the policy of glasnost, it incorporates Soviet materials hitherto unavailable in the West. It aims to be not simply a retrospective account of what was, but to form part of the context for what will be in the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Civil War and military intervention (1917-1921)
- the emergence of Soviet military strategy (1921-1935)
- Soviet military strategy in the 1930s (1930-1941)
- Soviet military strategy in World War II (1941-1945)
- Post-World War II Soviet military strategy
- future Soviet military strategy and its implications. Appendices
- Soviet mobilization in World War II
- Soviet strategic operations in World War II
- recent Soviet views on military reform.

[Tal Inbar]

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Combat missions and functions
- offensive use
- the meeting engagement
- defensive use
- evolution of the forward detachment through 1945
- the psost-war years 1946-1985.

[Tal Inbar]

David Glantz examines the Soviet study of war, the re-emergence of the operation level and its connection with deep battle, the evolution of the Soviet theory of operations in depth before 1941, and its refinement and application in the European theatre and the Far East between 1941 and 1945.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The Soviet study of war
- history and war
- military doctrine
- military science
- military art
- military strategy
- operational art
- tactics. The nature of operational art
- roots of operational art
- development of operational art
- the emergence of deep operations
- the test of war
- operations and the revolution in military affairs
- re-emergence of the operational level and the rebirth of deep operations. The framework of operations
- missions
- territory
- actions
- forces. The formative years of Soviet operational art 1917-1942
- the Civil War and Leninist base of military doctrine (1917-1921)
- the evolution of a socialist military doctrine (1921-1929)
- the technical reconstruction of the armed forces and the theory of deep operations (1929-1937)
- crisis in the Soviet military establishment (1937-1941). The Great Patriotic War and the maturation of operational art 1941-1945
- tragedy and rebirth of an army (1941-1942)
- an army in transition (1943)
- triumph of arms (1944-1945). Operational art and the revolution in military affairs
- the last Stalin years (1946-1953)
- the nuclear era and the revolution in military affairs 91953-1968). Refinement of the revolution in military affairs
- background
- force structure
- military doctrine
- military strategy
- operational art - front and army operations
- tactics - corps and division operations. Perspective on the future
- military strategy
- operational art and tactics
- force structure.

[Tal Inbar]

This volume offers detailed information about the Red Army's preparation for and conduct of the Battle of Kursk. Prepared by the Red Army General Staff in 1944 from combat reports and other top-secret archive materials, the work is a practical and candid document, which was written to educate the Red Army in the intricacies, demands and pitfalls of modern mobile warefare.

The book addresses aspects of the battle that have puzzled commentators since 1943. It provides information on subjects ranging from overall Soviet strategic intent and military planning, through the employment of large-scale armoured and air forces to the more mundane aspects of artillery fire planning, engineer preparation of the battlefield, and the oft-neglected question of logistical support. Juxtaposed with the vivid details of the struggle leading up to the combat crescendo at Ponyri and Prokhorovka are such unusual matters as the employment of remote-controlled mines, electrified barabed wire and anti-tank dogs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The fundamentals of the organization of the Kursk Bridgehead defense
- preparation of the Kursk Bridgehead for defense
- brief characteristics of German operations in the July operation
- the defensive battle for the Kursk Bridgehead
-troop control during the defensive battle at the Kursk Bridgehead
- protecting junctions in the defense - from the experience of the Voronezh front
- artillery support of the Kursk Bridgehead defense
-tank forces in the defense of the Kursk Bridgehead
- air operations in the battle of Kursk
- engineer support of the defensive operation
- the maneuver of mobile antitank reserves in a defensive operation.

[Tal Inbar]

The Red Army's summer offensive of 1944 against Hitler's Wehrmacht was unprecedented in terms of its scale, scope, and strategic intent and impact. For the first time in the Soviet-German War, the Soviet High Command planned a series of massive and strategic operations, each aimed at the defeat of a full German army group.

The Soviets conducted the L'vov-Sandomierz operation with a single powerful front operating under close High Command control. Within a period of 15 days, over one million attacking Red Army troops, including three tank armies and two cavalry-mechanized groups, demolished the opposing German army group, captured L'vov and launched its final advance toward Berlin and the heart of Germany in January 1945. This study details how the Red Army accomplished this feat in the words of those individuals who planned and orchestrated the offensive.

The volume is an unexpurgated translation of the Soviet General Staff Study No. 22, published under the rubric of war experiences and originally classified Secret. In addition, the book contains a map supplement, including terrain maps, which are vital to following the detailed action, and daily operational maps, which permit the reader to understand the general flow of the operation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Overall situation in the 1st Ukranian Front's offensive sector
- operational planning
- operational support
- the preparation of the operation
- combat operations of the forward battalions
- development of the offensive to the San and Vistula Rivers
- the 1st Ukranian Front's combat operations from 28 July through 18 August
- the 3d Guards Tank Army in the L'vov-Peremyshl operation
- encirclement and destruction of the German Brody grouping (July 1944).

[Tal Inbar]

Wehrmacht. By January 1944 the Red Army had penetrated the vaunted "Eastern Wall" along the Dnepr river and was preparing to lunge deep into the Ukraine. In mid-January 1944, Stalin ordered his 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts to crush German forces defending the last portion of the Eastern Wall in German hands, the salient around Korsun'-Shevchenkovskii. The ensuing offensive destroyed a major portion of two German army corps and precipitated the subsequent fighting withdrawal of German forces from the entire Ukraine.

This volume is an unexpurgated translation of the originally classified Soviet General Staff Study No.14.