Stone & Stone World War II Books Editor’s Choice
Continuing his magisterial account of the Eastern Front campaigns, the writer cited by The Atlantic as “indisputably the West’s foremost expert on the subject” focuses here on the Red Army’s operations from the fall of 1943 through the April 1944. David M. Glantz chronicles the Soviet Army’s efforts to further exploit their post-Kursk gains and accelerate a counteroffensive that would eventually take them all the way to Berlin.
The Red Army’s Operation Bagration that liberated Belorussia in June 1944 sits like a colossus in the annals of World War II history. What is little noted in the history books, however, is that the Bagration offensive was not the Soviets’ first attempt. Battle for Belorussia tells the story of how, eight months earlier, and acting under the direction of Stalin and his Stavka, three Red Army fronts conducted multiple simultaneous and successive operations along a nearly 400-mile front in an effort to liberate Belorussia and capture Minsk, its capital city. The campaign, with over 700, 000 casualties, was a Red Army failure.
Glantz describes in detail the series of offensives, with their markedly different and ultimately disappointing results, that, contrary to later accounts, effectively shifted Stalin’s focus to the Ukraine as a more manageable theater of military operations. Restoring the first Belorussian offensive to its place in history, this work also reveals for the first time what the later, successful Bagration operation owed to its forgotten precursor.
Innehållsförteckning
List of Maps, Tables, and Illustrations
Preface
A Note on Maps and Tables
Part I: The Struggle for Belorussia, October-December 1943
1. Context: The Summer-Fall Campaign (1 July – 23 December)
2. The Kalinin and Baltic Fronts’ Vitebsk and Nevel’ Offensives (3-30 October)
3. The Western Front’s Orsha Offensives (3-28 October)
4. The Central Front’s Gomel’-Rechitsa Offensive (30 September – 30 October)
5. The 1st and 2nd Baltic Fronts’ Polotsk-Vitebsk and Pustoshka-Idritsa Offensives (2-21 November)
6. The Western Front’s Orsha Offensives (14 November 5 December)
7. The Belorussian Front’s Gomel’-Rechitsa and Novyi Bykhov-Propoisk Offensives (10-30 November)
8. The 1st Baltic and Western Front’s Vitebsk (Gorodok) Offensive (13-23 December) and 2nd Baltic Front’s Idritsa-Opochka Offensive (16-25 December) and the German Counterstroke (20-27 December)
Part II: The Struggle for Belorussia, December 1943-April 1944
10. Context: The Winter Campaign (24 December 1943 – April 1944)
11. The 1st Baltic and Western Fronts’ Vitebsk Offensive (24 December 1943 – 5 January 1944) and 2nd Baltic Front’s Novosokol’niki Pursuit (30 December 1943 – 15 January 1944)
12. The 1st Baltic and Western Fronts’ Vitebsk-Bogushevsk Offensive (6-24 January)
13. The 1st Baltic and Western Fronts’ Vitebsk Offensive (3-16 February)
14. The Western Front’s Babinovichi and Vitebsk Offensives (22 February – 5 March)
15. The Western Front’s Orsha and Bogushevsk Offensives (5-29 March)
16. the Belorussian Front’s Situation on 1 January 1944 and Preliminary Operations
17. The Belorussian Front’s Kalinkovichi-Mozyr’ Offensive (8-14 January)
18. The Belorussian Front’s Ozarichi-Ptich’ Offensive (16-30 January)
19. the Belorussian Front’s Parichi-Bobruisk (Marmovichi-Dubrova) Offensive (16 January – 23 February)
20. The Belorussian Front’s Rogachev-Zhlobin and Mormal’-Parichi Offensives (21-29 February)
21. The Liquidation of German Bridgeheads on the Dnepr River’s Eastern Bank (25-31 March)
22. Investigations, Recriminations, and Sokolovsky’s Relief
23. Conclusions
Appendices
A-Q. Documents: Directives, Orders, and Reports
R. German Command Cadre in Eastern Belorussia
S. Selected Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of Appendix Documents
Index
Om författaren
Mary Elizabeth Glantz obtained a Ph D in history from Temple University and is the author of the book FDR and the Soviet Union: The President’s Battle over Foreign Policy.
Fler e-böcker från samma författare (r) / Redaktör
227 600 E-böcker i denna kategori
