This book provides an in-depth study of the Soviet Army during the offensive operations that started with Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942 and went until Spring 1943. The lessons learned by the Soviet Army from these experiences helped design the military steamroller that decimated the German panzer divisions at Kursk in the Summer of 1943.

When Germany launched its blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, it forever changed the way the world waged war. Although the Wehrmacht ultimately succumbed to superior Allied firepower in a two-front war, its stunning operational achievement left a lasting impression on military commanders throughout the world, even if their own operations were rarely executed as effectively. Robert Citino analyzes military campaigns from the second half of the twentieth century to further demonstrate the difficulty of achieving decisive results at the operational level. Offering detailed operational analyses of actual campaigns, Citino describes how UN forces in Korea enjoyed technological and air superiority but found the enemy unbeatable; provides analyses of Israeli operational victories in successive wars until the Arab states finally grasped the realities of operational-level warfare in 1973; and tells how the Vietnam debacle continued to shape U.S. doctrine in surprising ways. Looking beyond major-power conflicts, he also reveals the lessons of India's blitzkrieg-like drive into Pakistan in 1971 and of the senseless bloodletting of the Iran-Iraq War. Citino especially considers the evolution of U.S. doctrine and assesses the success of Desert Storm in dismantling an entrenched defending force with virtually no friendly casualties. He also provides one of the first scholarly analyses of Operation Iraqi Freedom, showing that its plan was curiously divorced from the realities of military history, grounded instead on nebulous theories about expected enemy behavior. Throughout Citino points to the importance of mobility—especially mobilized armor—in modern operational warfare and assesses the respective roles of firepower, training, doctrine, and command and control mechanisms. Brimming with new insights, Citino's study shows why technical superiority is no guarantee of victory and why a thorough grounding in the history of past campaigns is essential to anyone who wishes to understand modern warfare. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm provides that grounding as it addresses the future of operational-level warfare in the post-9/11 era.

In mid-December 1942, after encircling the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, Soviet forces in southern Russia began a series of offensive operations which continued unabated into February 1943. In these offensives the Soviet High Command attempted to smash German resistance and encircle the bulk of two German army groups. For two months the German forces struck back. In a well co-ordinated counterstroke they inflicted a major operational defeat on the Soviets and stabilized the front until the summer. The two-month period of Soviet offensive activity during the winter of 1942-1943 saw the Red Army test new operational and tactical techniques and experiment with forces and methods for conducting mobile armoured warfare. Through victory and defeat the Red Army learnt its lesson well. Out of this period, and the three month period of relative calm that followed, emerged the new Red Army, which would defeat blitzkreig at Kursk and would achieve two years of virtually uninterrupted battlefield success, culminating in their defeat of Nazi Germany.

About the history of Russia from the 10th century until 1990.