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Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle of Smolensk, 10 July-10 September 1941. Volume 1: The German Advance to Smolensk, the Encirclement Battle, and the First and Second Soviet Counteroffensives, 10 July-24 August 1941 by David M. Glantz West Midlands, England: Helion, 2010 656 pages $59.95
Readers familiar with David Glantz know what to expect in Barbarossa Derailed-a meticulous operational narrative covering a key Eastern Front campaign. In keeping with his works on Manchuria, Kursk, Rzhev, Leningrad, and most recently Stalingrad, he provides precise accounts of maneuvers down to the level of individual divisions, documented by lengthy excerpts from situation reports and operational orders from Germans and Soviets alike. Glantz does not pretend to offer personal touches or gripping man-on-the-ground accounts. He does operational history exclusively and he does it very well. He also does it quickly; his preface notes this massive book took him six months to complete (breaking the hearts of lesser historians).
The book, first of two narrative volumes on the Smolensk campaign, is not easy: Glantz says it "must be studied as well as read." Readers must possess a firm grasp of mechanized warfare to understand what is going on. A good set of maps needs to be close at hand; sadly, the maps in the book itself are not enough. The maps in When Titans Clashed and The Battle of Kursk, Glantz's earlier collaborative works with Jonathan House, were models of clarity. This book, like Glantz's ongoing Stalingrad Trilogy, relies heavily on reproductions of contemporary German operational maps. These are not nearly as good. Unlike the colored German originals, these black and white maps make it far harder to distinguish between German and Soviet forces, and make all lines blur together: unit boundaries, rivers, and axes of advance. Glantz promises a third volume of documents and a fourth volume of colored maps; those might improve the situation.
This volume covers...