When Titans Clashed is an excellent, single-volume account of operations during the war. Its minor defects tend to be sins of omission; neither House nor Glantz devote much time to the air war or the naval aspects of the Eastern front. Edward Homze's AHR review noted that the authors also could have explored the role of intelligence more thoroughly as well as the impact of Lend-Lease supplies. But these are minor critiques, and it is a tall order to expect a single volume to cover everything.

The major problem of Glantz, and one that does not come up within When Titans Clash, is Glantz's work does not really engage with Soviet political history or notions of a military as a social organization except in somewhat cosmetic forms. Thus when he describes the evolution of the Soviet concept of Deep Battle, he really assigns Marxist-Leninist ideology and experience within the Stalinist state to a subordinate level even though some of Deep Battle's ideas were very much in congruence with Marxist-Leninism's expansive visions of revolution and mass mobilization. That Soviet officers grew up and were promoted in such a milieu is something Glantz tends to deal with tangentially. At the risk of drawing too broad a criticism of Glantz, politics was something that happened to the Red Army, not something it participated in. For example, in Glantz's Stumbling Colossus almost all of the references to the daily life and beliefs of the Red Army's soldiers comes from a single, secondary source, Roger Reese's Stalin's Reluctant Soldiers. This is a somewhat limiting view of military institutions and was one of the less satisfying aspects of an otherwise good book.