While David Glantz is always worth reading, it is to be admitted that some of his works are more successful than others. The thrust of this book is that the image given of a Soviet Red Army that had finally learned its lessons in the wake of the Stalingrad campaign is false, if only because it's been made clear that many of the "diversionary" operations mounted in the Winter of 1942-43 were still inspired by Stalin's desire to attack and overthrow German forces in one shattering series of operations. The residue of these failures being the operational reality that was the salient of Kursk.

Perhaps the major problem with this book is that Glantz has written so long and so much about war at the operational level on the Eastern Front in World War II that it feels as though he's cannibalizing his past work. There is also the matter that this work feels like an unfinished draft, or like a set of preliminary findings for a better integrated book that is going to require more research to be definitive, or that Glantz does not expect to be writing himself. ( )