October 2, 1998 - Interview Profile
About David Glantz
About David Glantz
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October 2, 1998 - Interview Profile
About David Glantz |
DAVID M. GLANTZ, COLONEL USA (RET.)
EDITOR, THE JOURNAL OF SLAVIC MILITARY STUDIESDavid M. Glantz, Colonel US Army (ret.), is a 1959 graduate of Port Chester High School, Port Chester, New York. After receiving degrees in History from the Virginia Military Institute in 1963 and in Modern European History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1965, he entered active army service. From 1965-67 he served a tour of duty with the 24th Infantry Division in Germany as a staff officer and battery commander in the 3d Battalion, 11th Artillery. A 1967 graduate of the Army’s Officers’ Advanced Artillery Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Captain Glantz served for a year with the II Field Force Artillery’s Fire Support Coordination Element in Vietnam, where he was awarded two Bronze Star Medals. On his return from Vietnam in 1969, he was selected to serve on the history faculty of the US Military Academy, West Point, where he taught European History from 1969 through 1973 and was promoted to the rank of Major.
While attending the 1973-74 US Army’s Command and General Staff College Course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he applied for and was selected to receive language and area studies training under the auspices of the Army’s Foreign Area Officer education program. He then attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, California, and the US Army Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany, where he learned the Russian language and traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. After graduating from the Russian Institute in 1977, he was assigned as Chief of Estimates in the US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he was responsible for assessing the capabilities and intentions of Soviet military forces in Europe. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1979.
Upon his return to the United States in 1979, Lieutenant Colonel Glantz helped found the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute (CSI) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he served from 1979 through 1983 as the Institute’s Deputy Director and as Chairman of the Institute’s Teaching Committee. CSI was the first army organization dedicated to original research in military affairs and responsible for supervision of military history instruction at Fort Leavenworth’s Command and General Staff Course and other Army branch schools. While at the Combat Studies Institute, Colonel Glantz began his research on the Soviet military, writing detailed studies on Soviet military operations in Manchuria in August 1945, on Soviet airborne operations, and other more current themes. When published, these studies became classics in their field and helped promote interest in and a broader appreciation of the field of Soviet military studies and operational art.
In 1983 Lieutenant Colonel Glantz was assigned as Director of Soviet Operations at the US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA where he was promoted to Colonel in 1985. While serving at the War College, he organized annual Art of War Symposia, three weeklong conferences that analyzed in detail Soviet and German Eastern Front operations in World War II. With the help of many distinguished German and Soviet veterans of the war, he published studies of the operations, which opened new horizons in the study of Soviet military history. At the same time, Colonel Glantz authored unprecedented works on Soviet military operations, military intelligence and wartime deception, and the fundamentals of Soviet operational art and tactics.
Colonel Glantz returned to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, where he helped found the Army’s Soviet Army Studies Office (SASO), an organization dedicated to studying the Soviet from open-source Russian-language materials. In time, the office became instrumental in opening cooperative contacts between the US Army and Soviet military research organizations. As a vehicle for that cooperation, in 1987 Colonel Glantz founded the London-based quarterly, Journal of Soviet Military Studies, manned by an extensive international editorial board. In 1991 Colonel Glantz converted SASO into the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO), which expanded its work to other Central and Eastern European nations. As Director of FMSO, Colonel Glantz and his small team of experts continued their analysis and extensive travel in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. After the fall of the Soviet Union, his organization built bridges to then emerging democracies of Eastern Central and Eastern Europe and established lasting cooperative relationships with organizations and individuals in the Russian Federation, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
In 1993 Colonel Glantz converted his journal into The Journal of Slavic Military Studies and expanded its editorial board and focus of interest to encompass all of the states of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. At the same time, FMSO became instrumental in the developing contacts between the US Army and the armies of Central and Eastern Europe. Continuing his cooperative ventures, he organized numerous international conferences and, on Russian invitation, became a member of the Russian Federation’s Academy of Natural Sciences. His continued publications included detailed studies of evolving Soviet military strategy, Soviet airborne operations, and Soviet operations during the initial period of World War II.
In January 1993 Colonel Glantz retired from the Army after more than thirty years of service. During his service, in addition to the two Bronze Stars, his decorations included two National Defense Service Medals, the Army Achievement Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, two Meritorious Service Medals, the Legion of Merit, and the Distinguished Service Medal. Since his retirement he has devoted his energies to developing his journal, expanding contacts with analysts and historians in Central and Eastern Europe, and writing more extensively on the history of the Red Army in World War II. His journal is now the premier source on Slavic military affairs and the prime conduit for publication of works by Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, and other experts on military-historical and security matters. His historical writings are capitalizing on recent unprecedented Russian archival releases to reveal the full scope and dimensions of that most terrible and influential of Twentieth Century wars. His most widely acclaimed work in the single-volume history of the German-Soviet War, entitled When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (University of Kansas Press, 1993). He is presently embarked on two book series, one reassessing well-known Soviet military operations and the second revealing aspects of World War II Soviet authorities have hitherto covered that up. He has just completed a definitive study of the famous Battle of Kursk (entitled The End of Blitzkrieg) and exposes of concealed major Soviet wartime defeats (entitled The Anatomy of a Military Disaster: Khar’kov, May 1942 and Marshal Zhukov’s Greatest Defeat: Operation ‘Mars,’ November-December 1942). His detailed description of the condition of the Red Army in June 1941 (entitled The Stumbling Colossus) is scheduled for publication in 1998.
Simultaneously, Colonel Glantz has translated and edited several works by Russian and Ukrainian authors, including a study of Red Army generals who died during World War II, which will be published in London, also in 1998. In addition, he is translating and editing for publication in the West a series of hitherto secret Red Army General Staff studies various aspects of wartime operations and a series of desk-top atlases and studies suited for the use of military specialists.
Colonel Glantz now resides with his wife in Carlisle, PA. His wife, Mary Ann, acts as chief editor of his books and assists in his correspondence. He has two daughters, one of whom, Mary Elizabeth, is completing her Doctorate in European military and diplomatic history at Temple University and the other, Susan Ann, who has completed her Masters Degree in (Tax) Accounting and Information Systems at the University of Kansas and is an accountant and CPA.
Related Links 1. Interview with David Glantz 2. October Book of the Month Selection
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