Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk 10 July-10 September 1941: Volume 3 - The Documentary Companion. Tables, Orders and Reports prepared by participating Red Army forces

by David M. Glantz

Overview

Volume 3, the Documentary Companion to Barbarossa Derailed, contains the documentary evidence for the two volumes of narrative. In addition to key Führer Directives issued by Adolf Hitler to provide direction to his forces during the Barbarossa Campaign, as well as vital orders issued by German Army Group Center, this book includes the daily operational summaries of the participating Soviet fronts, armies, and some divisions and many if not most of the orders and reports issued by the struggling Soviet armies. Precise translations illustrate not only the capabilities and states-of-mind of key Soviet commanders as they dealt with crisis after crisis but also the characteristics (such as aggressiveness, passivity, brutality, and despair) of their varied styles of command. They also demonstrate how an army, which lost the bulk of its experienced troops during the first several months of the campaign, attempted to use its operational directives and tactical orders to educate its soldiers and officers in the basics of waging war in the midst of active and bloody operations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909982116
Publisher:	Helion and Company
Publication date:	10/19/2014
Pages:	568
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.40(d)

About the Author

David M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Glantz holds degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Defense Language Institute, Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, and U.S. Army War College.

He began his military career in 1963 as a field artillery officer from 1965 to 1969 and served in various assignments in the United States and Vietnam during the Vietnam War with the II Field Force Fire Support Coordination Element (FSCE) at the Plantation in Long Binh.

After teaching history at the United States Military Academy from 1969 through 1973, he completed the army’s Soviet foreign area specialist program and became chief of Estimates in US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Upon his return to the United States in 1979, he became chief of research at the Army’s newly formed Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then Director of Soviet Army Operations at the Center for Land Warfare, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

While at the College, Col. Glantz was instrumental in conducting the annual "Art of War" symposia which produced the best analysis of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War in English to date. The symposia included attendance of several former German participants in the operations and resulted in publication of the seminal transcripts of proceedings.

Returning to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, he helped found and later directed the U.S. Army’s Soviet (later Foreign) Military Studies Office (FMSO), where he remained until his retirement in 1993 with the rank of Colonel. In 1993 he established The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, a scholarly journal for which he still serves as chief editor, that covers military affairs in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union.

In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Society of Military History’s prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Prize for his contributions to the study of military history. Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best western military historians of the Soviet role in World War II. He lives with his wife Mary Ann Glantz in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

List of Archival Maps v

List of Tables vi

Abbreviations vii

Preface ix

Corrections to Volume Two xii

Appendices with Organizational Tables and Documents Regarding Specific Stages of the Battle For Smolensk

A The Composition, Dispositions. Command Cadre, and Armored Strength of Mechanized Corps Supporting the Western Front in July 1941 13

B The Western Front's Lepel' Counterstroke, 6-9 July 1941 18

C Army Group Center's Advance on Smolensk and the Timoshenko "Counteroffensive," 10-15 July 1941 26

D The Composition and Command Cadre of the Front of Reserve Armies, 14 July 1941 41

E The Composition and Command Cadre of the Front of the Mozhaisk Defense Line, 18 July 1941 47

F Army Group Center's Encirclement Battle at Smolensk, 16-23 July 1941 49

G The First Soviet Counteroffensive, 23-31 July 1941 71

H Tire Struggle for the Smolensk Pocket, 23-31 July 1941 99

I The Northern Flank: Nevel' and Velikie Luki, 16-31 July 1941 120

J The Southern Flank, the Fall of Mogilev and the Problem of 21st Army (Guderian's Advance to the Sozh River), 16-31 July 1941 123

K Armeegruppe Guderian's Destruction of Group Kachalov, 31 July-6 August 1941 135

L The Reduction of the Smolensk Pocket, 1-6 August 1941 152

M The Stavka Regroups its Forces, 30 July-11 August 1941 179

N Armeegruppe Guderian's and Second Army's Southward March and the Fall of Gomel', 8-21 August 1941 193

O The Second Soviet Counteroffensive: The Western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, 6-24 August 1941 198

P The Second Soviet Counteroffensive: The Reserve Front's El'nia Offensive, 8-24 August 1941 293

Q The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's Advance to Velikie Luki and Toropets, 21-28 August 1941 300

R The Northern Flank: Group Stumme's Advance to Zapadnaia Dvina, 29 August-9 September 329

S The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Western Front's Dukhovshchina Offensive, 25 August-10 September 1941 351

T The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Reserve Front's El'nia Offensive, 30 August-10 September 1941 469

U (Part 1) Armeegruppe Guderian's Jockeying for Position along the Desna River, 22-25 August 1941 474

U (Part 2) Armeegruppe Guderian's Advance across the Desna River, 25-28 August 1941 499

U (Part 3) The Third Soviet Counteroffensive: The Briansk Front's Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive, 29 August-14 September 1941 513

V The Roslavl'-Novozybkov Offensive: The Records of 108th Tank Division and 40th Army's 10th Tank Division, 28 August-14 September 1941 582

W Excerpts from the Southwestern Front's Daily Operational Directives and Summaries about 40th Army's Positions and Situation, 28 August-10 September 1941 [not in the narrative] 592

Index to Documents and Tables 602

Editorial Reviews

"Without hesitation, it is a must for any Eastern Front aficionado, as well as those wanting to see and understand the interplay between the state and the military in totalitarian states."

ARMOR Magazine

… A necessary and valuable addition to the English-language literature on the Great Patriotic War. It includes a wealth of documents never before available in English, and it substantially revises earlier accounts of the Battle of Smolensk.

Journal of Military History