Armies in the Balkans 1914-18 (Men-at-Arms) [Paperback]

Nigel Thomas (Author), Darko Pavlovic (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 2001 | Series: Men-at-Arms (Book 356)

Recent history should remind us that it was events in the Balkans which sparked off World War I (1914-1918), with the assassination of the Austrian heir Prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and the consequent invasion of Serbia by Austro-Hungarian armies on 2 August 1914. Nevertheless, the subsequent four-year war in that theatre is always overshadowed by the simultaneous campaigns on the Western Front. For the first time this book offers a concise account of these complex campaigns, the organisation, orders of battle, and the uniforms and insignia of the armies involved: Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, Serbian, Montenegrin, Albanian, British, French, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Greek and Rumanian.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Packed with specially commissioned artwork, maps and diagrams, the Men-at-Arms series is an unrivalled illustrated reference on the history, organisation, uniforms and equipment of the world's military forces, past and present.

About the Author

DR. NIGEL THOMAS is an accomplished linguist and military historian and is currently a Senior Lecturer in charge of the Business Language Unit at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle. His interests are 20th century military and civil uniformed organizations, with a special interest in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe. He was recently awarded a PhD on the Eastern Enlargement of NATO.
DUŠAN BABAC is a postgraduate geological engineer, living in Belgrade. He has a strong interest in military history, particularly military uniforms, and is an acknowledged authority on Yugoslavia and Montenegro. He is an associate of the Military Mudeum and Serbian History Museum in Belgrade and has published widely in France, Japan, Russia and the states of former Yugoslavia. This is his first book for Osprey.

Product Details

• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Osprey Publishing (July 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184176194X
• ISBN-13: 978-1841761947
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 0.2 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,089,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of Info, Lots of Bias, August 18, 2001

By 

R. A Forczyk (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Armies in the Balkans 1914-18 (Men-at-Arms) (Paperback)

This addition to the Osprey Men-at-Arms series offers considerable hard-to-find information on the oft-neglected Balkan armies of the First World War. Sections cover the forces of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Rumania, Austria-Hungary as well as the German, Turkish, Russian, British, French and Italian units sent to that front. Dusan Babac, a Serbian military history enthusiast, has culled the archives of the Military Museum in Belgrade and provides many photographs previously unseen in the West. The volume also offers much new and hard-to-find information on the armies that fought in the Balkans. However, there is also considerable overt pro-Serb bias throughout the volume.

The author's pro-Serb bias is evident from the first page, where he states that, "Austro-Hungary had provoked Serbia by holding military maneuvers in Bosnia-Herzegovina in summer 1914," which led to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. No mention of state-sponsored terrorism by Serbian military intelligence or Serbian territorial interests in Bosnia. Later, the successful Central Powers' invasion of Serbia in October 1915 is downplayed by the Serbs "legendary tactical retreat" through Kosovo into Albania. The point that without Allied refuge and support Serbia would have been knocked out of the war by late 1915 is minimized here.

The section on the Austro-Hungarian forces used in the Balkans is not very good. The Order of Battle is skimpy compared to those of other countries, with only divisions listed, no artillery or engineer units provided. Also unlike the other sections, there is no discussion of Austro-Hungarian unit organizations or equipments. The three figures depicted for the Austro-Hungarian army in the color plates are rather odd, non-representative choices. One gets the impression that the author would rather have omitted this section (it did include Croats and Bosnians, after all, not favorite people of most Serbs).

The sections on the Serb, Montenegrin, Greek, Bulgarian and Rumanian armies are quite detailed for a volume this size, with succinct discussions of unit organizations and equipment. Most of the order of battles for these armies include infantry units down to regimental level, cavalry, artillery and engineer units. Some of the order of battles are a bit difficult to decipher however, since the author does not seem to have mastered the military use of the slash in unit abbreviations. For example, in the Serbian army OB, a unit listed as "Danube/2" could be read as 2nd Division of the Danubian Corps, but the author may mean 2nd Danubian Division. Typically slashes are only used for "organic" units below division-level, not for divisions themselves, which are rarely "organic" to a corps.

The sections on the various German, Turkish and Allied units that operated in the Balkans are less detailed, usually mentioning only division-level units. However the small section on the Russian contingent includes a clear error when it states that the initial Russian force was "later joined by the 1st and 3rd [brigades] and grouped in July 1917 into an 18,000-strong division." Readers should see Jamie Cockfield's excellent account of the Russian Expeditionary Force, which has considerable detail on the morale collapse in the Russian 1st and 3rd Brigades stationed in France, and their refusal to be transferred to the Balkan front.

Overall, this volume packs considerable amounts of hard-to-find OB data on some of the minor armies of the First World. Other details on uniforms, rank structure and organization are a bonus. However, the pro-Serb bias of the author reduces the comprehensive value of this volume and renders some of its information as suspect.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too Much in Too Little Space, December 25, 2001

By 

El Cutachero (MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Armies in the Balkans 1914-18 (Men-at-Arms) (Paperback)

As family tradition has it that our name originates in the Balkans, in Bulgaria, I have had a curiousity about the wars and campaigns there, ever since I began studying WW I and perused my sets of Leslie's Weekly, and sets of the New York Times Mid Week Pictorial, a rotogravure mainstay of photohistorians of the Great War. But there have been no known readily available short treatments of those times in the Balkans. So when I saw this listed last month I eagerly sent off for it. As followers of my reviews know, I have a lot of Osprey titles and find them mostly useful.
If this one were a sausage, though, it would burst in the microwave. There is just too much order of battle data and not enough historical interpretation. Another reviewer has caught the author's national slant. (He is a Serb, after all. Try reading some Mexican author on the "Colossus of the North". That era is one of my research specialties.) I think part of the verbal confusion may be due to the translator.
Leaving all that aside, the main fault is just too much available material to cover in the standard volume size of this series. The battle history is too skimpy and should be in a Campaign volume where it could be treated properly. As a cartographer, I am really disappointed at the one inadequate and confusing monocolor map herein. It shows no lines of communications, many place names are missing, and topography is not indicated.
There should be some sense of the life experience of the soldiers both before and during service. Such has been done in the volumes on the British Army for years. We know that all these Balkan proper nations were hard scrabble rural states and most remain so today.
The coverage of the Ottoman Army and the Austro Hungarian forces should be eliminated as the former is covered elsewhere in its own volume and the latter should be. And omit the German forces as well.
This would leave enough room to cover the Serbs, the Romanians, the Greeks, the Bulgarians, etc. in the detail they deserve. This volume should emphasize those national forces not likely to ever have their own volumes, either due to lack of information or lack of importance. Montenegro will never get its own. :-)
The plates are of the usual high quality.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Recycled images, May 11, 2008

By 

danny boy "dbswongv" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Armies in the Balkans 1914-18 (Men-at-Arms) (Paperback)

This book can only serve as a basic primer to the subject, as it attempts to cover too many countries and units within such a small volume. It would have been far better if MAA had decided to do this as a multi-volume sub-series.

The illustrations are not that great. But don't be fooled by that pseudo-photorealistic technique to assume that these were taken from photos of the period.

I can compare this book to an earlier Blandford book covering WWI (Army Uniforms of World War One by Andrew Mollo and Pierre Turner) which had far superior drawings based on the same or similar photos of the period. If one examines the drawings between the two books, it is clear that in this Osprey book, at least half of the drawings were made by cannibalising substantial parts of figures from that Blandford book.

Sometimes, whole body poses have been reproduced with detail changes, either as it is or mirror-reversed. There are also composite poses made up from several body poses. I do not know if the Blandford artist (Turner) had done this as well, but this method of secondary cut-and-paste reproduction leaves rather oddly posed figures. I cite one example. The Austrian skier on the front cover of this Osprey book is partly taken from a German soldier holding his child in that Blandford book, which in itself was taken from an original WWI photograph.