by Robert Forczyk
London and New York: Osprey Books, 2026. Pp. 592.
Illus., maps, tables, appends, notes, biblio., index. $40.00 / £30.00. ISBN: 978-1472874399
Two Books on Command
- Generalship on the Eastern Front 1941-45; A Study in Command, by Robert Forczyk.
- The Generals: 69 Generals, 69 Authors, 69 Lessons in History, edited by Iain Dale.
These volumes are very different in range, content, tone and scholarship, although there can be surprises: Forczyk, unlike Dale, offers footnotes, charts, appendices and maps, but also photographs. Rather than focusing simply on the most famous commanders, Forczyk tackles a larger group of operational-level commanders, for example 54 German ones, in order to rescue some at this level from obscurity as well as to assess relative effectiveness. He finds that whereas the Wehrmacht was the victor at the tactical level, it found it difficult to achieve operational goals. The decision when and how to use reserves is repeatedly seen as significant. German senior officers are presented as reluctant to accept explicit principles of war. After a introductory section, not least on senior leader training and pre-war planning, the approach is chronological before a concluding assessment of performance in which Bock, Manstein, Kleist, Model and Hoth are presented as particularly impressive, with Soviet equivalents including Konev, Rokossovsky and Bagramyan. As he admits, however, there are problems of assessment caused by some commanders being better in attack or defence. Forczyk also points out that some veteran commanders, such as Nikolai Pukhov, gave long service, even if out of the limelight.
Forczyk argues that the German generals failed to understand their operational deficiencies, but points out that some did well in post-war historiography. He notes that their opponents had more plentiful reserves, but also criticises Russian generals in Ukraine from 2022 for failing to synchronise manoeuvre and mass and to appreciate the principles of war. Lots of interest in this volume.
Collections of the type edited by Iain Dale tend most to excite discussion in terms of inclusion and omission, and I am as happy as anyone else to follow suit, for example doubting the value of including Sun Tzu, William Donovan, and a number of others, and noting that Chinese generals are very badly underrepresented. As Iain Dale notes, in his shrewdly modest brief introduction, ‘the selection was certainly more of an art than a science.’ He apparently took advice, but, while so, he clearly had some very poor interlocuters, not least as some of the greatest generals in history were Chinese or Indian, the latter also conspicuous by their neglect.
Let us, however, focus on the positives. There are some interesting pieces, with several important historians at play, notably Peter Caddick-Adams on Montgomery. There is also the significance of reading what generals have to say about their predecessors, for example Sir Gwyn Jenkins on Clausewitz. That approach can lead to presentism, but is nevertheless instructive. This includes the Foreword by Lord Dannatt who correctly focuses on the operational level of war as that ‘where generals principally exercise their art,’ whereas Dale mistakenly brings forward ‘strategy’ which is often not done by generals. An interesting book, but fails in its global coverage.
---///---
Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. Among others, he has previously reviewed here The Pacific’s New Navies, No More Napoleons, Republic and Empire. Crisis, Revolution, America’s Early Independence, The Fate of the Day, The Maginot Line: A New History, The Nuclear Age. An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival, Daring to Be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World, Mexico: A 500-Year History, A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, On Strategists and Strategy, Japan’s Grand Strategy: Liminal Power in an Uncertain World, The War that Made the Middle East, The Cambridge History of War, Volume III, War and the Early Modern World, and The Firearms Revolution.
---///---
Note:
Generalship on the Eastern Front 1941-45 is also available in e-editions.
The Generals: 69 Generals, 69 Authors, 69 Lessons in History is also available in audio & e-editions.
StrategyPage reviews are published in cooperation with The New York Military Affairs Symposium
www.nymas.org