Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942

An exhaustively detailed examination of one of the more obscure campaigns of the Eastern Front in World War II -- Operation "Mars," which was an attack near Rhzev that went on at the same time as the vastly more famous Operation "Uranus," which occurred at Stalingrad. On the positive side, the author does go into a good deal of detail as to why the Russian offensive failed. At its root, Zhukov tried to do to much with too little, especially given the terrain and the condition of his troops and equipment. Additionally, German control of their troops was masterful. A major flaw in the book is that the maps, while liberal in number, are not easy to parse, owing to the colour selection (it's very hard to read where the villages are), the show more orientation of the maps, and the way that units are represented. Given the importance of knowing where actions were occurring, that's important. One can also get lost in the maze of detail provided. The author also engages in the "getting into the mind" of participants, which is something that I don't particularly like in historical accounts. Certainly valuable for plugging a hole in our understanding of the Eastern Front, but this is very much for specialists, in my view. show less