Robert Forczyk

A comprehensive evaluation of generalship on the most important front in World War II. The war on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945 was the largest sustained air-ground conflict in military history and played the decisive role in the defeat of the Third Reich. This new study seeks to analyse the command and generalship of the combatants. The scale of the conflict was immense. Lasting over 46 months it involved over 10 million combatants at its peak, and resulted in roughly 15 million military deaths, as well as about 20 million civilian deaths. More than 50 percent of all German military fatalities in 1941–45 occurred there, and by the time the Western Allies invaded France in June 1944, the Wehrmacht was already decimated. Who were the generals who led these campaigns on the Eastern Front? The standard historiography of World War II tends to focus on a few prominent leaders while ignoring the mass of commanders and operational-level military staffs who actually fought most of the war and this new study by renowned Eastern Front historian Robert Forczyk seeks to redress the balance. Generalship on the Eastern Front offers an objective analytic framework for assessing the senior German and Soviet commanders on the Eastern Front through the lens of generalship and battle command, examining a total of 54 German and 140 Soviet officers.

A detailed exploration of a critical month-long battle, which set the stage for German strategic-level defeats on both the Eastern and Western fronts.In February 1944, 1st Panzer Army (under Generaloberst Hube) played a major role in the relief operation that saved part of the German forces trapped in the Korsun Pocket. However, the losses suffered in that effort left Hube’s forces materially weakened, exhausted and with vulnerable flanks. Unexpectedly, Zhukov’s 1st Ukrainian Front and Konev’s 2nd Ukrainian Front attacked on 4 March, conducting a huge pincer operation against 1st Panzer Army. Within three weeks, Hube’s 200,000-strong army was isolated, with its back to the Dniester River. The destruction of Hube’s army would doubtless precipitate a rapid German collapse on the Eastern Front – two months before the Allied invasion of France. In this work, Eastern Front expert Robert Forczyk presents a superbly illustrated examination of the initial Soviet encirclement operation, Hube’s full-scale breakout operation to save his army, and the relief operation by 2nd SS-Panzer Corps (redeployed from the West) in April 1944. Although Hube’s army managed to escape Zhukov’s trap, it lost most of its equipment and was no longer fully combat capable. The German Army in the East had been seriously weakened, and the amount of German armour deployed in the West to counter any Allied landings in France had simultaneously been reduced.

1943-ban, a Sztálingrádnál elszenvedett katasztrofális vereség után a Wehrmach páncéloshadseregei elvesztették a kezdeményezést a keleti fronton; a háború menetében fordulat állt be. Az összfegyvernemi harcászat, mely révén a németek 1941-ben és 1942-ben elsöpörték a szovjet csapatokat, veszített hatékonyságából. A keleti fronton ezt követően a páncéloserők vezette támadásokra helyeződött a hangsúly, s mint Robert Forczyk könyvéből megtudhatjuk, a Vörös Hadsereg gépesített alakulatainak erőteljes csapásai sorra zúzták szét a német védelmi vonalakat. E tudományos igényű munka betekintést enged abba, milyen változások történtek a két legnagyobb gépesített haderőnél a páncélos harcászat és a fegyverzet terén a szovjet dominancia erősödése idején. A szerző német, orosz és angol forrásokra alapozva, a német és a szovjet látásmódot egyaránt érvényre juttatva közöl átfogó ismertetést és elemzést a keleten zajló páncélos-hadviselésről. A történelem legnagyobb páncélos háborújáról szóló nagyszabású munka második kötete is lebilincselő olvasmány.