Storm of Steel: The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919-1939

by Mary R. Habeck

Release Date: April, 2003

Edition: Hardcover

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Interesting, but . . .

The book is pretty interesting.

What's surprised me, though, is the vitality of the myth of the so called Tukhachevskii's "military genius." This legend is based solely on a fallacy: Stalin was bad; Stalin killed Tukhachevskii; ergo, Tukhachevskii was good. The only military operations successfully conducted by Tukhachevskii were against the anti-Bolsheviks revolt in the Tambov district, when this "genius" used hostage-taking "tactics" and chemical weapons (does it remind you of something?) against the insurgents, i.e. Russian peasants.

A remarkable detail: among different reasons for the Red Army's defeats in 1941, the author DOES NOT mention "obsolete" tanks. "Obsolete" Red Army tanks is just another popular myth, originated in GlavPUR, and being disseminated still by the History Channel.

Some extra photos could have made this book more interesting.

What I've been having a problem with, are the countless errors in the transliterated titles of Russian books and archived documents. What was the point of the transliteration, anyway? For those who read Russian, Cyrillic letters would do just as well; for those who do not, it doesn't matter. I don't believe that Cornell UP has no Cyrillic typefaces at its disposal. Furthermore, it's comparatively easy to find a Russian-speaking proofreader in the United States--not to mention an English-speaking proofreader who might do a much better job on this book.

Is the decline of publishing quality in this country irreversible?

An interesting analysis of Soviet and German armor doctrines

Habeck does an excellent job of comparing German and Russian armor doctrines. Acccording to Habeck both the Germans and the Russians copied the British concpet of independent armored formations to strike the flanks of the enemy army. The Soviet and the German doctrines differed in the role that they gave junior offices. The German doctrines allowed a great deal of intiative to the junior officers while the Soviet doctrine set clear instructions to be followed to the letter by junior officers. Another difference is that the German army believed in the decisive battle while the Russian army thought a series of battles had to be fought in order to achieve victory. The Germans ignored the experience of the Spanish Civil War since the terrain did not favor armored movements. But the Russian opponents to armored warfare used the Spanish Civil War as an example of why armored formations failed in combat.Another reason why the Soviet doctrine appeared to fail was that Russian junior officers could not understand their directions during war games and the Russian army lacked mechanics to fix broken down tanks. As a result Soviet generals favoring armored tactics were purged and the Soviet army returned to an infantry centered force until the results of the German blitzkreig in France made them change their doctrine at the last minute. I would reccomend this book for anyone interested in the development of Russian and German armored doctrine.