Robert Citino, Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007)
Following a series of stunning victories in 1940 and most of 1941, the vaunted Nazi war machine finally outran its war of movement on the steppes of the Soviet Union and in the North African desert. Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942, from historian Robert M. Citino is a work of operational history that describes what went wrong as the German Army ground to a halt in twin epic defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein. Citino is the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at the National World War II museum. He is the author of multiple award-winning books exploring the nuance of the operational level of war, and particularly the German Army in World War II.
Citino argues that when the German army moved toward Moscow in the fall of 1941, it was finally out of its element. The combination of weather, culture, chaos, and a resurgent Soviet Red Army finally brought the Wehrmacht to its knees. Death of the Wehrmacht elaborates on Citino’s idea of the German way of war. Known in German as Bewengungskrieg, the Wehrmacht preferred quick, highly mobile wars of movement that relied on audacity and quick thinking subordinate commanders. These ideas were ingrained in the German army’s culture, having originated with Frederick the Great and fought to near perfection in the 19th-Century wars of unification. To win wars, Germany believed that decisive victory was necessary before its deficiencies in material and manpower manifested themselves. This mindset was never more evident than in the opening stages of World War II when Germany overwhelmed Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece in quick succession. Even the initial stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union looked promising, as did the first half of 1942. Throughout these campaigns, the Wehrmacht destroyed one enemy army after another in textbook versions of Kesselschlacht—the “cauldron” battle technique that Germany used to encircle and defeat their enemies. After the initial movement on Moscow in 1941 failed, victories at Kharkov, Kerch, Gazala, and Sevastopol precede Operation Blue—the 1942 renewed offensive into southern Russia—also met with failure outside Stalingrad. This defeat coincided with Rommel’s failure to overcome superior British intelligence, firepower, and airpower that made use of a seemingly endless supply of American and British equipment in Egypt. By the late fall of 1942 the Wehrmacht overextended itself and lost its ability to maneuver.
Citino attributes these dual defeats to several reasons. First is geographic as the Wehrmacht preferred to execute quick cauldron battles in what amounted to relatively confined geographic areas on the continent. Invading the vast reaches of Russia with limited resources allowed ample room for the enemy to retreat and regroup to counterattack a Wehrmacht increasingly deficient of basic supplies. A second reason was due to the culture of the German army, which placed a premium on subordinate commanders’ ability to execute their commander’s intent and fight a “quick and lively” war of maneuver. For the Germans, being on the offensive was the only way to conduct a war, a mindset that included both Hitler and Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder. According to Citino, a third reason stemmed from an over-centralization of command in Adolf Hitler that allowed the Führer to micromanage his commanders—destroying notions of auftragstaktik and putting the German army at the whim of a leader with only the simplest understanding of strategy. Citino also cites gross intelligence failures on the part of the Wehrmacht that vastly underestimated Soviet and British capabilities.
Some of Citino’s best sources are the weekly journal Militär-Wochenblatt and the Wehrmacht’s capstone doctrinal manuals he used to decipher the “German way of war” while engaging with contemporary Wehrmacht thought and overall command climate. His endnotes are vast and indicate the depth of his command of the secondary literature on this subject. The majority of his primary sources are these journals and doctrinal publications rather than deep archival work. Still, Citino writes in a style that is equal parts academic and enjoyable—sometimes even humorous. Citino is critical of the Germans and very careful to break through common myths of the Wehrmacht, such as Rommel’s politics and its invention of “blitzkrieg.” Because of its detailed description of Wehrmacht operations and the contingency of history, this book is ideal for policymakers and especially a professional military audience.