Rollback

Rollback: The Red Army's Winter Offensive Along The Southwestern Strategic Direction, 1942-1943 covers the fighting in Southern Russia and the Eastern Ukraine west and northwest of Stalingrad during the heart of the winter of 1942-1943. This book is an edited and translated reproduction of articles published by the Soviet General Staff both during and following the Second World War. As such, the book contains much insight into the effectiveness of the Red Army when on the offensive during this stage of the war, including a detailed look at its tank and mechanized formations.

More than that however, the studies provided here (as translated by Richard Harrison) offer an interesting look into a very critical part of the war. Its not uncommon for German Eastern Front enthusiasts to overlook events west of Stalingrad (where the German Sixth Army had been trapped by the Red Army's Operation Uranus in November of 1942) following the collapse of the German relief effort in mid-December of 1942. Accordingly, this book offers an important corrective to those oversights. The book also provides a good overview of the state of Soviet planning toward the execution of complex combined-arms deep operational offensives as it existed following eighteen months of continuous warfare against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.

Divided into six parts, the book focuses first on the Red Army's operations (especially those of the Southwestern Front) along the middle Don River in mid-late December 1942. From there, it moves on to deal with the Voronezh Front's January 1943 offensive defeating the Italian Eighth Army, Hungarian Second Army, and part of the German Second Army (combined representing the last relatively intact parts of German Army Group B following the beginning of Operation Uranus late in November of 1942). Finally, the book includes translations of numerous Soviet archival documents that better explain the Red Army's perspective on these events. To that end the translation is excellent. Though I am a big fan of Stuart Britton's work in this regard, I must say that Richard Harrison has done a superb job in providing an enjoyable reading experience that is well organized.

In terms of covering the operations detailed in the prior paragraph, individual sections of the book cover the preparatory phase (in all of its detail - including recon, intel, command & control, staff work, terrain analysis, logistics, scheduling, and the like), the disposition and composition of the respective combatants, correlation of forces, and then the respective phases of each offensive (divided into the break through and pursuit operations). In terms of bringing deep operations to life and explaining how it worked this book does an excellent job. Furthermore, for those interested in the conduct of Soviet tank and mechanized operations this book also provides additional value.

Though at times the book falls into the political jargon common in such Soviet General Staff studies - that is mostly limited. There is no question that this is strictly a one-sided perspective. But that's a good thing. By entirely focusing on what was happening on the Soviet side of the hill we get another source of the book's value. So much of what is known about these events comes from the Axis perspective. For instance, we often read about huge numerical Soviet advantages in key indices of military firepower like the number of tanks or artillery. In getting an inside look at those numbers we are better able to see what they mean. For instance, to support the initial breakthrough stage of the Voronezh's January 1943 offensive we know that it gathered an impressive sounding 3,135 guns and mortars. But in this study we find that number was not as meaningful as one would suspect. That is because fully 87% of the weapons were light artillery pieces and mortars. Only 13 percent of the gathered artillery park consisted of weapons of 122mm or larger-caliber. This meant well-constructed Axis positions were more likely to survive an initial bombardment that otherwise has all too often been made out to be so overwhelming as to play a key role in stunning and suppressing the defensive system of fire into irrelevance.

Another example as described in this book would be that of the same Voronezh Front's armor park as it existed on January 13, 1943. All told, the Voronezh Front fielded a very impressive sounding 896 tanks. However, a deeper dive into the numbers reveals that 350 of these tanks (or 39% of the armor park) consisted of obsolete T-60, T-70, and Lend-Lease Stuart light tanks. These were all tanks that even the lightest Hungarian and Italian anti-tank weapons could destroy at this stage of the war - no less the comparatively far better equipped German infantry divisions.

Thus, this book studied in conjunction with German perspectives together provides a much more balanced look at why these offensives produced success for the Red Army (hint, it wasn't about the numbers). It also helps to answer why these offensives went so well for the Red Army when previous attempts to reclaim the initiative from the Axis armies failed miserably throughout the bulk of Operation Blue (the German 1942 summer and fall campaign in Southern Russia). As such, I recommend this book to my readers.