The Role of Intelligence in Soviet Military Strategy in World War II
Novato, CA: Presidio, 1990. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. x, 262 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Index. David M. Glantz (born January 11, 1942) is an American military historian known for his books on the Red Army during World War II and as the chief editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Born in Port Chester, New York, Glantz received degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He 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. Glantz had a career of more than 30 years in the U.S. Army, served in the Vietnam War, and retired as a colonel in 1993. Glantz is known as a military historian of the Soviet role in World War II. He has argued that the view of the Soviet Union's involvement in the war has been prejudiced in the West, which relies too much on German oral and printed sources without being balanced by a similar examination of Soviet source material. Glantz received the 2000 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by the Society for Military History and in 2020 the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement. Aimed at serious students of modern military warfare, this dry examination of Soviet intelligence gathering/analysis and its effect on political-military decision making during WW II has a well-defined subject but lacks a theme or argument. Glantz begins the study with a discussion of Soviet unpreparedness at the time of the German invasion in 1941, then traces the strategic misjudgments imposed by Stalin on the high command during the first few months of the war, resulting in a series of military disasters that lasted until the autumn of 1942 when the Red Army seized the initiative at Stalingrad. The author describes how the Soviets learned to detect German intentions, provide the enemy with false information, and mask Red Army counteroffensive plans only after Stalin began to pay heed to the advice of his staff. This study investigates the role played by razvedka [intelligence and reconnaissance] in the military strategy of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In the broadest sense, it focuses on two principal issues: first, the nature of soviet wartime military strategy as reflected by Soviet conduct of strategic operations and second, the role of razvedka played in the formulation and implementation of Soviet strategic plans. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: W.W.II, Espionage, STAVKA, Stalingrad, GRU, Counterintelligence, Vasilevsky, Stalin, Zhukov, Razvedka, Kursk, Shtemenko
ISBN: 0891413804
[Book #21746]
Price: $75.00