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The Budapest Operation (29 October 1944-13 February 1945): An
Operational-Strategic Study examines in detail the Red Army's
operations on the approaches to Budapest and the city's ultimate
capture following a long siege. The first part of the study deals
with the Red Army's arrival in central Hungary, following the
successful conduct of the Iasi-Kishinev operation in late August
1944 and the subsequent development of the offensive through
Romania, Bulgaria and eastern Yugoslavia. By mid-October the
Soviets were poised to continue the offensive into Hungary and its
capital of Budapest, the capture of which would clear the path for
a subsequent advance into Austria and southern Germany. This study
examines the rapid advance to the outskirts of Budapest, where
stubborn German-Hungarian resistance forced them to halt, after
which the Soviets sought to surround the city, finally closing the
ring at the end of December. Also examined are the Germans'
repeated attempts to break the siege by launching several
counter-offensives to the west and south of the city. However,
these were all beaten back in heavy fighting and the enemy garrison
was forced to capitulate on 13 February. This study also devotes
considerable attention to the combat arms (artillery, tanks and
mechanized forces, aviation, and engineering troops) during the
operation. The other study is an internal General Staff Academy
document dealing with the activities of the Third Ukrainian Front
during the Budapest operation. Throughout the greater part of the
operation the Third Ukrainian Front played a decidedly secondary
role, charged with protecting the flank of the Soviet advance
through Yugoslavia and Hungary, with the Second Ukrainian Front
slated to receive the accolades for taking Budapest. However, the
bitter enemy resistance along the approaches to Budapest gradually
forced the Soviet high command to increasingly shift its efforts to
the right bank of the Danube River, first to help in isolating the
Budapest garrison inside the city, and then to fend off repeated
German counter-offensives to relieve the city. It was the Third
Ukrainian Front's successful repulse of these efforts that enabled
the Soviets to finally bring about the garrison's capitulation and
the end of the operation.
The Battle of Kursk: The Red Army's Defensive Operations and
Counter- Offensive, July-August 1943, offers a peculiarly Soviet
view of one of the Second World War's most critical events. While
the Germans defeats at Moscow and Stalingrad showed that Hitler
could not win the war in the East, the outcome of Kursk
demonstrated beyond a doubt that he would lose it. This study was
compiled by the Red Army General Staff's military-historical
directorate, which was charged with collecting and analyzing the
war's experience, and issued as an internal document in 1946-47.
The study languished for more than a half-century, before being
published in Russia in 2006, although heavily supplemented by
commentary and other information not contained in the original. The
present work omits these additions, while supplying its own
commentary in places deemed necessary. The book is divided into two
parts, dealing with the defensive and offensive phases of the
battle, respectively. The first begins with a strategic overview of
the situation along the Eastern Front by the spring and summer of
1943 and the Soviet decision to stand on the defensive. This is
followed by a detailed examination of the Central Front's efforts
to counter the expected German attack out of the Orel salient, and
the Voronezh Front's attempts to do the same against the German
concentrations in the Belgorod-Khar'kov area. The rest of this
section is devoted to an exceedingly detailed day-by-day,
tactical-operational account of the struggle, particularly along
the southern face of the salient, where the Germans came closest to
succeeding. The second part will be more of a revelation to the
Western reader, who is likely to be more familiar with the
defensive phase of the battle. Here the authors once again, in
great detail, lay out the Red Army's preparations for and conduct
of a massive counteroffensive to clear the Orel salient, which soon
degenerated to a grinding struggle, which while ultimately
successful, cost the Soviets dearly. Likewise, the authors detail
the Voronezh Front's preparations to reduce the Belgorod salient
and seize the industrial center of Khar'kov. This offensive, in
conjunction with a simultaneous offensive in the Donets industrial
region, pushed the German lines to the breaking point and set the
stage for the follow-on advance to the Dnepr River and the eventual
liberation of Ukraine.
Rollback: The Red Army's Winter Offensive along the Southwestern
Strategic Direction, 1942-43 covers the period from mid-December
1942 to mid-February 1943, one of the most critical periods of the
war on the Eastern Front. It was here that following the
encirclement of an entire German army at Stalingrad, the Soviets
sought to take advantage of the ruptured Axis front in southern
Russia to finish off the Germans' Italian and Hungarian allies and
liberate the economically vital areas of eastern Ukraine. This
study is drawn from a number of wartime and postwar articles,
published by the General Staff's directorate for the study of
wartime experience. Also featured are documents relating to the
operational-strategic conduct of the various operations, which were
compiled and published after the fall of the Soviet Union. Several
articles deal with the preparation for and conduct of the
Southwestern Front's Middle Don operation of December 1942.
Originally intended as an ambitious offensive to cut off the German
forces in the North Caucasus by driving on to Rostov, the operation
was later reoriented to meet the threat of the German effort to
relieve Stalingrad. The offensive not only accomplished its
objective of turning back the German attack, thus dooming the
Stalingrad garrison, but also destroyed the Italian army in the
East as well. The Soviet Voronezh Front then struck further up the
Don River, and in the Ostrogozhsk-Rossosh' operation destroyed what
remained of the Italian forces in the area, as well as the
Hungarian army. This enabled the Red Army to capture Khar'kov and
push nearly to the Dnepr River by mid-February, before being thrown
back by a skillful German counteroffensive. The territorial results
of this operation set the stage for the front's subsequent
Voronezh-Kastornoe operation, which enabled the Soviets to push as
far west as Kursk before exhaustion and growing German resistance
brought the offensive to a halt. Further to the south, the Soviets
were able to capture Voroshilovgrad and penetrate into the
industrial Donets Basin. The book also contains a detailed Soviet
examination of the employment of tank and mechanized corps during
the campaign. The conclusions reached here had a direct bearing on
the restructuring of the Red Army's tank armies in time for the
summer campaign of 1943.
Prelude to Berlin: The Red Army's Offensive Operations in Poland
and Eastern Germany 1945 offers a panoramic view of the Soviet
strategic offensives north of the Carpathians in the winter of
1945. During the course of this offensive the Red Army broke
through the German defences in Poland and East Prussia and
eventually occupied all of Germany east of the Oder River. The book
consists primarily of articles that appeared in various military
journals during the first decade after the war. The General Staff's
directorate charged with studying the war experience published
these studies, although there are other sources as well. A
particular highlight of these is a personal memoir that offers a
rare insight into Soviet strategic planning for the winter-spring
1945 campaign. Also featured are documents relating to the
operational-strategic conduct of the various operations, which were
compiled and published after the fall of the Soviet Union. The book
is divided into several parts, corresponding to the operations
conducted. These include the Vistula-Oder operation by the First
Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts out of their respective
Vistula bridgeheads. This gigantic operation, involving over a
million men and several thousand tanks, artillery and other weapons
sliced through the German defences and, in a single leap, advanced
the front to the Oder River, less than 100 kilometres from Berlin,
from which they launched their final assault on the Reich in April.
Equally impressive was the Second and Third Belorussian Fronts'
offensive into Germany's East Prussian citadel. This operation
helped to clear the flank further to the south and exacted a
long-awaited revenge for the Russian Army's defeat here in 1914.
This effort cut off the German forces in East Prussia and concluded
with an effort to clear the flanks in Pomerania and the storming of
the East Prussian capital of Konigsberg in April. The study also
examines in considerable detail the First Ukrainian Front's Upper
and Lower Silesian operations of February-March 1945. These
operations cleared the army's flanks in the south and deprived
Germany of one of its last major industrial and agricultural areas.
Berlin Operation, 1945, tells the story of the Red Army's
penultimate offensive operation in the war in Europe. Here the
forces of three fronts (Second and First Belorussian and First
Ukrainian) forced the Oder River and surrounded the defenders of
the German capital, reduced the city and drove westward to link up
with the Western allies in central Germany. This is another in a
series of studies compiled by the Soviet Army General Staff, which
during the postwar years set itself the task of gathering and
generalizing the experience of the war for the purpose of training
the armed forces' higher staffs in the conduct of large-scale
offensive perations. The study is divided into three parts. The
first contains a brief strategic overview of the situation, as it
existed by the spring of 1945, with special emphasis on German
preparations to meet the inevitable Soviet attack. This section
also includes an examination of the decisions by the Stavka of the
Supreme High Command on the conduct of the operation. As usual, the
fronts' materiel-technical and other preparations for the offensive
are covered in great detail. These include plans for artillery,
artillery and engineer support, as well as the work of the rear
services and political organs and the strengths, capabilities and
tasks of the individual armies. Part two deals with the Red Army's
breakthrough of the Germans' Oder defensive position up to the
encirclement of the Berlin garrison. This covers the First
Belorussian Front's difficulty in overcoming the defensive along
the Seelow Heights along the direct path to Berlin, as well as the
First Ukrainian Front's easier passage over the Oder and its
secondary attack along the Dresden axis. The Second Belorussian
Front's breakthrough and its sweep through the Baltic littoral is
also covered. Part three covers the intense fighting to reduce the
city's defenders from late April until the garrison's surrender on
2 May, as well as operations in the area up to the formal German
capitulation. This section contains a number of detailed
descriptions of urban fighting at the battalion and regimental
level. It closes with conclusions about the role of the various
combat arms in the operation.
"The Battle of Moscow, 1941-1942: The Red Army's Defensive
Operations and Counteroffensive Along the Moscow Strategic
Direction" is a detailed examination of one of the major turning
points of World War II, as seen from the Soviet side. The Battle of
Moscow marked the climax of Hitler's "Operation Barbarossa," which
sought to destroy the Soviet Union in a single campaign and ensure
German hegemony in Europe. The failure to do so condemned Germany
to a prolonged war it could not win. This work orignally appeared
in 1943, under the title"Razgrom Nemetskikh Voisk pod Moskvoi" (The
Rout of the German Forces Around Moscow). The work was produced by
the Red Army General Staff's military-historical section, which was
charged with collecting and analyzing the war's experience and
disseminating it to the army's higher echelons. This was a
collective effort, featuring many different contributors, with
Marshal Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov, former chief of the Red
Army General Staff and then head of the General Staff Academy,
serving as general editor. The book is divided into three parts,
each dealing with a specific phase of the battle. The first traces
the Western Front's defensive operations along the Moscow direction
during Army Group Center's final push toward the capital in
November-December, 1941. The study pays particular attention to the
Red Army's resistance to the Germans'attempts to outflank Moscow
from the north. Equally important were the defensive operations to
the south of Moscow, where the Germans sought to push forward their
other encircling flank. The second part deals with the first phase
of the Red Army's counteroffensive, which was aimed at pushing back
the German pincers and removing the immediate threat to Moscow.
Here the Soviets were able to throw the Germans back and flatten
both salients, particularly in the south, where they were able to
make deep inroads into the enemy front to the west and northwest.
The final section examines the further development of the
counteroffensive until the end of January 1942. This section
highlights the Soviet advance all along the front and their
determined but unsuccessful attempts to cut off the
Germans'Rzhev-Vyaz'ma salient. It is from this point that the front
essentially stabilized, after which events shifted to the south.
This new translation into English makes available to a wider
readership this valuable study.
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