New Book by David Glantz involving Rumania, Excerpt from an interview by Don Maddox

(...)
Don: Can you give us a hint what works we might expect to see from you in the future?

David: My most important task is to complete volumes 7 and 8 of my series, “Forgotten Battles” of the Soviet-German War (the summer and winter campaigns of 1944 and 1945 and the spring campaign of 1945) and redo and expand volume 1 of this series (on Barbarossa). Sadly this will have to wait until I complete three other projects. These are: a two-volume, 1,600 page study of Operation Barbarossa am preparing for the U.S. Army Center for Military History, which is taking 10 hours a day for 6 days a week (until March 2005); a Red Storm over the Balkans: The Red Army’s Invasion of Rumania, April-May 1944 on the 1st Iassy-Kishinev offensive, which is complete but without maps; and a single-volume, 800-page study of the Battle for Stalingrad, which is half complete.


Don: Any final comments?

David: Please encourage your readers to become involved in the process of researching and writing on this subject. At a time when the sources are finally available to reconstruct a more accurate history of this (and perhaps other) wars, the study of military history in modern American academe has become taboo and is being replaced by social history. This is indeed a tragedy, and an insult to the memories of the many millions of Red Army and Wehrmacht soldiers who died on forgotten battlefields during the struggle.

[The complete interview can be found here: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/page_left_c...p&p=1979&page=1]

Col. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on November 23, 2004 04:08 pm

I appreciate Glantz. His style is a little drab, but the data and analysis are top notch.
I've read "Zhukov's greatest defeat" (Operation mars) ; "From the Don to the Dniepr", "Kharkov 42" & "Kursk" from him. All 4 are the same high standard. I expect as much from these books yet to come.

Dénes, Mr Glantz already covered the 1st Iassy-Kishinev offensive(April - May 1944) in his "FORGOTTEN BATTLES OF THE SOVIET-GERMAN WAR 1941-1945, Volume 6 part 3 : The Winter Campaign , Southwestern Axis."

Glantz has contributed a lot to the new way of understanding the Eastern Front, but he is in no way free of mistakes. I see he also intends to rewrite "Before Stalingrad: Barbarossa. Hitler's Invasion of Russia". While reading it, I recall him mentioning that the German 11th Army started the offensive of 2 July, conquered Iasi and reached the Prut River from the first day. I may be nitpicking here, but for a Romanian this is a big blunder, especially since the book is very well researched.

Yes, he's no more immune to errors than other historians. However he often makes optimum use of the data available to him at a specific time. Albeit the data maybe lacking it's hard to fault his judgement most of the time. I'm looking forward to get his book involving the Romanian front.

I've read his The Battle of Leningrad and The Battle of Kursk, and they are excellent reads!

The first part is coming out in November - Red Storm over the Balkans: The Failed Soviet Invasion of Romania, Spring 1944. See here: http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/0700...7149482-4409018

I already ordered it.

I also placed a pre-order for the book (very good pre-publishing offer on amazon.ca).

Here is an interesting document related to the topic:



Sterbebild aus dem II. Weltkrieg

Gefreiter in einem Grenadier-Regiment – wohnhaft in Garham – gefallen am 11.5.1944.

Todesort: Speja – begraben in Telita in Moldawien (Quelle: www.volksbund.de)

Gen. Dénes

I have finished reading David Glantz's Red Storm over the Balkans: The Failed Soviet Invasion of Romania, Spring 1944. A good book, but probably because I had high hopes about it, I was pretty disappointed. The author uses, as usual, a lot material from the Soviet archives. however, the same isn;t true for the Axis side. While the use of original Romanian documents was probably too much to ask, the use of German primary sources wouldn't have been out of reach. Instead he chose to use German secondary sources or the recolections of German generals and soldiers, not exactly an accurate and objective source. This is how we end up with units the likes of the Romanian 20th Mountain Infantry Division (whatever that is) or the endless confusion between the the Romanian Guard Division and the 1st Armored Division (baptised 1st Guards Panzer Division). There is also the usual contempt in which the Germans held the Romanians, which IMO was transferred into the book by this excesive use of secondary sources. Although the main battle was among German and Soviet forces, the Romanian forces had a rather important role during the initial fights, when they helped stop the Soviet advance (along with the Soviet supply problems), and during the June offensives, when brig. gen. Edgar Radulescu, 11th Division's CO, received the RK (his unit is hardly mentioned in the book). IMO this subject would have deserved a thorougher investigation.