After the fine Where Iron Crosses Grow (now pretty cheap with Kindle) I picked up Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front. So far it is pretty good.
Such a vast conflict within a 'world' war is so rich in detail of living, fighting and dying that it is difficult if not impossible to come to concise and clear conclusions. The author does, so far, a good job to put things into context. The importance which training, experience, often superb leadership on many levels, radios, a combined arms approach among others player should be by now well understood. This goes as well for the woeful operational and tactical preperation of Soviet units in midst of a reorganization, the almost non-existent tactical radio communication, lack of ammunition and fuel and so forth. A huge part of the Soviet soldiers were put by this combination in an ofen at best very difficult situation which greatly reduced their ability to fight effectively. So strangely the 'tank shock' is one of those things which stand out for me. The great difficulties if not inability of German tank and AT weapons to penetrate 'medium' and heavy Soviet armor, are actually similar to the one's with heavy Allied one. The sheer number of hits some KV suffered while fighting mirrors instances in France, with the crews of puny AT-guns and Tanks shooting and hitting skillfully and in vain till death. While there is a huge scope in training, organization, people's quality and so forth but one still needs the proper tools to do the job against such strong resistance. The whole package counts both ways.
P.S: Both 'The Viaz'ma Catastrophe, 1941' and the 'The Rzhev Slaughterhouse' are now the available for Kindle at roughly half the price I payed for the hardcovers. The former is in my humble opinion especially valuable.
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