I make no apologies for the somewhat risque title of this review. I have no PhD in Russian/Soviet studies. However I come from an Eastern European background originating in WW2 and I have been studying Russian and Russia/the SU all my life (I'm 54).

I don't trust Russians, instinctively. I love them, dearly, they are a wonderful people, but I don't trust them. Not in politics, not in history. They are too conditioned by extreme hardship and suffering as a people to be trustworthy. Ever since 1917 they are the masters of deception and disinformation. Ask Stratfor.com who do some pretty sharp analyses of modern Russian developments.

After WW2 everything about Germany was evil, including her attack on the SU, and her murder of x million human beings. Then came revelations of Stalins efforts and 30 million dead. Yet still, Stalin was 'Uncle Jo' while Hitler was, evil.

Along comes a Soviet defector writing as Victor Suvorov, and out comes 'Icebreaker'. He is giving a radically different view of the War in the East, that it was Stalin who was about to invade Europe and Hitler beat him to the punch in a preemptive strike called 'Operation Barbarossa'. The entire Communist/Socialist/Liberal/scholarly etc. community in the West was horrified, dogma had been challenged...

The Soviet reaction was predictable. The 'Great Patriotic War' is THE great memorial in Russia to 'the Soviet Struggle to Survive', and it deserves to be; the Soviets lost 20+million people fighting the Germans, after having already lost 30million to Stalins madness (out of a population of some 200 million).

But admitting Stalin might have been the instigator, not Hitler, is virtually the same kind of thought crime in Russia as Holocaust Denial is inthe West.So the Russians had to do a hatchet job on Suvorov very quickly.

Along comes Colonel Glantz, who it appears is a Russo-/Sovietophile. An historian with a love of detail but not a huge amount of (cultural) understanding. The Russians offer him 'unrivalled access' to all their WW2 archives, and a membership of one of their prestigious academies, if he will do that hatchet job on Suvorov. He agrees, and 'Stumbling Colossus' is the result. It may or may not have happened like this, but it seems likely...

Glantz is a great historian for detail. Sometimes interesting, sometimes dry and boring. He writes what they want him to write. Its a great love affair. But would anyone else take all this detail, which is rife with possibilities for disinformation, at face value? Any more than with Suvorov... Well, yes, most of the Western academic world it seems...

Unfortunately, what comes out of Russia/the SU is only what they want to come out. Romantic Western scholars often 'forget' this conveniently. Take Suvorov and esp. Glantz with a huge pinch of salt. Scholars like Glantz and the late John Erickson love to obscure with overwhelming detail. And both are Russo-/Sovietophiles in their writings. Both historians are considered to be the West's 'greatest experts' on the Soviet military and WW2 Eastern front. How gullible the West can be.

Before taking either Glantz or Erickson as gospel, try to understand Russia/the SU very well, and see what their agenda is, then be aware of that agenda in these historians' works. Its interesting information, sometimes, but probably underlying disinformation most of the time.

David Glantz's book is a very well laid out rebuttal of the claims made in the book Icebreaker that the Soviet Union was merely preempted while preparing it's invasion of German territory. The most impressive aspect of this book however, is not simply the extremely well documented arguments by Glantz but also the complete lack of polemics in answering Viktor Suvorov. Glantz is supremely even-handed in laying out his arguement.
In quantity, quality and organization of information, this book is exceptional. For many years the German aspects of the war preperation and German claims of Soviet intent were nearly all that were available. Well the passage of time has changed that and Glantz has done a masterfull job incorporating previously unavailable Soviet documents. Using these and also a much smaller number of German resources, he provides nearly indisputable evidence of the Soviet State's inability to correct command and control, supply, rear support, communications, and soldiers training issues prior to the German invasion. Using these same documents, Glantz also shows how the military purges which removed some 54,000 officers from the armed services between 1937 and 1941 absolutely crippled the red army throughout the first 6 months of the war and greatly hindered combat readiness in general and the the formation of mechanized corps and the air force in particular. Furthermore, he goes on to detail the absolutely deplorable condition of the strategic reserves in the early part of the war. These reserves forming in the interior had few officers and NCOs, little food, almost no equiqment and non-existent transportation in many instances.
The only complaint that I can make with this book is in it's readability. Glantz, unfortunately, makes the reading of this book every bit as enjoyable as perusing the instructions to a DVD player. That being said, Stumbling Colossus is intended to be a serious study of the preperations and mistakes that the Soviet government made prior to the beginning of general war, not a historical survey written for a mass audience. It is furthermore intended to answer the revisionists who claim that it was in fact the Soviet government who intended agressive war in the summer or fall of 1941 but were simply beat to the punch by a preemptive German strike. In short, this book is simply an indespensible source of information for anyone interested in the myriad reasons behind the near lightning military defeat of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941