The Kuban 1943: The Wehrmacht's last stand in the Caucasus (Campaign Book 318)

Robert Forczyk’s “The Kuban 1943: The Wehrmacht’s last stand in the Caucasus” provides fascinating insights into a costly Eastern Front campaign little known to western audiences.In the first weeks of 1943, the German summer offensive launched in 1942 lay in ruins. The Sixth Army was encircled by Soviet forces amidst the ruins of Stalingrad, and the German units which had been dispatched to seize the USSR’s main oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains were in danger of being cut off by enemy forces racing towards Rostov, the only overland escape route to the west. Units of the 1st Panzer Army reached Rostov first and were able to escape, but the German 17th Army pulled back into a bridgehead in the Kuban region, just across the Kerch Straits from the Crimea. Hitler insisted the Kuban be held in hopes it could serve as a springboard for a renewed 1943 attack against Caucasus oilfields.Forczyk’s book deftly outlines the course of the ensuing action which featured intense air combat between the rising Soviet air force and the still-potent Luftwaffe, along with abortive Soviet naval and amphibious operations. The central feature of the campaign, however, was repeated, unimaginative frontal assaults by Red Army infantry against German and Romanian defenses. Many books on the Eastern Front understandably focus on the better-known decisive battles, with panzer divisions launching deep assaults, or Tiger and Panther tanks striving to stave off powerful Soviet artillery-armor-infantry offensives later in the war. Forczyk’s book, however, illuminates the combat that typified secondary fronts, with Soviet forces with few tanks struggling to successfully combine artillery and infantry attacks against undermanned but still potent German field defenses. After stymying the Soviets for 8 months, Hitler ultimately permitted the 17th Army to withdraw. 200,000 troops were evacuated across the Kerch Straits to Crimea relatively unscathed, a remarkable echo of the western allies’ failure to halt the Axis evacuation of Sicily across the Straits of Messina two months previously.Along with David Glantz, Forczyk is one of the preeminent historians writing on the Eastern Front, and like their other works this volume fully utilizes German and Russian sources and gives equal attention to both sides’ plans and operations. A chronology, overview map and introduction chapter set the stage for the campaign, and the book includes the standard quick biographies of the key commanders typical of Osprey campaign series books. The section on opposing forces features an exceptionally useful examination of the weapons, training and equipment of both sides’ air, ground and naval forces, well worth the price of the book in itself, along with a comprehensive order of battle of forces engaged. Six standard and three “3-D” maps allow the reader to follow the action. Numerous photographs, many from the author’s own collection, illuminate the action, and three special pieces of artwork provide further vivid portrayals of the struggle. Forczyk concludes with a comprehensive listing of sources and a guide to the challenges of trying to visit the Kuban battlefields today.While the Kuban campaign remains little known, Forczyk does note some fascinating legacies which gave it more prominence in the USSR, and even to some extent in the West. A Soviet amphibious operation in February 1943 gained a tiny bridgehead near the port of Novorossiysk which was held for months despite German attempts to eliminate it, and the participation of Commissar Leonid Brezhnev in the operation led to the Kuban campaign having an unusually prominent place in Soviet-era accounts of the Great Patriotic War. Forczyk similarly notes how Andrei Grechko, who led the 56th Army in a series of clumsy and largely unsuccessful frontal attacks against German defenses in the Kuban ultimately became the Minister of Defense from 1967 to his death in 1976, again giving the campaign an undeserved prominence in the USSR. In a roundabout way, an exposure to the Kuban campaign even reached the west before the end of the Cold War. Willie Heinrich, a soldier serving in the Kuban wrote “The Willing Flesh,” a 1955 novel that was adopted into the 1977 Sam Peckinpah movie “Cross of Iron,” featuring Yugslavian army T-34/85s and James Coburn as a hardened and cynical NCO leading his troops in battles set in the Kuban.As Forczyk concludes, the campaign ultimately had little strategic meaning. Hitler’s hope that the bridgehead would allow a new 1943 offensive into the Caucasus proved a pipe dream, and despite the fact that the Kuban was essentially a sideshow, Stalin, Zhukov and the Soviet high command insisted on numerous costly attacks against the Axis lines. Axis forces suffered almost 70,000 casualties, and the Red Army’s attacks cost almost half a million. Forczyk’s analysis underscores the ferocity and tragedy of the Russo-German struggle, with both sides investing precious military resources and incurring heavy losses on peripheral as well as decisive areas of operation.

"The Kuban 1943: The Wehrmacht's last stand in the Caucasus (Campaign)” by Robert Forczyk and illustrated by Steve Noon, is an entry in the Osprey "Campaign" series about the Soviet and German efforts in the region in 1942 and 1943, particularly in 1943. The book follows the standard Osprey Campaign format - typically about 96 pages long, consisting of analysis of the campaign, commanders, forces and styles of warfare, pictures, illustrations, and maps.As I read the book, I half wished the author had written more about the region. Luckily for me, he had – he wrote both “The Caucasus 1942–43: Kleist’s race for oil (Campaign)”, and “Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941–44 (General Military); both books give more details on the fighting in the region.In this and in the author's other Osprey-published campaign books, he provides a concise yet sufficiently detailed narrative of the subject at hand (despite the limitations inherent in the Osprey Campaign format). Mr Forczyk shows the strengths and constraints for both sides' positions. For example, even though Army Group South had been tabbed by the Germans to be the focus for their 1942 offensive (and were receiving priority for replacements), they were far from full strength, and had to increasingly use their somewhat shaky allies in front line roles to make up the difference. And on the Soviet side, Stalin chose to ignore his generals' advice, and failed to give his attacking forces enough time or resources to organize themselves to give them the greatest chances of success.The author does an outstanding job of explaining the ebb and flow of the battles, and provides excellent analysis of what happened and why. The photographs, maps, and illustrations are up to Osprey's usual standards, and add greatly to the text. This is not a well-covered battle location, at least from the "book" perspective, and is well worth adding to your library if you're a World War II buff. Five stars.

The collapse of the German offensive into the Russian Caucasus left significant numbers of German troops exposed to Soviet counterattack. The situation became much worse following the loss of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Hitler demanded the retention of a bridgehead in the Kuban, and some 250,000 German troops of the 17th Army dug in and held on. This is their story."The Kuban 1943" is an Osprey Campaign Series book, another in a long string on the Eastern Front, well-authored by Robert Forczyk, with illustrations by Steve Noon. The introduction sets up the strategic situation and introduces the opposing forces and their respective commanders and plans. The narrative covers a series of Soviet offensives against the Kuban enclave, and the efforts by the Germans to hang on.Of note, the beleaguered Germans and their Romanian allies fought a stubborn and surprising joint and combined delaying action in the Kuban for months. The Soviet forces showed flashes of initiative but struggled to bring their superior numbers to bear in a decisive manner. The author highlights the contributions of the Luftwaffe and the German and Romanian navies, and the remarkable ending of the campaign. Highly recommended.

New info on a backwater campaign.

Excellent! This is far and away the most comprehensive book on the Kuban campaign and battles I have found. The text is accompanied by very useful full-page color maps. There are also quite a few black & white photos.The format follows what the author (Robert Forczyk) has done in other books. There are chapters or sections on Opposing Commanders, Opposing Forces, and Opposing Plans. There is also a concluding. chapter on " Aftermath;" one of his best sentences is "In the long run, the enduring lesson that the Kuban campaign teaches is that in war, lives and resources should not be wasted on efforts that do not contribute to victory."

Considering how remote a part of the Eastern front the Kuban bridgehead was, it was a good read and I was impressed by the good information that came through this book.

Very detailed account of the Kuban battles in russia in WW2 The author is especially skilled in crafting this account in such a small book.

A useful review of the little studied Kuban campain

R. Forczyk's book on a little researched vital area of the Russian campaign conducted by Germany during 1943 is extremely well presented with excellent maps and a cogent script which fully explains how the German/Roumanian troops became trapped in the Caucasus Kuban region of Southern Russian. The 17. Armee was largely starved of supplies due to Hitler's other, seemingly more pressing emergencies-Stalingrad and Kursk, to name two. Forczyk neatly sums up Hitler's foolishness in his summation when he says '...the German Army in Russia was gutted by the disaster at Stalingrad'. That sentence neatly encompasses why Germany lost WW2. In Russia Hitler's gamble lost the bulk of the Luftwaffe, the bulk of their tanks, and over a million trained troops. Goodbye Germany! The Russians won the war as they did against Napolean, both leaders failed to take into account the vastness of the land and the number of Russians, also the poor state of the roads and the different gauge of their railway tracks and the extreme weather conditions. All contributed to a crazy gamble that was bound to fail. An excellent book, highly recommended.

Content wise this is an excellent account of the battles of the Kuban Valley in early 1943. It has many strong points especially if all the data provided in the different sections is referenced as you read. I found looking at the various locations on Google maps or Google Earth while reading gave a great sense of the places involved, despite the changes in the intervening decades.However I made the mistake of buying the Kindle version. I would strongly advise against this as one of the great strengths of this series of books is the very useful and well designed maps which are sparse or absent in other publishers accounts of the Eastern Front. The maps are too small to get any benefit from seriously reducing the value of this monograph. The extra money for the 'soft back' is worth it in my opinion.