The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 sparked a guerilla resistance unparalleled in modern history in scale and ferocity. In the wake of the initial invasion, the German Army began its struggle to secure a territory encompassing one million square miles and sixty-five million people and to pacify a growing partisan resistance. The German endeavor to secure the occupied areas and suppress the partisan movement in the wake of Operation Barbarossa illustrates the nature of the problem of bridging the gap between rapid, decisive combat operations and “shaping” the post-major conflict environment-securing populations and infrastructure and persuading people to accept the transition from a defeated government to a new one. In this regard, the German experience on the Eastern Front following Operation Barbarossa seems to offer a number of similarities to the U.S. experience in Iraq in the aftermath of OIF. This study highlights what may be some of the enduring qualities about the nature of the transition between decisive battle and political end state-particularly when that end state is regime change. It elaborates on the notion of decisive battle, how the formulation of resistance movements can be explained as complex adaptive systems, the potential of indigenous security forces and the influence of doctrine, cultural appreciation and interagency cooperation on operational-level transition planning.

A “masterly account” of the juggernaut offensive that conquered France—but also marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany in World War II (Kirkus Reviews). In the spring of 1940, the German forces launched an attack on France that combined superb intelligence, cutting edge strategy, and new technology—the blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.” In just six weeks, it would achieve what their fathers had failed to do in all four years of the First World War. It was a stunning victory. But here, leading British military historian and academic Lloyd Clark argues that much of our understanding of this victory is based on myth. Far from being a foregone conclusion, Hitler’s plan could easily have failed had the Allies been even slightly less inept or the Germans less fortunate. The Germans recognized that success depended not only on surprise, but also avoiding a protracted struggle for which they were not prepared—making defeat a very real possibility. Their surprise victory proved the apex of their achievement; far from being undefeatable, Clark argues, the Battle of France revealed Germany and its armed forces to be highly vulnerable. And Hitler dismissed this fact as he planned his next move—and greatest blunder: the invasion of the Soviet Union. In this eye-opening reassessment, complete with maps and illustrations, Clark “presents a well-balanced narrative that highlights the knife-edge victory of the German forces” and reveals how very close the Nazi war machine came to catastrophe in the early days of World War II (New York Journal of Books).

This Russian/American collaboration provides evidence that despite serious mistakes made by the Germans, the primary reason the Red Army was able to prevail in 1941 was due to war games conducted by the Soviet generals Zhukov and Timoshenko in 1940 and 1941. The results of these exercises convinced Stalin that a defense anchored along the Dnepr river would slow down and attrite the German forces. The authors contend that the battle for Yelnia was the turning point of the war. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR