#Reviewing Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942

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Russell Hellyer

Robert Forczyk’s Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt is an excellent analysis of the first 18 months of armored warfare on the Eastern front during the Second World War. This account differs from previous work primarily through its wide-ranging use of primary sources from Russian and German records, in addition to leaning on the excellent groundwork laid by David M. Glantz and others. Glantz's work is essential to understanding the Eastern front and his work, in particular Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia 1941, remains relevant to the current discussion.

For decades, popular history has perpetuated misunderstandings about the Eastern Front of the Second World War. Some of these, such as the “endless hordes” of the Soviet Army overwhelming the professional and competent Wehrmacht through sheer numbers, border on myth, if not outright fabrications. Other myths include the technical superiority of German war machines (Death Traps) and the genius of certain commanders, Soviet and German, with the memoirs of Generalfeldmarschall Manstien being among the most famous examples of these, along with much of the early post-war work by Sir B.H. Liddell Hart. This myth busting is part and parcel of the motivation behind this book.

Tank Warfare illuminates the failures and successes of the German and Soviet approaches as the war progressed. Forczyk avoids the pitfalls of the surrounding myths by choosing to address them through a well written chronological history with consistent analysis of individual actions and the larger operational and strategic pictures. 

This serves as a focal point as it consistently works to shed light on the armor campaigns of 1941 and 1942. This new understanding is beneficial to more than just the historians of the Second World War, giving a wider audience a chance to get a clear and comprehensive background of tank warfare in general and the specifics of the Eastern front based on primary Russian and German sources. This is the standout feature of this book, as it is one of the first to delve into these sources and elucidate the fog of war that clouds historical perception of the war on the Eastern front. The author uses unit records, previous scholarship, U.S. Department of Defense white papers, and an inherent understanding of tank operations, borne of experience, to do this. Few, if any, other authors bring this combined understanding to the topic. 

Robert Forczyk starts his introduction with the popular mythology of “quantity over quality” and proceeds with a thorough detailing of how this particular fable misses key factors that, when assembled, paint a more complex portrait of the war. Background information is laid out here, outlining the standing misconceptions he is choosing to address and outlay the scope of the book ahead. The next 230 pages are organized into a mere 3 chapters: a scene setting overlay discussing the opposing forces in early 1941, followed by a chapter each for operations in 1941 and 1942. The conclusion is short and focuses on recapping the 18 months of lessons and patterns that had taken shape. The book suffers somewhat from this broad chronological organization, making it hard to find places to rest and digest the information presented. 

The first chapter gives a solid start to the book, detailing the formations, equipment, and commanders of the opposing forces at the outset of the campaign. This discussion provides a foundation for the detailed examinations of the major armored battles that follow.

The next chapter proceeds through a montage of the various tank battles of the first year of the Eastern front, stopping to detail various strategic and tactical factors as they influence the operational situation. There are small subsections that bring the narrative focus onto individual unit actions and tactical movements in each of the theaters major actions. The third chapter follows this same formula for 1942, ending with a brief overview of the disposition of the involved formations and a snapshot of the tactical, operational, and strategic picture of the Eastern front in December 1942. There is a short conclusion that focuses on the trends for the Russians and the Germans. Forczyk allows this to cap his understanding of the war to this point, giving some perspective on the trends and some of the reasons behind them. The appendices are excellent and allow for an in depth understanding of production numbers, technical minutiae of the various armored vehicles involved to this point of the war, and even order of battle for each army at two points, June 1941 and June 1942.

Forczyk admits the book is not a comprehensive day-by-day account of the Eastern front, nor is it an account of every armored clash. He instead chooses to progress through the war’s campaigns of note, highlighting actions that help to support the narrative and move the timeline forward, guiding the reader through a clear chronological path from one action to the next, allowing for a complete understanding of each operation as it happened. Between major operations, the author pulls back from detailing individual unit actions to refresh the operational and strategic perspective as it had progressed to that point in time. Each of the German Army Groups are discussed in this manner as are individual areas in turn.

The book shows how the dearth of experience and skill for the Red Army in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa lead to enormous losses for the Soviets. Organization and employment of the Soviet armor in the early years left much to be desired, and this book tracks the slow and often painful evolution of the Soviet armor branch. The production numbers of various equipment types are examined, as is their impact on frontline units. 

Evaluation of the performance of individual commanders during the war is done fairly; however, occasionally some personal ire seeps into the narrative. It is clear throughout the text that Forzcyk thinks little of the reputations of the leaders in this theater. He is consistently critical of the decision making and motivations on both sides. Here, Guderian draws his ire:

Guderian during Operation Barbarossa, July 1941 (German Federal Archives/Wikimedia)

“On 16 July, Guderian disobeyed direct orders from Generallfeldmarschall von Bock to direct his own panzer forces toward an immediate link-up with Hoth’s 7.Panzer-Division at Yartsevo. Instead, Guderian figured that somebody else could attend to such details and what really mattered was pushing eastward as far and as fast as possible. Visions of Moscow’s golden spires apparently twinkled in his mind’s eye. Toward that end, he deliberately ordered von Viettinghoff’s XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.) to proceed east toward Yelnya.”[1]

The interference of Stalin and his followers in the professional conduct of the war, which often proved disastrous for the Red Army, is especially disdained by the author. 

Forzcyk takes great pains to provide insight into the decision-making process of the important actors, occasionally pausing to explain the experience or background of the commander mentioned. Here we find one such passage:

“However, the Stavka had indeed decided to send some armour [sic] to reinforce Ershakov’s 22nd Army-Polkovnik Dmitry Y. Yakovlev’s 48th Tank Division from the 23rd Mechanized Corps. Yakovlev was a forty year old cavalry officer and his division arrived by rail from Voronezh just before the German offensive began and was assembling at Nervel, northeast of Polotosk.”[2] 

This quote demonstrates a key quality of Forcyzk’s work in comparison to others: he highlights small unit commanders regularly, recognizing that they often have outsized effects on the course of an action, as their decision often draws the front lines. He manages this while avoiding the narrow feeling of a memoir, keeping us firmly seated in an operational understanding of the war on the Eastern front. The value of this work lies not in the numbers and minutiae of the campaigns grinding of men and machines to naught, but in bringing light to the background behind the eastern front’s armored campaigns in the first two years.

…HE HIGHLIGHTS SMALL UNIT COMMANDERS REGULARLY, RECOGNIZING THAT THEY OFTEN HAVE OUTSIZED EFFECTS ON THE COURSE OF AN ACTION, AS THEIR DECISION OFTEN DRAWS THE FRONT LINES.

The author masterfully dissects the development and progress of each side. There are really two concurrent narratives here. The first narrative relates to initial German success that leads to a slow decline in the effectiveness of panzer formations. The second relates to Soviet failure at the outset of the war and the slow stumbling towards the effective armor branch that they would eventually wield in the later years of the war. 

Forczyk helps the reader see the complex moving parts of armored warfare. He describes each side’s generals struggle with material and political obstacles, in addition to the standard battlefield problems any commander has to deal with—some self-inflicted, others not. Generalfeldmarschall von Manstien and Generaloberst Guderian, some of the Wehrmacht’s brightest stars, are laid low in their various failings, something that for decades few could bring themselves to do. It seems that Guderian redeems himself somewhat in the author’s view, once he is out of field command and placed in an administrative position. Marshals of the Soviet Union Zhukov, Konev, and Vasilevsky on the Soviet side are treated with reasonable fairness, dressed down for their relative failings as well as complimented on their successes when due to their own actions. There is a plethora of primary sources from both sides presented here, as well as masses of secondary research, allowing for a new appreciation of the personalities and difficulties involved. 

The only consistent shortcoming of this book is common to many military history books: an inexplicable failure to include quality full page maps. I did not find this an impossible obstacle to overcome, but many less familiar with the geography of the region could easily be confounded. To repair this fault, I strongly suggest picking up a quality atlas; Robert Kirchubel’s Atlas of the Eastern Front: 1941–45 has served me well, is a handsome edition, and worth every penny in its own right. 

Further reading should first be directed to Forczyk’s follow-on to this book, Tank Warfare on The Eastern Front 1943-1945. For an in depth technical review of the Wehrmacht’s performance on the Eastern front in a more general sense, I found George Liedtke’s Enduring the Whirlwind: The German Army and the Russo-German War 1941-1943 provided another interesting perspective. 

The book accomplishes the author’s goals, helping to give a complete understanding of the shortcomings of both sides, while painting a clearer picture of how the Soviets learned to properly employ their armor forces as the first years of the war progressed. Anyone who has any doubt about how the war evolved in these crucial first years would do well to read Tank Warfare on The Eastern Front. This work gives a thorough dismantling of many of the myths surrounding these campaigns, though much of this is done indirectly, outside of the introduction. Forczyk allows for his research to stand on its own, while rejecting amateur tendencies of what might have been, instead choosing to carefully evaluate the actual performance of men, equipment, and organizations. The Eastern front has important lessons for practitioners of military and political strategy, and this work has an important role in any library, as it serves to dispel common misconceptions of how that part of the war progressed. Any time we get a fresh look at the events of this magnitude, we can find new lessons for today.