Monday, February 5, 2007

The Russian way of War: Operational Art, 1904-1940 by Richard W. Harrison

Very well written and shows the evolution of operational art within the Russian Tsarist and later Red Army. From as early as the Russo-Japanese war the Russians were already experimenting with 'front' type formations and groupings of armies, this later led to those of the first world war, civil war, and finally in the beginning of the second world war.

The different ideas and people are listed and detailed with their plans for how modern war should be waged. Tuhachevsky, Isserson, Triandafillov, and Svechin are all described as well as the opposition each one faced, the purges, and the some of the reasons for why the Red Army was in such a bad position in the summer of 1941 are also listed and talked about. Mainly it is a description of the development of the ideas and theories of operational art within Russia and later the Soviet Union, very useful in understanding why Nazi Germany lost to the Red Army and how.

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