This is a book from my library that I have had a long time and actually could not recall ever reading although I am sure I did at the time of purchase.
Having now read this book again I am pleased I did as it really is very good. The Eastern Front is hardly mentioned in most WW1 histories yet the campaign was so very different to that on the Western Front. Indeed it was more like the the sort of open warfare that most generals expected in 1914. The book covers the various battles with a fairly broad brush as I would expect given the huge scale of the fighting. However it also covers the economics of war mainly from the Russian perspective. It tries to answer the question of whether Russia had the industrial strength to have won if the revolution had not curtailed the political will to continue the fight. A great deal of research has gone into this question and it makes good and interesting reading.
There are many fascinating aspects to the war in the east. These include massive troop movements, lack of a continuous front line, fortifications, where they existed, being only a virtual scratch in the ground and the huge numbers of prisoners taken due to outflanking by both sides on a regular basis.
An excellent book with only one downside in that it leaves me with a thirst for more detail on the various battles and campaigns. There is very little published about the Eastern Front and I will have to undertake a search to find more books on this fascinating theater of war.
Earlier this year I read a book on the war of 1914 - and only 1914. It seems that the war on the eastern front was so fluid and so confused that it is very difficult to get more than a 'broad brush' narrative. According to this book, 'Catastrophe' by Max Hastings, after Tannenberg, the war seemed to be the advance - retreat - advance again shamble of mutually exhausted armies. Austrian armies might be rationed to 4 rounds per riflemen PER DAY - 'even when hard pressed'. There's a priceless comment by the Austrian C-in-C Baron Conrad von Hotzendorff, after the complete shambles of the Austrian campaigns in the first 2 months of the war: 'If the Archduke Ferdinand were still alive, he would have had the architect of this military disaster taken out and shot.' As he well knew when he said it, 'the architect of this military disaster' was Conrad himself.
ReplyDeleteThere's a bit more detail in the Balkan War of 1914, and Austria managed to make a pig's breakfast of that TWICE, before finally making its superior strength count.
After Brussilov's summer offensive of 1916 (which was to cost Russia a million casualties), it seems that the morale of the Austrian Army was broken pretty much for good. From then on they had to be stiffened with German troops, which would have spread the Kaiser's resources damnably thin...
Cheers,
Ion
Hi Ion.... Since writing this review I have found a set of four books by PITT BUTTAR who is apparently a historian, living in the UK, of the Eastern Front in both wars. The four books each cover one year of WW1 apart from the last which goes through to 1921. The synopsis looks promising so I plan to buy one then, if good, I will buy the others. The book above does a reasonable job of covering the major elements of the fighting and gives a good general outline. However it is clear there is so much more to learn. Regards.
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