Sevastopol 1942: Von Manstein's triumph (Campaign)
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List Price:
$19.95
Hungary Hotels Travel Price:
$13.57
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Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Brand: Osprey Publishing Limited
Dewey Decimal Number: 940
EAN: 9781846032219
ISBN: 1846032210
Label: Osprey Publishing
Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 96
Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Release Date: 2008-01-22
Studio: Osprey Publishing
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Editorial Reviews:
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In late July 1941, Hitler ordered Army Group South to seize the Crimea as part of its operations to secure the Ukraine and the Donets Basin, in order to protect the vital Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti from Soviet air attack. After weeks of heavy fighting, the Germans breached the Soviet defenses and overran most of the Crimea. By November 1941 the only remaining Soviet foothold in the area was the heavily fortified naval base at Sevastopol.
Operation Sturgeon Haul, the final assault on Sevastopol, was one of the very few joint service German operations of World War II, with two German corps and a Romanian corps supported by a huge artillery siege train, the Luftwaffe's crack VIII Flieger Korps and a flotilla of S-Boats provided by the Kriegsmarine. This volume closely examines the impact of logistics, weather and joint operational planning upon the last major German victory in World War II.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: SEVASTOPOL 1942: VON MANSTEI'S TRIUMPH
Comment: THIS CAMPAIGN WAR BOOK IS WELL DETAILED ABOUT HISTORY'S CONFLICT ON THE TACTICS AND STRATEGIES OF BOTH OPPOSING FORCES.
VERY NICE BOOK.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Concentrated information, but not really informative
Comment: This is an expensive book (listing for $19.95), but it is a thin paperback (96 pages), with lots of photographs. I found myself wishing for more words, descriptions, analysis, stories.
The book itself is chock full of facts, but there is little human interest, and the facts are rarely expounded on. If you are looking for an quick and dirty history of the campaign, then this is the book for you. I kept wishing that the author had expanded on some of the snippets that he refers to, they are tantalizing.
The author put as much information into limited space as he could, but it reads more like a book report than a book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well Written Operational Account of the Siege
Comment: The original plans for the Barbarossa Operation did not call for the seizure of the Crimean Peninsula. Things changed quickly when on July 13, six Soviet bombers based in the Crimea attacked the Romanian oil fields in Ploesti. Within a week, 11,000 tons of precious fuel went up in flames. Hitler and the German Army Staff soon viewed the Crimean Peninsula as an aircraft carrier aimed directly at their strategic oil reserve.
Starting at the end of October 1941, Army Group South switched direction and moved south to capture the Crimea by a "coup de main". After a series of daring counter attacks, the Soviets were able to frusturate the German plans. As the winter of 1941-42 set in, both armies prepared for a new campaign in the Crimea and the eventually seige of the Sevastopol naval base. "Sevastopol 1942" is an account of that siege which proved to be the last major German victory in World War II.
With The Osprey Campaign Series, it is usually hit or miss. At their very worst, books in the series end up being poorly written and mind numbing in their fastidious recounting of dull operational details. Fortunately, Robert Forczyk is a strong writer with a good command of the German and Russian language secondary sources. He understands the conventions of the Osprey Campaign Series and gives his readers a clear, concise retelling of one of the great sieges of the Second World War. On a personal note, I appreciate Dr. Forczyk's honest assesment of Van Manstein's character and generalship. Too often in Eastern Front books written for enthusiasts, authors create a portrait of Von Manstein that borders on hero worship.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sevastopol 1942
Comment: Another excelent book with a new cover art, splains every movement of the german, romenian and russian armies, show detailed maps and graphics.
Good for beginners and experts.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very good operational history but gets lost in the details
Comment: Robert Forczyk's latest effort is a solid example of the Osprey campaign series. It is an interesting coincidence that a previously ignored campaign has, in the space of a few months, gotten two good studies, the other being in Robert Citino's "Death of the Wehrmacht" which covers it as part of the overall German effort in 1942. Citino goes for the broad strokes, Forczyk for the details.
Forczyk starts with an excellent discussion of the background to the campaign; the section on opposing plans is short but hits the high points; the section on the commanders is disappointing. Forczyk devotes a lot of space to Manstein's involvement in Nazi war crimes. It is certainly important to mention this, but it is not the main focus of the book. The matter is referred to in the narrative whenever appropriate and is covered again in the conclusion; this is overkill in a book with a tightly constrained page count. The two German corps commanders get adequate coverage, but lower level commanders and Soviet commanders get shortchanged. The section on opposing armies is very good, focusing on the German assault pioneers as well as the eclectic collection of heavy artillery used, the Rumanian army (surprisingly good but under-equipped) and the quality of the Soviet infantry (mixed but determined). The order of battle is very complete, including non-divisional artillery, although not the type and number of guns each had. Much of this information is scattered throughout the book, but that makes it difficult to find.
The narrative is a bit plodding compared to his last book, "Moscow 1941", but that may have more to do with the nature of the fighting (narrowly confined infantry battles rather than sweeping panzer operations) than the quality of the writing. He does get bogged down in the details: is it necessary to know how many and what type of shells were fired at each target in the preliminary bombardment, or the miss distance of each round fired the gigantic "Dora" railroad gun? More valuable is the detailed day-by-day descriptions of the fighting. The maps are excellent and help enormously in understanding what was going on, although a map covering the middle period of the fighting would have helped a lot.
My main complaint is a personal one: I would have liked to see more about the campaign that led up to the siege. Shocking, that a book about the siege of Sevastopol actually focuses on the siege of Sevastopol. I can hardly fault Forczyk for that.
The conclusion is short and not very satisfactory. The Nazi executions following the fall of the city are mentioned. Forczyk asserts that the fighting left the 11th Army incapable of further action, although the figures of 20-30% losses in the attacking divisions hardly bears that out. He should at least have mentioned that most historians believe German losses were significantly higher than they claimed.
It would also have been valuable to actually draw some conclusions. How could the Germans fight their way into what has been called the strongest fortress in the world in 1942, without a significant numerical superiority? Citino quotes Mainstein that the Luftwaffe "pulled the infantry forward." Forczyk mentions air attacks in support of the ground operations several times, but draws no conclusions. He does make the points (in the narrative) that the heavy artillery so laboriously collected was mostly ineffective, that German casualties among junior officers were very high, and that the failure to effectively blockade Sevastopol allowed the Soviets to bring in large numbers of troops and supplies. It would have been useful to know why so much of the limited supply of ammunition was wasted on a preliminary bombardment that any World War 1 artillerist could have told Manstein would be ineffective; what effect the shell shortage had on the later fighting; or the effect of the loss of so many junior officers had on the combat-effectiveness of the 11th Army both during and after the siege. On these sorts of questions, Forczyk is silent.
This book complements Citino's book very nicely: Citino covers the overall campaign better, with little detail on the actual siege, and he discusses the sort of issues Forczyk ignores; Forczyk has the excellent maps that Citino lacks, and covers the siege itself in depth and with a great many details. However, Citino's focus is on 1942 as a whole and the Crimea is just one chapter. Forczyk does a thorough and impressive job of telling the story of one of the great sieges in history, and does it in 96 pages. That's quite an accomplishment.
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