Amber Books

Order of Battle: The Red Army in WWII

by  David Porter

Reviewed By  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $34.95 ISBN: 978-1-906626-53-2 Review copy courtesy of Casemate Publishing: www.casematepublishers.com 192 pages, 300 illustrations and photos, 50,000 words. In one of my former professions, I was required to study the Orders of Battle of several potential opponents. When John Noack advised that this book was available for review, I asked for it, figuring that no one else would request it, and having been exposed to OOBs, I was probably capable of deciphering it and deciding whether it would be a useful tool. Most Orders of Battle are dense, jargon filled tomes with lots of tables and an occasional 3-view. One of these can put you into MEGO mode (My Eyes Glaze Over) in minutes. I'm very happy to say that David Porter's Red Army in WWII is NOT one of those. This book covers the Red Army from pre-War in 1939 to the 1945 victory. I was most favorably impressed with the explanation of each campaign or battle, the flow, and how things worked. Or didn't work, as the case may be. The major chapters are: · Pre-War Years: 1939-41 · Defending the Motherland: 1941-42 · From Moscow to Stalingrad: 1942 · Turning the Tide: 1943 · Year of Victories: 1944 · Victory in Europe: 1945 In each chapter there's at least one campaign covered. In "Pre-War Years 1939-41", the campaigns are Khalkin Gol, Invasion of Poland, and Winter War: Finland. Khalkin Gol was the earliest and smallest, so the OOB is the simplest. Each campaign following is bigger and more complex than the one before, until the line diagrams cover all of two pages. Here's the sample of the Khalkin Gol background paragraph, command structure and the OOB table.

The other two campaigns are nicely tied together, showing that Stalin didn't trust Hitler, and was building a land buffer between the Motherland and the Germans, using eastern Poland and Finland, as well as the annexed nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Of course we all know how well that worked, don't we?

This book follows the progress of the Red Army from an error-prone, poorly led, poorly armed, inexperienced force which was fought to a draw by the inadequately equipped but better led and better motivated Finnish Army in December and January of 1939/40. This leads to the fourth section of Chapter 1; Facing reality: 1940-41. Stalin reorganized the entire command structure and began an industrial push to produce the equipment the Red Army was going to need.

Another great feature of this book is that not only does Mr. Porter present the OOB, he also gives an idea of what the units shown actually did in a side note, as shown here, which makes it much clearer why things were organized as they were. In one of these notes he lets us know that Soviet tank production was vastly superior numerically to German production, but Soviet losses were also so great that most of this advantage was lost. Overall Evaluation A must have for anyone interested in World War II. This book gave me a much clearer picture of how the Red Army really worked in the Great Patriotic War, both the good and bad. Good writing combined with clear illustrations and insights make it a great addition to your historical library.