The Battle for Leningrad, 1941-1944: 1941-1944 (Modern War Studies)

by David M. Glantz

Release Date: November, 2002

Edition: Hardcover

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Great research, horrible writing!

David Glantz has achieved a reputation as a foremost scholar on the Soviet Red Army and its operations during World War II. He has achieved this reputation because of his meticulous research of the once unreachable Soviet archives and the use of his findings in those archives to write a number of books on the famous (and not so famous) campaigns of the Eastern Front. Glantz's heavy use of Soviet research materials to write his books results in their emphasizing the Soviet viewpoint. Thus, his books often contrast greatly with the East Front works of other western historians who often based their research almost entirely on the much more accessible German sources, which Glantz believes are as tainted by self-service and selective memory as the official Soviet account were by communist propaganda. By delving into the Soviet archives and developing a picture of how the Soviets really viewed "The Great Patriotic War," Glantz has been able to present a much clearer view of that struggle than was possible before the fall of the USSR.

Glantz is a thorough researcher and his books often show that a lot of what we knew about the East Front just wasn't true because much of it was tainted by German apologia and Soviet propaganda. By cutting through the myths, Glantz has made his mark as one of the preeminent historians on the East Front. However, unfortunately, he is a dull, dull, DULL writer!

"The Battle of Leningrad" has all of Glantz's trademarks: detailed research, a straight narrative of the campaign told mainly from the Soviet viewpoint, and a mindnumbing writing style. I don't consider myself a either a lightweight military history buff or someone who can't handle dry text, but "The Battle of Leningrad" with its page after page of unit number designations and Russian place names just made my eyes glaze over everytime I started to read it. Yes, I know campaign studies deal with unit designations and geographic features, but "The Battle of Leningrad" seems to be nothing but those elements related in a colorless prose. There is little about the personalities of the commanders, the differences in equipment, and although Glantz does draw upon some first hand accounts of those involved in the action he just isn't very good at blending those into the narrative.

I've enjoyed some of Glantz's books such as his single volume history of the Eastern Front, "When Titans Clashed," and his "The Battle of Kursk." However, those books were co-written by Jonathan House. I don't know exactly how House contributes to these joint efforts, but I have a suspicion that he is a much more polished writer than Glantz and thus he is the reason why those books are much more readable than the ones written just by Glantz himself.

If you're a specialist on the Leningrad campaign then "The Battle of Leningrad" will be an invaluable reference tool. However, if you're looking for a good read on an important campaign of WW II then either skip this book or have plenty of caffeine at hand when trying to tackle it.

For Specialists Only!

David M. Glantz is a retired army officer who spent most of the latter part of his career studying the Soviet army. He founded and then headed the army's study group that concentrated on the Soviet army (with the fall of Communism the center now devotes itself to the Russian army, and associated armed forces of nearby countries). He's now retired, and has been producing a book every two or three years on the Soviet army during the Second World War. The present volume is in many ways his most ambitious, an attempt to retell the whole of the battle of Leningrad, from the initial German attempts to capture the city through the lifting of the blockade almost three years later.

Glantz has several strengths as a historian, and a few weaknesses. His principal strength, and this can't be overstated, is his access to Soviet archives that no one else has gotten into since the war ended. One of his previous books, Zhukov's Greatest Defeat, recounts a large battle on the Eastern front in late 1942 that doesn't appear in many histories of World War II, because the Soviets successfully suppressed knowledge of it. There aren't any whoppers of that magnitude here, but there is a wealth of detail concerning operations, intentions, and forces that hasn't appeared elsewhere.

On the other hand, Glantz isn't Hemingway, or even Harrison Salisbury. His prose is rather wooden, and workmanlike, fine for retelling a story of a battle, but not much as literature. It's OK for the first 300 pages, but this book stretches to 470 pages of text, and it gets a little wearing. In other words, if you aren't *very* interested in the subject, I would recommend going elsewhere. On the flip side, if you *are* interested, there's more information here than you'll find anywhere else, and it's clearly presented and intelligently analyzed.

As an aside, you'll notice that all of the references above are to Glantz as a historian of the Soviet side of things. There are (of course) references to the Germans here, and to their dilemmas and opportunities, but the emphasis is on the Soviets. In most instances, the book only tells you what the Germans are doing to provide context for the actions of the Soviet army. He does provide a brief history of the city prior to the war, and some account of the privations of the citizens of the city during the war, but this has been done elsewhere, and better. I suppose if he didn't provide anything like this, he'd be criticized for its absence, but frankly it seemed a bit out of place.

Given that, this is one of the best books on the Eastern Front to appear in a good long while, and if you're as interested in this field as I am, it's a worthwhile addition to your library.