ISBN 0-7006-0879-6
374 pages

Preface; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; photos; maps; tables; Notes; Bibliographical Essay and Selective Bibliography; Index.

Appendices: Red Army Order of Battle, 22 June to 1 August 1941; Red Army 1941 Defense Plans; An Opponent's View: German Intelligence Assessments; Correlation of Forces on the German-Soviet Front

   In response to Icebreaker and M-Day by Viktor Rezun (writing as "Viktor Suvorov")—which purport to document Stalin's manipulation of Hitler, his intention to enter the war on his own terms to spread his brand of communism, and specifically his plan to launch a preemptive invasion of German territory in the summer of 1941—Colonel David Glantz has delivered a methodical and demolishing rebuttal.

   Finally, and most important, the validity of Rezun's arguments is challenged by three fundamental types of sources: newly released and extensive Soviet declassified documents and studies on the war (all secret or top secret); German archival materials; and other materials that document the parlous state of the Red Army in 1941 and indicate that any offensive operations contemplated by the Soviets in 1941 would have bordered on the lunatic. Stalin may well have been an unscrupulous tyrant, but he was not a lunatic.

   Stumbling Colossus goes well beyond rebuttal, however, by disinterring masses of documentary material to increase our understanding of the Red Army in 1941.
   The book opens with an assessment of manpower strength of the Red Army and survey of quantities and types of armies, corps, and divisions assigned to each front and military district. As Glantz shows, Soviet expansion and gradual mobilization ("creeping up to war") was already underway before the invasion. Barbarossa both hindered and accelerated the mobilization process so that despite the loss of over 40 divisions, by 1 August there were over 400 Soviet divisions in the field. This is covered thoroughly in the text and reiterated in several tables as well as the very detailed appendix showing the Red Army OB as of 22 June 1941.
   Similar treatment is accorded Soviet aviation assets.
   Despite these huge and impressive numbers, Glantz makes it clear quantity belied quality. He chronicles the purges—still underway as the war began—that emasculated the officer corps of the army, saw the promotion of unqualified officers into vital positions, and caused the morale of the army to plummet. His figures for suicides, accident rates, and drunkenness reveal an army in turmoil.

   Undoubtedly the purges produced a Red Army whose loyalty to Stalin was unquestioned. That loyalty, however, was based largely on abject and paralyzing fear, which stifled any creativity, initiative, or flexibility within the Red Army's ranks. While ridding the Red Army of its most creative military thinkers and its most experienced practitioners of war, the purges also smothered the revolutionary traditions that had fired the enthusiasm of Red Army commanders and soldiers alike. Thereafter, a lifeless and wholly mechanical Red Army struggled ineptly and bled profusely on the battlefields of the Finnish War. It would do so again and in like fashion in the western Soviet Union in summer 1941...
   The purges and wholesale expansion of the Red Army between 1937 and 1941 placed immense strain on the Red Army combat training system. Not only did the tens of thousands of purged experienced officers and soldiers have to be replaced, but cadres had to be prepared to command, control, and man an army that more than doubled in size. Many of the new troops possessed only rudimentary training, which they had received while serving in the reserve or territorial units.

   The "peasant rear", meaning both the mass of uneducated, technically inexperienced populace and the undeveloped national infrastructure, was difficult to mobilize. The bulk of recruits, many serving only grudgingly, were unfit to wield anything more technologically advanced than a rifle. Wartime documents and postwar Russian commentators bemoan the shortages of qualified men and officers and delineate the differences, especially as the tempo of purges and preliminary expansion accelerated, between the relatively small cadre of "regular" units and the growing numbers of under-trained, poorly equipped, and badly led conscripts.
   Glantz reviews the class origins and ethnic makeup of recruits and their brutal treatment: shortages of food, racial friction, endemic thievery, and more. In general, recruits were treated as an expendable commodity. To compound matters, the Soviets abolished "medallions" (dogtags) and made little attempt to accurately quantify their casualties, let alone maintain records of individual deaths.
   So what could the Soviet high command do with these imperfect military formations?
   Strategically, by mid-1940 the entire fabric of Soviet inter-war defense planning had been ripped apart by German victories in Europe, the shifting political balance, Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, parts of Finland, eastern Poland, and Bessarabia, and the failings of the Soviet war machine revealed by those operations. The Soviet General Staff revised its contingency planning with considerable urgency: "...the plan postulated an attack [against the USSR] by Germany supported by Italy, Finland, Rumania, and possibly Hungary against the western Soviet Union and by Japan against Soviet Far Eastern territories. Vasilevsky's plan assessed a total threat of 270 infantry divisions supported by 11,750 tanks, 22,000 guns, and 16,400 aircraft, the bulk of which would be committed in the critical Western Theater."

   ...[the new plan] mandated deployment of the bulk of the Soviet armed forces in the West (189 divisions and 2 brigades, or 61 percent of all formations), organized into four wartime fronts (Northern, Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern). The plan called for the maintenance of 5 High Command reserve armies (with 51 divisions), all of which were earmarked for operations in the West. Thus, the General Staff proposed that 240 Red Army divisions (80 percent of the Red Army) be committed in the West, 33 in the Far East, 30 in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, and 1 in the White Sea region. The plan accorded 60 percent of front and long-range bomber aviation to the West, 16 percent to the Far East and Trans-Baikal, and 24 percent to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.

   This plan met with considerable controversy, particularly in regard to the details of deployment and missions of Soviet armies along the western borders. Should the greatest weight of forces be placed north or south of the Pripiat marshes? Upon German invasion, should the armies immediately move to the offensive or fall back to better defensive positions? General Staff conferences and wargames attempted to answer these questions in December 1940 and January 1941, after which Zhukov replaced Meretskov as Chief of the General Staff. Glantz makes no mention of the supposed "secret February wargame" (see Thunder on the Dnepr: Zhukov-Stalin and the Defeat of Hitler's Blitzkrieg by Bryan Fugate and Lev Dvoretsky), but explains that the Soviet plan remained seriously flawed: the General Staff believed it would take the Germans 10 to 15 days to deploy, during which time the Red Army could take up its defensive positions and thus avoid a surprise blow. Glantz then ticks off deficiencies in Soviet planning, mobilization, and deployment, all of which point toward unreadiness and inability to withstand the Wehrmacht's onslaught, let alone mount any credible offensive in 1941.
   In the ensuing chapters Glantz reviews the state of Soviet ground combat forces (rifle, mechanized, cavalry, airborne), support and rear services (artillery, engineers, air defenses, NKVD), and air forces: organization, equipment, training, tactical doctrine, personnel, command and control. The overall state of readiness could not have been encouraging to any Soviet leader who knew the facts.

   The Soviets responded to the shock of their own failures and German successes by embarking on a crash program to reinvigorate their armed forces. The ensuing reforms, which bore the name of Commissar of War S. K. Timoshenko, affected virtually every facet of the Red Army. Beginning in haste in mid-1940, the Soviets attempted to rebuild their mechanized force structure, expand and modernize their artillery and airborne troops, modernize and strengthen their rifle forces, and create a logistical structure sufficient to sustain so large and modern a force. The ambitiousness and grandeur of the reform program and the frenetic pace of its implementation vividly demonstrated Soviet concern for the looming threat. The chaotic results of the attempted reforms likewise underscored the utter futility of the effort.

   The air force fared little better:

   Like Soviet mechanized forces, the Red Army Air Force was an immense organization with tremendous combat potential. New weaponry was reaching the field in June 1941 which, when it was manned by trained personnel, would be a formidable opponent to the vaunted German Air Force. The many-faceted reform program, as a whole, was well thought out and suited to a first-class Air Force. Unfortunately for the Soviets, timing and circumstance turned the promises inherent in these military reforms into tragedy for thousands of pilots and crews.

   And summarizing the state of Soviet forces:

   The mobilization system and the forces it produced were severely flawed, but those flaws must be appreciated within a broader context. As A. A. Svechin had predicted less than 20 years before, the Soviet Union would have difficulty mobilizing its "peasant rear" for war. Every facet of manpower and unit mobilization, and the necessary preparation of communications, military command and control, governmental organs, the industrial base, and the economy at large, proved immensely difficult. Stalin, the Stavka, and senior military organs prodded the ponderous Soviet government, military, and economic infrastructure into action, but, predictably, it responded glacially, despite the achievements of such prodigious feats as the partially successful transfer of elements of the industrial base eastward to relative safety. For every such feat that Soviet authorities bragged about after the war, there were striking examples that vividly underscored the Soviet state's inability to respond quickly and efficiently to the challenges of war.

   In the meantime, while the Soviet leadership desperately attempted to mold its population into coherent military formations, mobilize them by "creeping up to war", and decide how best to deploy them in peacetime and employ them in combat, from every level of intelligence Stalin received clear and ominous warnings of impending invasion: a personal message from Winston Churchill quoting "a trusted agent", from the spy Richard Sorge in Japan, from Party officials in border districts, from military attaches abroad, and from military units along the border.
   Chief of the General Staff Zhukov claimed in his memoirs that neither he nor People's Commissar of Defense Timoshenko was aware of the intelligence reports Stalin was receiving.

   This may well have been correct. The intelligence system presided over by Stalin was overly compartmentalized, and because of his own penchant for secrecy, the dictator probably did not share critical information with his always suspect subordinates. Nevertheless, when he wrote this, Zhukov was being more than a little disingenuous in separating himself from blame for the massive intelligence failure.... What Zhukov should have said was that in the circumstances he was virtually powerless to do anything else but acquiesce in Stalin's judgment. In short, while intelligence collection concerning German military intentions was clearly more than adequate, interpretation by the High Command and political leadership was not.

   And Stalin's interpretation remained unshaken. These reports were lies and provocations. Hitler would not attack.
   Based on what he knew, Zhukov went so far as to propose a preemptive strike with Soviet forces to disrupt the German deployments. His report appears to be the underpinning for much of the school, including Rezun's works, claiming the Soviet Union planned offensive war against Germany in 1941, and Barbarossa was merely Hitler's response to Stalin's scheme. Glantz quotes part of Zhukov's document, co-signed by Timoshenko, and then analyzes the facts.

   "Considering that Germany, at this time, is mobilizing its forces and rear services, it has the capability of forestalling (preempting) our deployment and delivering a surprise blow. In order to avert such a situation, I consider it necessary on no account to give the initiative of action to the German command, to preempt the enemy deployment and to attack the German Army at the moment when it is in the process of deployment and has not yet succeeded in organizing the front and the cooperation of its forces."
   The report then postulated strategic objectives for the proposed operation, which was designed to defeat and destroy the estimated 100 German divisions assembling in eastern Poland. Zhukov calculated that the Soviet attacking force of 152 divisions would be faced by roughly 100 German divisions.
   Zhukov's report suggests the following conclusions. First, it confirms the accuracy of Golikov's 5 May intelligence assessment. Second, Soviet deployments on 15 May were insufficient to mount such an offensive. Between them, the Western and Southwestern Fronts counted about 102 divisions. Strategic second echelon and reserve forces were just then beginning their deployment forward and would arrive in the western border military districts in stages between early June and July. By the time Zhukov's required correlation of forces would have been achieved (early July), German force strength would also have risen. It would have taken 60 days for Zhukov to achieve the necessary force correlation and by that time, given their successful prewar intelligence collection, the Germans would certainly have detected Soviet preparations and acted accordingly. Third, and most important, as documentary evidence clearly indicates, the Red Army was in no condition to launch such an ambitious offensive, and Stalin knew it. Finally, history itself has negated the importance of this sinister historical "What if?" The German 22 June attack rendered any postulated Soviet action utterly irrelevant.
   Futhermore, despite the notoriety of the Zhukov proposal, there is no indication that Stalin ever saw it. Given Stalin's reaction to the existing intelligence information, it is doubtful whether he would have given it any thought if he had.

   In short, as Glantz thoroughly surveys the unreadiness of the Soviet military colossus leading up to the summer of 1941, we learn not only about its strengths and its enormous shortcomings, but also that there could be no serious question of offensive war against Germany at that time. Any plans or proposals for such operations were strictly in the realm of military contingencies and in no way reflected the reality of Soviet decision-making or Stalin's intentions. As "interesting, sensational, and salable" as the theory of Soviet preemptive war in 1941 might be, Glantz proves beyond doubt that it fails to bear up under scrutiny and holds no substance.
   Colonel Glantz has produced many fine books about the Russo-German War; this might very well be his best yet. In addition to his cogent text, Stumbling Colossus contains mountains of tabular material (including some very impressive order of battle data), valuable appendices, careful annotation, attribution, and documentation, and an enlightening bibliographic essay. Highly recommended and likely to be regarded as one of the best new WWII-related books of the year. Don't miss it.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from University Press of Kansas.
   Thanks to Kansas for providing this review copy.