Operation Don's Left Wing: The Trans-Caucasus Front's Pursuit of the First Panzer Army, November 1942-February 1943 (Modern War Studies)

As always in the last years, a new book by David Glantz, represents a new step forward in knowing less-known operations. This volume is no exception from the rule, being the first detailed and dramatic presentation of the Trans-Caucasus Front role and contribution in Operation Don, one of the forgotten offensives amidst the panoply of Soviet operations in winter 1942-1943.Revealed by the author for the first time as a daring and risky offensive, hastily planned, without adequate logistical planning and limited reinforcements, Operation Don failed to achieve its strategic aim –the capture of Rostov in time to trap and destroy the bulk of German forces still present in the Caucasus. In particular, this sequel revealed how and why Trans-Caucasus Front failed to isolate and destroy the First Panzer Army.Responsible for this failure were German skillful maneuver and regroupings of forces, effective fighting withdrawal and last but not least, tactical skills coupled with the operational awareness displayed by German commanders at different levels made the difference on the frozen battlefields. Moreover, Army Group’s A two armies had a well-developed logistical system and still well-developed roads which allowed its thoroughly planned and skillfully conducted withdrawal.All these factors permitted the bulk of Mackensen’s First Panzer Army units to escape relatively unscathed through the Rostov “gate” thus negating Operation’s Don most important aim. Weeks later, these units help Germans to create a credible armored fist and will play an instrumental role in the victorious February – March 1943 Manstein’s Kharkov counteroffensive.The book is broken down into eight chapters by chronological order and sector. No doubt, the scale of new information that is presented - incorporating recently released Russian archival documents related to this operation - makes this book a must-read for serious students of the war who are accustomed to Glantz’s writing style.Before jumping to the planning part of the operation, the author devotes its first chapter to complete the strategic situation of both sides in Mid-November 1942, opposing Orders of Battle and the Correlation of Opposing Forces.The 30-page Chapter II analyses “Opposing Forces”, including infantry, tank, engineer, railroad forces; almost four pages are even devoted to penal and blocking forces, which had never been described in detail so far.The next three chapters cover “The Trans-Caucasus Front’s Planning and Operations in November and December 1942”, “The Stavka’s and Trans-Caucasus Front’s Offensive Planning” and “The Northern Group of Forces’ Pursuit of First Panzer Army to Armavir”. The author writes some conclusions at the end of every chapter and these sections are the book's best parts since they are synthesizing the dense reporting in the body of each chapter.Chapter VI concentrates on “The Krasnodar Axis: The Black Sea Group of Forces” Operations Sea and Mountain, while Chapter VII covers the “The North Caucasus Front’s Pursuit of First Panzer Army to Tikhoretsk and the Panzer Army Escape”.Eventually, Chapter VIII outlines the “Conclusions” (12 pages) in which the author analyzed the situation in January 1943, competing strategies, plus the costs of battles and the consequences.The volume also includes 83 maps, integrated into the text, describing strategic, operational and tactical situations, plus 37 tables in text and the typical gallery with Soviet commanders’ photos. The quality of the maps is clearly mixed, but on the other hand, it is considerably better than in other books. The author explained that Soviet archival maps are still unavailable due to “copyright provisions”. And this is not the only limitation: Dr. Glantz revealed that Russian MOD …” limited access to these archival records, ostensibly on a temporary basis”.Please note that this work is extremely scholarly -- the five appendices, notes, bibliography and index take up no less than 263 pages. Of note, appendix A contains Soviet and Axis Orders of battle in the Caucasus, appendix B contains Documents on the struggle for the Caucasus Region (operational summaries, directives, telephone conversations, etc). Appendix C, D, and E are full of combat strengths, correlations of opposing forces and Soviet estimates of the strengths of German units.I heartily recommend this fine work to all readers interested in the military history of World War II.

This book is just one more, of many classics written by David Glantz on the Eastern Front of WWII. This man is the foremost authority on the Eastern Front of WWII. Any question someone could have on the Eastern Front of WWII, this man would be the one to ask. Another essential read about another one of many Soviet failures forgotten by history.

In the past I have been sharply critical of Colonel Glantz's books mainly because of the poor quality maps. Someone must have listened because the maps in this book are readable, if you know the language. I trust the author's scholarship as I have every one of his books on my shelves, and this is a welcome addition. As usual the work is full of facts that a serious history buff will enjoy.Negatives: the index is largely useless with long lists of page numbers for entries that tell one nothing.The book blurb is incorrect - there are only 842 pages.In the interest of full disclosure I am returning my initial copy because it is falling apart, (the front cover arrived loose and the spine is torn as is the dust jacket in spite of plastic bubble packaging around the book) , but that is no reflection on the author, and Amazon has a replacement on the way, so I am a happy customer.

It was just the way I wanted to be.

College level Excellent read

Very in depth book covers every aspect of this operation. The Russian expected to much out of this operation and did not succeed. Very easy to read and packed full of information.