From a world expert on Hitler's war in Russia, this book on the
operation that changed the course of World War II includes updated
information on casualty numbers and opposing forces Here, David Glantz
challenges the time-honored explanation that poor weather, bad terrain,
and Hitler's faulty strategic judgement produced German defeat, and
reveals how the Red Army thwarted the German Army's dramatic and
apparently inexorable invasion before it achieved its ambitious goals.
On June 22, 1941 Hitler unleashed his forces on the Soviet Union.
Spearheaded by four powerful Panzer groups and protected by an
impenetrable curtain of air support, the seemingly invincible Wehrmacht
advanced from the Soviet Union's western borders to the immediate
outskirts of Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov in the shockingly brief period
of less than six months. The sudden, deep, relentless German advance
virtually destroyed the entire peacetime Red Army and captured almost 40
percent of European Russia before expiring inexplicably at the gates of
Moscow and Leningrad. An invasion designed to achieve victory in three
to six weeks failed and, four years later, resulted in unprecedented and
total German defeat.