Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 86

BOOK REVIEWS

Strategic bombing advocates claimed proof that their
theory worked when bombers repeatedly attacked the
island of Pantelleria, leaving its garrison to surrender
to British amphibious forces with barely a fight, but
the island was small and relatively undefended. For the
invasion of Sicily, the 12th again delivered paratroopers
and, despite some grumblings from ground commanders,
successfully supported the battle. Patton even credited the
air forces with his Army’s rapid march across the island.
The air forces, however, failed to prevent, or even tried
to prevent, the Axis forces from escaping Sicily to the
mainland of Italy. The bombers were instead committed
to a strategic mission—the Ploesti Raid.
The 1 August 1943 Ploesti Raid was a failure. Aimed
at taking out the oil refineries in Romania, the raid
failed, and many planes and crews were lost. Of the
eight refineries attacked, only one was put out of action,
while two others were back in operation in less than a
year. The author points out that the 9th Air Force lost
44 heavy bombers in 13 months of action before the
raid and lost 55 attacking Ploesti. Moreover, 532 highly
skilled air crewmen were killed in the raid. The losses
spelled the end of the 9th as a heavy bomber command.
The landings at Salerno, Italy, suffered from this lack of
bombers, with the Germans almost throwing the Allies
back into the sea. Transport planes helped save the day
by dropping airborne forces behind the Allied beachhead
to shore up the battle line.
The North African Air Campaign provides an excellent understanding of an under-examined element of
the Mediterranean Theater and reveals the high-level
conflicts between generals on the use of air power. This
is a great book for students of the macro-level view of
the air war in the Mediterranean. The author has done a
superb job of digging into the details of the 12th and 9th
Air Forces and showing how they fought an almost-daily
struggle—over the battlefield and also with the Army
Air Forces’ brass.
Kevin M. Hymel,
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

THE DRIVE ON MOSCOW, 1941:
Operation Taifun and Germany’s
First Great Crisis in World War II
Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson
Casemate, Philadelphia and Oxford, 2012
336 pages, $32.95

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HEN GERMANY ATTACKED the Soviet
Union on 22 June 1941, the invaders chose
the best possible time to defeat the Red Army, which
was in transition of its leadership, doctrine, organization, equipment, and deployment. However,
despite all their initial advantages, the Germans
failed to defeat the defenders decisively, condemning both sides to a prolonged war of attrition
that Germany ultimately lost. For seven decades,
historians and general readers have sought some
explanation for why the supposedly invincible Wehrmacht came to grief in 1941. The initial German
alibis, focusing on the interference of Adolf Hitler
and the extremes of weather and terrain, have long
since proven inadequate as answers to this question.
As part of a flurry of recent studies on events
of 1941, two Swedish historians, Niklas Zetterling
and Anders Frankson, have focused on Operation
Taifun (Typhoon), the final attempt of Army Group
Center to reach Moscow. In tracing the last German
advance, the authors provide a wealth of interesting
information, such as statistics indicating the Germans lost fewer tanks and suffered fewer casualties
during this operation than they had experienced
during the massive battles of the summer. For those
interested in details, this book offers such specifics
as the number of half-track mounted infantry battalions in certain panzer divisions and the average
ages of German and Soviet senior commanders.
Despite (or perhaps because of) continued tactical success, the German commanders consistently
underestimated Soviet reserves, believing that
each encirclement would be the last and that they
could, indeed, take the Russian capital before
winter arrived. The authors’ conclusion is consistent with the current historiography, to the effect
that Germany never had the industrial capacity
and manpower to subjugate its huge opponent in a
single campaign. If anything, the headlong rush to
Moscow seemed to suggest that the German military and political leaders were aware of their vulnerability and sought a quick victory before they would
have to face the United States. In fact, Zetterling
and Frankson observe, “hardly anything suggests
that Germany could have won World War II.”
The Drive on Moscow includes ample sources
from both sides of the battlefront but tends to
focus on the German aspects of the story. To some