4th Cavalry Division
A01=Earl F Ziemke
Army Group
Army Group Center
Army Group North
Army Group South
Author_Earl F Ziemke
Category=GTU
Category=JP
Category=JW
Category=JWA
Category=NHWL
Category=NHWR7
cavalry
Cavalry Army
commissars
Demarcation Line
district
division
East Front
Eastern European conflict studies
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Fourth Panzer Group
front
group
infantry
interwar military reforms
Left Social Revolutionaries
Main Military Council
military
Military Revolutionary Committee
Panzer Army
Panzer Group
People's Commissar
peoples
People’s Commissar
Pripyat Marshes
Red Army
Red Army Staff
Russian civil war analysis
Seventh Army
South Front
southwest
Southwest Front
Soviet military doctrine
Soviet military leadership evolution
Spanish Civil War intervention
Stalinist purges
Supreme Military Council
Twelfth Army
Ukrainian Front
West Front
Product details
- ISBN 9780415408653
- Weight: 840g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 06 Apr 2006
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Supported in large part by evidence released after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book follows the career of the Red Army from its birth in 1918 as the designated vanguard of world revolution to its affiliation in 1941 with 'the citadel of capitalism', the United States. Effectiveness of leadership and military doctrine are particular concerns here, and Josef Stalin is the dominant personality.
On the basis of the Russian Civil War (1918-20), the Red Army began to bill itself as 'an army of a new type', inherently superior to all others. However, in late 1920, the Poles trounce it soundly. Later, Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) reveals widespread obsolescence in armament and equipment. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 gives Germany and the USSR a free hand to act against Poland. However, slack performance by the Red Army in the unopposed occupation of eastern Poland and the bungled war with Finland in the winter of 1939-40 necessitate sweeping military reforms. Germany was an enemy in 1918, ally in the 1920s, enemy again in 1933, ally again in 1939, and the enemy once more in 1941, following the German invasion on 22 June 1941. This brings on a catastrophe that by the year's end has consumed nearly the entire pre-invasion Red Army. The United States' entry into the war on 7 December 1941 and the Red Army's subsequent recovery raise the question: Who won the Second World War?
Earl F. Ziemke was awarded a PhD in History in 1952 by the University of Wisconsin and was a civilian historian in the US Army staff until 1967, when he moved to the University of Georgia as a professor. He is the author of a number of books, including The German Northern Theater of Operations (1959), Battle for Berlin (1968), Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East (1968), The Soviet Juggernaut (1981), and Moscow to Stalingrad: Decision in the East (1986), as well as numerous chapters in edited books. He has also occasionally served as an expert witness for the US Justice Department on war crimes trials relating to the Holocaust. He retired in 1993.
