[Includes 15 tables, 1 tables, 26 maps] In August 1945, only three months after the rumble of gunfire had subsided in Europe, Soviet armies launched massive attacks on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In a lightning campaign that lasted but ten days, Soviet forces ruptured Japanese defenses on a 4,000-kilometer front, paralyzed Japanese command and control, and plunged through 450 kilometers of forbidding terrain into the heartland of Manchuria. Effective Soviet cover and deception masked the scale of offensive preparations and produced strategic surprise. Imaginative tailoring of units to terrain, flexible combat formations, and bold maneuvers by armor-heavy, task-organized forward detachments and mobile groups produced operational and tactical surprise and, ultimately, rapid and total Soviet victory. For the Soviet Army, the Manchurian offensive was a true postgraduate combat exercise. The Soviets had to display all the operational and tactical techniques they had learned in four years of bitter fighting in the west. Though the offensive culminated an education, it also emerged as a clear case study of how a nation successfully begins a war in a race against the clock arid not only against an enemy, but also against hindering terrain. Soviet military historians and theorists have recently focused on the Manchurian offensive, a theater case study characterized by deep mobile operations on a broad front designed to pre-empt and overcome defenses. Because these characteristics appear relevant to current theater operations, the Soviets study the more prominent operational and tactical techniques used in Manchuria in 1945. What is of obvious interest to the Soviet military professional should be of interest to the U.S. officer as well.

[Includes 19 tables, 7 figures, 41 maps] To be successful, a strategic military operation requires careful planning and meticulous execution. History applauds the commander who orchestrates the operation, and major subordinate commanders share in the glory. In reality, however, commanders and soldiers at the operational and tactical levels play an even more critical role in achieving battlefield success. History often accords them little attention. Practitioners of war must study war at all levels. An understanding of the strategic aspects of military operations is essential in order to provide a context for a more detailed and equally critical understanding of precise operational and tactical techniques. Few officers practice war at the strategic level. The majority wrestle with the myriad of problems associated with implementing those strategic plans. Leavenworth Paper no. 8. through the medium of detailed case studies, examines the operational and tactical aspects of a major strategic operation—the Soviet offensive m Manchuria in 1945. The case studies, which involve army, corps, division, regimental, and battalion operations, focus on the many problems commanders and soldiers at that level face. Constrained by time, a desperate enemy, rugged terrain, and severe climatic conditions—the realities of war— Soviet commanders devised find implemented techniques that produced victory. This paper highlights those techniques in the knowledge that Soviet theorists have likewise studied them in detail, both historically and in a contemporary context.

[Includes 36 maps and 10 tables] Deep battle, a major element in both U.S. and Soviet doctrine, is a tenet that emphasizes destroying, suppressing, or disorganizing enemy forces not only at the line of contact, but throughout the depth of the battlefield. Airborne forces are a primary instrument to accomplish this type of operation. While the exploits of German, British, and American paratroops since 1940 are well known to most professional soldiers, the equivalent experience of the Soviet Union has been largely ignored—except in the Soviet Union. There, the Red Army’s airborne operations have become the focus of many recent studies by military theorists. Lieutenant Colonel David M. Glantz has done much to remedy this gap in our historical literature. The Soviet Airborne Experience examines the experiences of the Red Army in World War II and traces Soviet airborne theory and practice both before and since the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Airborne warfare emerges as an essential part of the high-speed offensive operations planned by Soviet commanders. Because Lieutenant Colonel Glantz examines airborne operations within the larger context of Soviet unconventional warfare, the implications of this study reach beyond one specialized form of maneuver. This study, in demonstrating the ability of Russian airborne and partisan forces to survive and fight behind German lines for months at a time, provides us with an instructive example of how Soviet special operations troops probably plan to operate in future wars. The Soviet Airborne Experience is an important reference for anyone concerned with planning and conducting operations.

[Includes 10 photos illustrations] The first 9 months of the Korean War saw U.S. Army field artillery units destroy or abandon their own guns on nearly a dozen occasions. North Korean and Chinese forces infiltrated thinly held American lines to ambush units on the move or assault battery positions from the flanks or rear with, all too often, the same disastrous results. Trained to fight a linear war in Europe against conventional Soviet forces, field artillery units were unprepared for combat in Korea, which called for all-around defense of mutually supporting battery positions, and high-angle fire. Ironically, these same lessons had been learned the hard way during recent fighting against the Japanese in a 1944 action on Saipan, not Korea, aptly demonstrates. Pacific theater artillery tactics were discarded as an aberration after War World II, but Red Legs soon found that they “frequently [have] to fight as doughboys” and “must be able to handle the situation themselves if their gun positions are attacked.” A second problem with artillery in Korea was felt most keenly by the soldiers that the artillery was supposed to support — the infantry. Commanders at all levels had come to expect that in any future war, they would conduct operations with fire that equaled or even surpassed the lavish support they had recently enjoyed in northwest Europe. It was clear almost from the beginning, however, that this was not going to happen in Korea because there was a shortage not only of artillery units but also of the basic hardware of the cannoneers craft: guns and munitions. Until the front settled down into a war of attrition in the fall of 1951 (which facilitated the surveying of reference points and positioning of “an elaborate grid of batteries, fire direction centers, [and] fire support coordination centers”), massed fires were achieved by shooting at unprecedented speed.

Volume I covers in detail the background, strategic regrouping, and strategic planning and conduct of the offensive.

Shortly after midnight on 9 August 1945, assault parties of Soviet troops crossed the Soviet-Manchurian border and attacked Japanese positions in Manchuria. Thus began one of the most significant campaigns of World War II. Because of the combination of Soviet victories in the west and Japanese defeats in the Pacific, the potential for Japanese attack on the Soviet Far East diminished. Conversely, as allied victory over Germany approached in 1945, Allied leaders continued to press Stalin to commit his forces against Japan in order to complete the destruction of the Axis combination. Concentrating on Soviet ground operations in Manchuria proper, this study provides general information on the strategic context of the campaign, a detailed account of the operational techniques of armies, corps, and divisions, and the tactical employment of regiments, brigades, and lower echelon units. It also includes information concerning initial planning for the operation, redeployment of forces, high level organization for combat, and the essentials of front planning. It analyzes Soviet force structure and the published tactical doctrine governing the use of those forces in 1945, highlighting the tactical innovations and demonstrating the adjustments in force structure that contributed to Soviet victory.

At the request of the other Allies, on 9th August 1945, a force of over 1.5 million Red Army soldiers unleashed a massive attack against the Japanese in Manchuria. Volume 2 covers the detailed course of operational and tactical fighting in virtually every combat sector.

Contents: The Prewar Experience; Evolution of Airborne Forces During World War II; Operational Employment: Vyaz'ma, January-February 1942; Operational Employment: Vyaz'ma, February-June 1942; Operational Employment: On the Dnepr, September 1943; Tactical Employment; The Postwar Years.

Many of the books listed in this work are military classics, that is, books of recognized value that set a standard of historical or literary excellence. Others evaluate or expand on the military classics. Focused mainly on the history of land warfare, this bibliography begins with a general section. The books listed cover more than one chronological period or topical area, or are broad surveys of military history, or concentrate on a unique subject. The next sections are arranged chronologically beginning with Ancient History and concluding with The Nuclear Age. Covered here are significant historical eras, military writers, and conflicts. The Modern Warfare section encompasses lowintensity conflict. The remaining sections in the bibliography are topical and include The Moral Effect of Combat (men in battle), Russian and Soviet Military History, East Asian Military History, Sea Power, Air Power, and The Press. The novels cited in this work provide an approach to the human elements of war, are often enjoyable to read, and are thought provoking. The books listed in this bibliography should be read for professional development, historical perspective, information, and pleasure. They offer officers and students of military history an opportunity to understand better the nature of war.