Campaign 129: Operation Barbarossa 1941 (1) Army Group South

by Howard Gerrard, Robert Kirchubel

Release Date: September, 2003

Edition: Paperback

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Some Rough Edges, but a Decent Summary

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kirchubel, of the California Army National Guard, has embarked upon the ambitious task of summarizing the greatest land offensive in history - Operation Barbarossa - in three volumes. Kirchubel's first volume covers the German Army Group South's (AGS) invasion of the Ukraine in 1941. The bar is high for this task, given the vast literature available on this subject, and this volume does suffer from some rough edges. However, LTC Kirchubel's volume is a handy summary of an important campaign and as such, is useful for military professionals and amateur historians alike.

Operation Barbarossa 1941: Army Group South begins with a 5-page introduction and a detailed campaign chronology. The 5-page section on opposing plans is good, and emphasizes that while Hitler sought the destruction of the Red Army, many of his commanders were attracted by prestige objectives like Moscow. The 3-page section on opposing commanders is decent in covering army-level leaders, but then Kirchubel starts to ramble and includes a diverse assortment of minor subordinates. Considering the vast amount of material available on the opposing armies in 1941, the author's 8-page section is insufficient. Kirchubel states that "von Rundstedt's command numbered 46 � German and allied divisions" but his own order of battle lists 48 German, 2 Slovak and 14 Romanian divisions for a total of 64. Oddly, the author does not mention that AGS had 674 tanks at the start, despite tons of data available on the panzer divisions. As for the Red Army, somehow the author managed to miss the fact that the Soviets were in the midst of a huge reorganization of mechanized forces in the summer of 1941, which had a major impact on their combat readiness. Indeed, it is clear that the author did not use David Glantz's excellent Stumbling Colossus, which details the Soviet disorganization. Kirchubel makes two other significant errors in regard to Soviet forces: (1) he is unaware that the anti-tank brigades had been stripped of their trucks rendering them immobile and (2) his exaggeration of the combat prowess of the KV-1 heavy tank is tempered by his ignorance of the vehicles' faulty transmission that rendered it too, immobile (a recent article in ARMOR magazine described how Soviet propaganda had concealed the KV-1s weakness for decades because it was one of Stalin's pet projects).

The 2-D maps in this volume are quite good and include: initial dispositions (division-level); the frontier battles; the Kiev pocket; the capture of the Crimea; the Donbas and Rostov; and strategic overview. The three 3-D maps (the Uman Pocket, the Battle of the Sea of Azov, and the Battle for Rostov) are a bit less even; the Uman map is the victim of poor editing that mixed up Axis and Soviet units and the Rostov map is just too busy (it could have showed the German offensive or the Soviet counteroffensive, but not both). The Rumanian front does not get its own map, so both the Axis allies and the German 11th Army are under-represented. The three battle scenes are all very good but lacking in balance, since all are from the German viewpoint (I thought Osprey always tried to represent both sides?) and indeed, the entire volume is clearly pro-German. The Soviet tank counterattack at Dubno - one of the largest tank battles before Kursk - would have made a good battle scene.

Kirchubel's campaign narrative, which is 55 pages in length, is relatively clear and strait-forward. It is clear from his bibliography that he has combed many excellent lengthier works for source material and that he is able to synthesize this data into a coherent summary. Unfortunately, very few of these sources represent the Soviet point of view. Overall, this volume represents a decent campaign summary, albeit one that is heavily from the German point of view. The author also misuses the 5-page conclusion to essentially summarize the highlights of his narrative with very little analysis and some faulty statistics (is he really trying to say that AGS suffered only about 20,000 casualties during Barbarossa?). The editing throughout this volume is often slip-shod, which reduces the author's ability to drive his points home.