
Lee W. Eysturlid |
Review of Robert M. Citino, Death of the
Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942. Lawrence: Univ.
Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. xiv, 431. ISBN 978-0-7006-1531-5. |
In his latest book concerning the German army,
Robert Citino gives a concise picture of the Second World War in
Eastern Europe and North Africa. As in his previous work, especially
The German Way of War,[1]
the focus is on the continuity of the way the Germans fought. In
particular, Citino argues that, throughout time, the Germans and
their predecessors the Prussians had a very specific way of fighting
wars, for good or ill. The key word here, in German of course, is
Bewegungskrieg, or a "war of movement" (Citino's translation).
To show that this was the driving doctrine behind all the German
Army's way of fighting, the book covers to the end of the Stalingrad
and El Alamein campaigns.
Citino is ideally suited for this task, having
written several authoritative books on German operational history.
His seventy-three small-font pages of endnotes show that he has done
his homework. Further, he never gets lost in seeing the Germans,
despite their dizzying successes in 1941 and early 1942, as more
than they were: he clearheadedly analyzes both successes and
failings.
Death of the Wehrmacht is broken into an
introduction and nine chapters. Besides stating the book's broader
thesis, the introduction explains key German terminology. The first
chapter takes the reader, at a relatively fast pace, from the
beginning of the war, through operations against Yugoslavia and
Greece, to the end of Operation Barbarossa. As Citino makes clear,
"Barbarossa" was the name only for the opening phase of the Russian
campaign, not the entire event. The rest of the discussion of Russia
concentrates on 1942: chapter two on the bloody fighting in the Crimea
and chapter three on the great Kesselschlacht at Kharkov. The
fourth and sixth chapters deal with Erwin Rommel's arrival in Africa
and operations there. Chapters five and seven take the reader
through the summer and fall movements of the Germans in Southern
Russia. Finally come the campaigns of Stalingrad and El Alamein and
a brief conclusion. This is truly an operational history and the
narrative remains with the army commanders and events transpiring at
their level. It is not a look at the soldiers' war or the leadership
of Hitler. The book is best suited to those with a solid knowledge
of the Second World War, especially on the Eastern Front.
Having described the mundane details, the
reviewer can say that he found the work very informative: parts of
it will change the way he teaches German operations in his Second
World War elective. Citino's thesis that the Germans were always
fighting this same type of war--Bewegungskrieg--from 1939 to
the end of 1942, and that it had been part of their doctrinal notion
for centuries is most compelling. As the author repeatedly points
out, the Prussians, and later the Germans, in order to overcome
their bad position in the "center," and their manpower and supply
disadvantages, always chose to attack. Unable or unwilling to master
the strategic art of logistics, they instead brilliantly mastered
the art of operations. This did not always pay off; as a matter of
fact, historically, the German military had a love affair with a
rather cruel mistress, as seen in defeats during the French
Revolution, the Napoleonic era, World War I, and World War II.
Citino's analysis of Alam Halfa in North Africa shows this:
Whichever number one chooses, the Wehrmacht went to school at Alam
Halfa in a new Allied way of war. Here the traditional German
operational pattern met the Grand Alliance for the first time: sound
British battlefield management married to nearly unlimited American
industrial production. Besides winning the battle of materiel, the
Allies had also won a decisive victory in the war of intelligence
(221).
Despite this, the Germans never fundamentally
changed the way they engaged in war. The detailed review of
operations in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Africa all prove
Citino's thesis. The German High Command developed overall strategic
objectives, often without sufficient forethought, and then turned
loose the Army commanders to realize them. This was the standard
mode of operating, with little or no real control from the top.
However, this came to an end in the second half of 1942 (Operation
Blue I-IV and El Alamein), as Hitler and his immediate staff started
to micromanage the armies.
It is unfortunate that Citino did not have more
time for it, and perhaps this will be the focus for another
productive study, but the seven pages he devotes to Yugoslav and
Greek operations are eerily reminiscent of the American operations
in Iraq in 2003. The mass of force brought to bear against a
politically divided and hopelessly outclassed enemy allowed for a
thunderclap victory. However, the Germans ran through the large
Yugoslav army so fast that much of it escaped destruction, fading
into the mountains to fight as partisans. As Citino shows,
Bewegungskrieg, when it came to finishing military operations,
often left lots of loose ends:
There is one last aspect of the quick and almost painless victory in
Yugoslavia that deserves mention, especially as it reflects on the
German way of war. Despite the totality of victory, this was a
campaign with an extremely problematic aftermath.... Nevertheless,
there is something incomplete about a way of war that relies on the
shock value of small, highly mobile forces and airpower, that
stresses rapidity of victory over all, and that then has a difficult
time putting the country it has conquered back together again
(26-7).
In Yugoslavia the immediate redeployment of the
army to the Soviet border meant the quickly swelling insurgency had
to be left to the Italians to handle, which they did poorly.
A few quibbles: the first is the bugbear of all
operational histories--maps. The book has several maps both for
Africa and the USSR, but they are not adequate. Those unfamiliar
with the events of the war and some of the geography will have
serious trouble following the narrative. Granting that maps are
expensive, another six or ten, ideally with better topographical
markings, would have been ideal. There are also several minor typos
and misuses.[2]
Finally, it would have been interesting to learn how
Bewegungskrieg fit into the Luftwaffe's notions of war, as it
was so critical to operational success, but that may be asking too
much.
Citino's latest work achieves its clearly stated
goals on two levels. First, without getting lost in details, it
takes the reader very carefully through the strictly operational
realities of the European war to the end of 1942. Second, it
demonstrates that the "new" German form of war was not new, but
rather a continuation of a Prusso-German ideal dating back over two
hundred years. The failure of Bewegungskrieg at Stalingrad
and El Alamein spelled its demise as an article of German military
faith.
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
leysturl@imsa.edu
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[1] The German Way of War: From the Thirty
Years' War to the Third Reich (Lawrence: U Pr of Kansas, 2005).
[2] E.g., in the following sentence about German observations of
Kharkov, "He [Mackensen] analyzed it, if fact, in traditional
German terms, attributing it to low morale and bravery of the
German troops ..." (110), read "high" instead of "low."
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