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Overview
As is so often the case, however, history has misled its audience for several cogent reasons. On the one hand, the Soviet Union and its historians, anxious to conceal the ambitiousness of its offensive and, at the same time, preserve the reputations of the Red Army and its senior commanders, willfully avoided describing the offensive's true scope and the many failures and shortcomings the Red Army experienced during its conduct. On the other hand, German and other Western historians, frequently basing their accounts on inaccurate Soviet sources, focused only on the most dramatic aspects of the offensive, ignoring much of their adversary's actions and, not coincidentally, missing his intent.
This volume, and the series that provides it context, restores the lost and concealed to the historical record. Exploiting newly released Russian archival materials, it reveals the unbounded ambitions that shaped the Stavka's winter offensive and the full scope and scale of the Red Army's many offensive operations. For example, it reflects on recently rediscovered Operation Mars, Marshal Zhukov's companion-piece to the more famous Operation Uranus at Stalingrad. It then reexamines the Red Army's dramatic offensive into the Donbas and Khar'kov region during February, clearly demonstrating that this offensive was indeed conducted by three rather than two Red Army fronts. Likewise, it describes how the Stavka expanded the scale of its offensive in mid-February 1943 by ordering major strategic efforts, hitherto ignored, by multiple Red Army fronts along the Western (Orel-Smolensk) axis and, in Zhukov's forgotten operation Polar Star, along the Northwestern (Demiansk-Leningrad) axis as well.
Finally, by restoring the full scope of these failed or partially failed Red Army offensives to history, this volume also reassesses the impact of Manstein's dramatic counterstrokes in the Donbas and Khar'kov regions, concluding that their impact was equivalent to that of a full-fledged strategic counteroffensive.
This study includes over 100 operational maps to highlight key aspects of the offensives.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781907677052 |
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Publisher: | Helion and Company |
Publication date: | 11/10/2011 |
Pages: | 536 |
Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations v
List of Maps vi
List of Figures x
Preface xi
1 Overview 14
Part 1 soviet Offensive Operations Within The Context Of The Stalingrad Offensive (November 1942-January 1943)
2 The Kalinin and Western Fronts' 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive (Operation Mars) (25 November-16 December 1942) 38
3 The Northwestern Front's Demiansk Offensive (28 November 1942-6 January 1943) 92
Part 2 soviet Offensive Operations Along The Southwestern Axis (February-March 1943)
4 The Southwestern Front's Voroshilovgrad (Donbas) Offensive (Operation Gallop [Skachok]) (29 January-18 February 1943) 110
5 The Southern Front's Mariupol' (Donbas) Offensive (16-22 February 1943) 198
Part 3 soviet Offensive Operations Along The Western (Central) Axis (February-March 1943)
6 The Briansk Front's Orel Offensive and the Voronezh Front's (60th and 38th Armies') L'gov and Sumy Offensives (26 January-12 February 1943) 228
7 The Central, Briansk, and Western Fronts' Orel, Briansk, and Smolensk Offensive (15 February-6 March 1943) 252
8 The Kalinin, Western, Briansk, and Central Fronts' Orel, Briansk, and Smolensk Offensive (7-21 March 1943) 321
Part 4 soviet Offensive Operations Along The Northwestern Axis (February-March 1943)
9 The Leningrad, Volkhov, and Northwestern Fronts' Operation Polar Star (Demiansk) (15-28 February) 390
10 The Leningrad, Volkhov, Northwestern Front's Truncated Operation Polar Star (Staraia Russa) (4March-2 April 1943) 428
11 Conclusions 443
Notes 471
Bibliography 506
Index 513