Tank and mechanized forces spearhead Red Army operations from the gates of Stalingrad to the center of Berlin. This new book profiles Six Soviet commanders who rose to lead six tank armies created by the Red Army on the eastern front during the Second World War: Mikhail Efimov Katukov, Semen Ill'ich Bogdanov, Pavel Semenovich Rybalko, Dmitri Danilovich Lelyushenko, Pavel Alekseevich Rotmistrov, and Andrei Grigorevich Kravchenko. Each tank commanders' combat career is examined, as is the rise of Red Army forces, and reveals these lesser known leaders and their operations to western military history readers.
Richard N. Armstrong, a colonel in the United States Army, has served in military intelligence since 1969, and holds a military historian specialty. He has published historical and professional articles on Red Army operations and Soviet military affairs. He wrote the Combat Studies Institute monograph, Soviet Operational Deception: The Red Cloak, and edited Red Armor Combat Orders; Combat Regulations for Tank and Mechanized Forces 1944.