Books about Blitzkrieg from Amazon.com

Two weeks after the Americans, British, and Canadians invaded Western Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Soviet Union launched Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front, its massive attempt to clear German forces from Belarus. In one of the largest military campaigns of all time, involving two million Soviets and 800,000 Germans, the Red Army advanced 170 miles in two weeks and destroyed German Army Group Center. Using recently declassified Soviet documents as well as German and Soviet unit histories, Dunn recounts this landmark operation of World War II..
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At dawn on Friday 1 September 1939 the Germans launched their land, sea and air assault on Poland. The World became aware of the awesome power of Hitler's Third Reich and the limitless and ruthless nature of his ambition.

The Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) attack, spearheaded by Panzers, took the German forces to the gates of Warsaw in a week. The vital port of Danzig fell, crushed by naval and air bombardment and land assaults. The Polish Air Force, out-numbered and out-gunned, were driven from the skies. In a month Warsaw fell amid great bloodshed and in six weeks the Poles were defeated.

The speed of the German conquest was matched by its brutality. Lives and property meant little to the invaders and civilians and POWs were summarily executed. Jews received particular attention and these atrocities were not just perpetrated by the SS but soldiers of the Wehrmacht.

Blitzkrieg Unleashed is told in the words of those who conquered Poland, thanks to the author's research into letters, diaries, unpublished accounts, official documents and histories and newspapers..
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Since the earliest days of warfare, military operations have followed a predictable formula: after a decisive battle, an army must pursue the enemy and destroy its organization in order to achieve a victorious campaign. But by the mid–nineteenth century, the emergence of massive armies and advanced weaponry--and the concomitant decline in the effectiveness of cavalry--had diminished the practicality of pursuit, producing campaigns that bogged down short of decisive victory. Great battles had become curiously indecisive, decisive campaigns virtually impossible.

Robert Citino now tells how European military leaders analyzed and eventually overcame this problem by restoring pursuit to its rightful place in combat and resurrecting the possibility of decisive warfare on the operational level.

A study of war at the operational level, Quest for Decisive Victory demonstrates the interplay and tension between technology and doctrine in warfare and reveals how problems surrounding mobility--including such factors as supply lines, command and control, and prewar campaign planning--forced armies to find new ways of fighting.

Citino focuses on key campaigns of both major and minor conflicts. Minor wars before 1914 (Boer, Russo-Japanese, and the Balkan Wars of 1912-13) featured instructive examples of operational maneuver; the First World War witnessed the collapse of operations and the rise of attrition warfare; the Italo-Ethiopian and Spanish Civil Wars held some promise for breaking out of stalemate by incorporating such innovations as air and tank warfare. Ultimately, it was Germany's opening blitzkrieg of World War II that resurrected the decisive campaign as an operational possibility. By grafting new technologies--tanks, aircraft, and radio--onto a long tradition of maneuver warfare, the Wehrmacht won decisive victories in the first year of the war and in the process transformed modern military doctrine.

Citino's study is important for shifting the focus from military theory and doctrine to detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns that formed the basis for the revival of military doctrine. Quest for Decisive Victory gives scholars of military history a better grasp of that elusive concept and a more complete understanding of modern warfare.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series..
Price: $31.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively.

Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India’s blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War.

Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility—especially mobilized armor—in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms.

Brimming with new insights, Citino’s study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post–9/11 era.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series..
Price: $31.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

It was one of the most ruthlessly conceived and executed invasions in the annals of warfare Hitler's Polish campaign unleashed a blitzkrieg in which SS troops, police squads, and the army itself waged an ethnic war of unprecedented brutality. Tens of thousands of Poles-roughly 80 percent of whom were Christian-were summarily executed in acts of collective punishment. After six weeks, a country was crushed and the world was at war.

Usually given short shrift in most histories of World War II, the invasion of Poland was more than a series of opening salvos; it was a testing ground for German brutalities to come. In this first intensive study of the invasion, Alexander Rossino provides a comprehensive study of the Polish campaign, including disturbing new insights into its racist and ideological underpinnings.

Rossino tells how this invasion melded the ideology of the Nazi party with Germany's military yearning for empire in the East. The Polish campaign was important as the first step in Hitler's drive for "living space" for Germans in Eastern Europe, and as the blitzkrieg decimated urban residential areas, civilians soon became indistinguishable from combatants. In addition to describing military operations, Rossino also provides a close analysis of SS plans to murder Polish leaders, German army reprisal policies, and the close collaboration of Wehrmacht and SS forces in the subjugation and execution of Polish citizens.

Rossino considers both top-level decision making and the experiences of German soldiers as he explores the mentality of those who perpetrated crimes against civilians. He particularly investigates the links between Nazi racial-political policies and military action to show that Poland was merely the German army's dress rehearsal for the later slaughter of other Slavs and Jews during the Russian campaign. By providing a detailed examination of atrocities committed by both military and SS personnel, he shows that the Wehrmacht's criminality was clearly evident at the beginning of the war.

Hitler Strikes Poland is a startling reconstruction of history that clearly reveals the extent to which Nazi philosophy drove the German war machine. It also helps us better understand the brutality of the years that followed and better appreciate the suffering of the Polish people.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series..
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In the wake of World War I, the German army lay in ruins--defeated in the war, sundered by domestic upheaval, and punished by the Treaty of Versailles A mere twenty years later, Germany possessed one of the finest military machines in the world, capable of launching a stunning blitzkrieg attack against Poland in 1939. Well-known military historian Robert M. Citino shows how Germany accomplished this astonishing reversal and developed the doctrine, tactics, and technologies that its military would use to devastating effect in World War II..
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The German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 began World War II in Europe, pitting the newly modernized army of Europe’s great industrial power against the much smaller Polish army and introducing the world to a new style of warfare – Blitzkrieg. Panzer divisions spearheaded the German assault with Stuka dive-bombers prowling ahead spreading terror and mayhem. This book demonstrates how the Polish army was not as backward as it is often portrayed and fielded a tank force larger than that of the contemporary US Army. Its stubborn defence did give the Germans some surprises and German casualties were relatively heavy for such a short campaign..
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General William Tecumseh Sherman was known as the first modern general Commanding Union troops during the American Civil War. He was also heavily criticized for the harshness of the Scorched Earth policies that he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States. He is the commander responsible for the burning of Atlanta as depicted in Gone With the Wind..
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