When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler

by Jonathan M. House and David M. Glantz

Book Overview

On first publication, this uncommonly concise and readable account of Soviet Russia's clash with Nazi Germany utterly changed our understanding of World War II on Germany's Eastern Front, immediately earning its place among top-shelf histories of the world war. Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, much of it the authors' own work, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0700621210
• ISBN13: 9780700621217
• Release Date: October 2015
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Length: 568 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A great primer on the military history of the Eastern Front

David M. Glantz's "When Titans Clashed" is a comprehensive but not overlong operational history covering the entire Russo-German conflict from 1941-45, plus an interesting chapter on the Soviet operations in Manchuria against the Japanese Army. It's exhaustive, it's readable, it's filled with maps, it does include all the recent archival material worth being included, it's balanced even taking in account the focus on the Russian point of view. What could you ask for more? Well, a couple of things, but more of this later."When Titans Clashed" is a book that has already been dissected in every possible way, and is, if not a clear-cut best seller, definitely a popular. So I'll just underline the three main reasons why it a mandatory text for anyone even remotely interested in the subject, the first being that colonel Glantz does his own job, and not someone else's. In other words, he's a military expert, and this is an operational, and not political, social or human dissection of the conflict. Richard Overy's "Russia's War" aimed at being all that, and failed. Sticking to his guns, Glantz gives to this (not too big) book a greater level of detail,. Of course, we still need a good political, human and social history of the war - while Robert Thurston's "The People's War : Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union" is a fine social study of wartime Russia, it may be a bit too difficult for the casual reader. But Glantz's focus was on military operation, and this book is just that - a military history.Second. Glantz comes from old guard: i.e., he works mainly on primary/archival sources, and he knows how to separate gold from garbage. WWII history is a tricky business, and Eastern History (given the political sensitivity of the campaign's outcome) is even more so. Again, a comparison with Overy (who ended up giving credit to such debatable authors as Sokolov and gave readers sensation they could have spent much better your money on the secondary resources he continuously cited) may be useful. Glantz attitude towards the material is level headed and inspired by old fashioned positivism (there's a very useful appendices dealing with comparison of forces and losses). And he never assumes, giving even more authority to the basic thesis of this book - it was Russia who won the war, and not Germany that lost it, and Russia won because it learned how to outfight, outmanoeuvre and outsmart the Nazi army, in a long and (extremely!) bloody process, ending in 1945 with the Red Army being a even better military machine than the Wehrmacht was in 1941. Glantz gives you a lot of food for thought to support his view, especially on the "numbers" issue. More controversially but not polemically, colonel Glantz maintains also that while the Red Army broke Hitler's back, what the Allied did in the West was important - but basically more aimed at containing Russia's success rather than at speeding up Nazism's demise. The third reason why you should buy "When Titans C

Simply the best

This is now the best one volume history of the German campaign on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. One of the authors is one of the leading specialists on the subject and has written a large number of volumes about different aspects of the war on the Eastern Front. The book is easy to read and has numerous maps that support the text.The reason for the book is that prior to the opening of the Russian archives most historians depended on German material for understanding the campaign. That material was seriously flawed in a number of respects. The first problem was that for the entire war the Germans had very poor intelligence about the size and disposition of Russian forces. The second problem was that a large number of the memoirs of German Generals were self serving and inaccurate. Early histories of the war have seen the reason for the failure of the Russian campaign as a result of operational failures. That is that certain mistakes were made in the conduct of the campaign. A common theme of histories during the 60's and 70's was a belief that if the Barbarossa offensive had been run differently or if the attacking forces in operation Blue had not been separated victory might not have been achieved. This book shows clearly that by the end of the campaign in 1941 the Germans were in serious trouble. They had suffered massive casualties and the forces they could muster in 1942 were far below the army that had started the campaign in both men and equipment. The Russians although they had lost close to three million men had by the end of 1941 built up a force equivalent to the Germans. From that time on they were able to edge ahead in production of equipment and achieve a material preponderance over the Germans. In fact it was probably the failure of the Russian Kharkov offensive that made it possible for any offensive operation in 1942 to succeed. In summary the reason for the failure of Barbarossa was not due to operational problems but due to problems with strategy. In 1941 Germany put into the campaign an army of about three million men. Its level of production of tanks and aircraft remained low. In 1944 it was able to increase its army to the level of ten million and to raise tank and aircraft production. By 1944 it was to late as the Russian forces had reached the top of their fighting potential. The forces put into the field in 1941 were not adequate and the Germans were to suffer from massive supply problems. The basis of the commitment of three million men in 1941 was something that the German armed forces felt adequate to complete the conquest of Russia in five weeks. It was only later in the war that the Germans began to realize the potential of their enemy. Again this is territory that Glantz has discussed in his excellent book Stumbling Colossus. This book lays to rest a number of old mistakes and historical errors. One of the authors has written another volume on Operation Mars so that the book is able to show that this was

A must read for WWII buffs.

This incredible book belongs on the shelf of any student of World War II. It is easy to read, concise, and scholarly. If you don't know much about the Soviet-German conflict, this is an ideal place to start. If you have read widely on the subject, be sure to add this to your collection. It is excellent for both those looking for a quick read or for those who want a starting point for further research. The notes at the end of the book list an impressive number of sources.So many Americans, even those who are avid readers of military history, are very uninformed about the Russian Front. Anti-Soviet attitudes and the preponderance of books written from the German point of view have combined to present an often false and distorted version of history. In the minds of many, the Red Army was completely dependent on American military aid and survived only because of its "inexhaustable" manpower. The Soviets could only win by throwing more men into battle than the Germans had bullets to shoot them with, and were just barely holding their own prior to D-Day. According to popular imagination, the Russian winter is what really stopped the Nazis. As bad as these misperceptions are, even worse are the schools of thought which suggest that the Soviet Union was as guilty as Germany for the start of the war or that Hitler's invasion was a defensive move against an impending Soviet attack on Germany.Col. Glantz has proven himself to be the preeminent Western author on the Soviet military in general and its pivotal role in the Second World War in particular. Against all the myths, he presents the facts. Tenacious Soviet resistance, combined with overextended German supply lines, halted the Blitzkrieg at Moscow and Leningrad. Long before D-Day, the Red Army had made Hitler's defeat inevitable by gutting the Wehrmacht in the decisive battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. During the same time as the Normandy fighting, the Soviets' "Bagration" offensive inflicted 500,000 casualties on the Axis and drove the last of the invaders from their territory. From 1941 until mid-1943, the Red Army confronted 80-90% of Germany's total armed forces. At no time in the whole war did it ever face less than 60%, not even during the heaviest fighting on the Western Front (Normandy, Arnhem, or the "Battle of the Bulge"). Germany's Axis partners on the Russian Front included not only the Italians but the whole armed forces of Romania, Hungary, and Finland, as well as contingents of pro-fascist volunteers from all over Europe. Proper credit is finally given to the Soviet military leadership, as well. Red Army commanders often displayed outstanding generalship after the harsh lessons of '41 and '42, mastering the art of strategic deception and mechanized warfare on a level matching, even exceeding, that of their best German or Allied counterparts. Names like Zhukov, Vasilievsky, Rokossovsky, Konev, and Vatutin deserve a place alongside Rommel, Guderian, vo

An excellent summary of Red Army operations from 1939-45

It is unfortunate that until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, historical accounts of the Battle for Russia (as it should probably be named) have been hamstrung by the fact that the Soviet archives were off limits even to Russian speaking western historians.Consequently most histories are based on German archives, memoirs, captured documents and the occasional release of "approved" Soviet historical accounts. This, and the natural patriotic fervour generated when reading accounts of your own nations exploits in war, have led to the popular belief that the Western Allies, especially the USA were principally responsible for destroying the Nazis. More serious is impression that the Red Army was an enormous, bungling hydra-headed monster that wouldn't wilt under the brilliant blows the Whermarcht delivered before Hitler took over and stifled their creativity. Fortunately publications like this one have started to reverse that impression. The authors have crafted a well-written thoughtful summary of Soviet operations from 1939-1945. Contrary to some of the other reviews of this work Glantz and House DO discuss Stalin's purges and their effects, but only as they applied to the Red Army - which is fitting because that is the focus of the book. I would also like to point out that the book is a summary from a strategic point of view, that is you won't see interviews with veterans and the accounts of the battles are not exhaustive - nor could they be because the book is less than 500 pages!I think the fairest way to finish is to list the things I took from this account:1) Finding out what the Soviet Generals from STAVKA down to Army level did and intended to do in EACH major operation. 2) A rational explanation why the Soviets simplified their sub unit structures initially, removing the combined arms elements from divisional/corps control, before reinstating them in the latter stages of the war. 3) The book is an excellent study guide if you're interested in finding out about the unsung generals of the Red Army - the subordinates of Zhukov, Konev et al. 4) A detailed breakdown of casualty and Order of Battle Statistics and some explanation as to why the Germans thought the Red Army was bigger then it actually was.Basically I came away with a deeper respect and understanding about what the Red Army/Soviets accomplished in '41-45, especially the skill they displayed in beating what until 1943 was still the finest army the world had ever seen.

Excellent coverage of 1941-45 operational history

The sheer scale of the conflict in eastern Europe and Russia comes across in this book. There just isn't enough space to write about just one battle and it's participants, the war was so huge in the east. Thousands of people, masses of military equipment move great distances in the space of a sentence and still this book has to be economic with the language used to describe events. Descriptions are good and the structuring of the work is fine. This is no Saving Private Ryan, but it does justice to the efforts of the Russian people to defeat Hitler. Of no small importance is the fact that this book writes from the Soviet point of view. The front is the western front and the enemy a defiler of the motherland. The credit the authors give to Soviet commanders skill in defeating the German army and it's allies is long overdue considering the pro-German bias of previous accounts.