Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory

Front Matter....Pages i-x
The Soviet need to defeat NATO quickly....Pages 1-9
Attempts to win wars quickly, 1848–1914....Pages 10-21
Later attempts: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan....Pages 22-26
What is a war, anyway?....Pages 27-35
The new notion of victory....Pages 36-47
The first Soviet attempt at a speedy victory: the Russo-Finnish War of 1939–40....Pages 48-56
The reasons for all these failures....Pages 57-68
Possible recipes for success....Pages 69-101
Soviet practice, having absorbed these lessons: the Manchurian Campaign of 1945....Pages 102-121
The new ingredients: air mobile forces and rockets....Pages 122-130
The Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan....Pages 131-143
The Soviet view of surprise attack....Pages 144-167
But what does ‘surprise’ consist of?....Pages 168-182
A possible Soviet scenario for the perfect Blitzkrieg ....Pages 183-205
Epilogue Key quotations from senior Soviet officers....Pages 206-207
Back Matter....Pages 208-218