Did Russia's sacrifice save Britain and France from defeat in 1914? Step back into the combat zone of World War One to watch a crucial moment in the struggle. Amazing visuals--color illustrations; contemporary photographs of the faces, weapons, and landscapes of war; and specially commissioned diagrams and cutting-edge computer cartography--will transport you there, bringing added dimension to the battlefield. In 1914, Russia's doomed Tsar, Nicholas II ordered his armies to invade German territory. They moved faster than expected, and panic stories of Cossacks running amok in Prussia led the German High Command to call back troops from France. However, the two Russian generals leading the attack hated each other and refused to communicate--ultimately helping the Germans annihilate them, but saving the rest of Europe at their own expense.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Richard Holmes' Fields of Battle series takes up one of the most important, least heralded battles of World War I, the German victory over the Russians in East Prussia in August-September 1914. Its consequences for the Western Front, emphasized in conventional historiography, are actually less important than its consequences for the Eastern, for with it the Germans acquired an ultimately decisive strategic edge over the Russians that affected the entire course of the war in different ways. They won that edge fairly--their strategy, logistics, and communications were all vastly superior to that of their opponents, who with only sheer courage and determination couldn't bring their superior infantry strength and weight of artillery into play. Those circumstances Sweetman points up in a clear and balanced narrative that makes necessary concessions to World War I novices without alienating their sophisticated brethren. Meanwhile, the copious illustrations and maps are to be treasured. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Dr John Sweetman is Hon. Research Fellow at Keele University and former Head of Defence & International Affairs at Sandhurst. He has written many other books, incl. THE DAMBUSTERS RAID, also published by Cassell.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the Best Account Available on Tannenberg,
By
This review is from: Tannenberg 1914 (Hardcover)
The critical battle of Tannenberg in 1914 that set the tone for the rest of Imperial Russia's involvement in the First World War has long been a neglected subject in English language histories. This deficiency was rectified in 1991 when Dennis E. Showalter wrote Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, and for eleven years that book has stood as the best on the subject. No longer. John Sweetman's Tannenberg 1914 totally outclasses Showalter's book and is now the best available account of this campaign. Tannenberg 1914 consists of a historical prologue on the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410, five chapters on the campaign itself, an epilogue, a campaign chronology, an order of battle, a section on organization and weaponry, bibliography and notes. Unlike Showalter's book, which boasted only five crude sketch maps and no photographs, Sweetman's book has twelve splendid full-color maps of the campaign that cover the phases in great detail, as well as numerous excellent photographs. Graphically, Tannenberg 1914 is of very high quality and one would hope that the next books in this series will hold to that standard. Furthermore, most accounts of the campaign only cover the mauling of Samsonov's 2nd Russian Army during 25-30 August 1914 and neglect to say much about the fate of Rennenkampf's 1st Army. Sweetman covers both phases of this campaign in great detail, including the Battle of the Masurian Lakes on 8-13 September 1914. Sweetman is no novice historian and he quickly moves to demolish the many myths and distortions associated with the Tannenberg campaign, such as the alleged Samsonov-Rennenkampf feud and Russian communications sloppiness (they simply lacked the necessary equipment and operators at this stage to encode messages). Why did the Russians suffer defeat in this campaign? Sweetman concludes that it was a number of factors, beginning with the ineptitude of the Northwest Front Commander Zhilinski who failed to properly coordinate the operation (interestingly, Sweetman is not so harsh on Rennenkampf or Samsonov). Other major factors were luck (what if the German commander von Prittwitz had not been replaced; he was more cautious than Hindenberg-Ludendoff), totally inadequate Russian logistics, inadequate communications, and of Russian mechanized transport. On the operational side, Russian commanders continuously neglected to conduct proper reconnaissance and screening operations with their available cavalry units, which permitted the Germans to gain tactical surprise time and again (the Germans benefited from air reconnaissance and signal intercepts). Many of these Russian problems were due to the premature nature of the entire offensive; Russia had pledged to France that it would invade East Prussia by M+15 and the Tsar and General Staff stuck to that schedule. The result was that Russian troops - without much food, ammunition or medical support - did invade East Prussia close to the schedule, but that the hasty preparations had almost doomed the operation from the onset. Many units crossed the border lacking vital sub-units and equipment, which made sustained operations problematic. If the Germans had retreated to the Vistula River this cobbled-together offensive might have succeeded at least initially, but the Germans called their bluff at Tannenberg. One particularly interesting aspect of Sweetman's account is his detail on Russian losses. Many accounts - even Showalter's - suggest that the Russian 2nd Army was annihilated and the 1st Army was nearly so. Sweetman exposes this exaggeration, inspired no doubt by German propaganda, as falsehood. Samsonov's 2nd Army, which bore the brunt of the German counteroffensive, lost three of its five corps but still had seven divisions left after it withdraw back into Poland. Showalter even claims that only about 200 Russian cavalrymen broke out of the German pocket. However, Sweetman lists the escape of part of the Russian 13th Corps - one of the units usually listed as destroyed - which had over 13,000 troops in an organized column break through to Poland. Furthermore, most accounts tend to mention the defeat of Rennenkampf's army as an afterthought and imply that it too, suffered a double envelopment. Sweetman details how the docility of Rennenkampf led to his army's defeat, but that it conducted a decent tactical withdrawal without heavy loss and still retained 100,000 troops (as large as the Army of the Potomac in 1863). The photographs in this section are also worthwhile, since they demonstrate that the Russians were capable of constructing stout field positions with overhead cover. Military officers should study Sweetman's book carefully for several reasons. First, this book details the high cost of letting political imperatives ride roughshod over military realities, particularly logistics and planning. Second, Tannenberg 1914 demonstrates how an army must be trained and prepared for the war that it is likely to fight; strategic success is the result of years of effort, and cannot be conjured up by ad hoc means. Third, commanders must aggressively seek out and fix an enemy; all the Russian commanders in 1914 seemed to focus too much on reaching this or that phase line, and seemed relatively unconcerned about grabbing on to the German 8th Army and crushing it. Nor did the Russian sacrifice at Tannenberg make much difference to the Allied war effort either; Sweetman details how the alleged role in the Russian offensive diverting two German corps from the Western Front and thereby contributing to Allied success at the Battle of the Marne is unlikely. In the end, Tsarist Russia honored its treaty requirements and paid a heavy price for its efforts.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Book on a little-known battle,
By Russell D. Melling "World's Greatest Anglophile" (Coatesville, Indiana) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Tannenberg 1914 (Hardcover)
I read this book in three days last August and it is a good account of a battle that hasn't been covered very well in the English-speaking world. What makes this book even more interesting is how the author connects it with the 1410 battle when the Teutonic Knights were decimated by the Poles. If there were only more books in print on this little-known front of the First World War
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Deja vu All Over Again,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Tannenberg 1914 (Hardcover)
This book perhaps shows how easy it is to get published in military history compared to other fields. There is no new material here, and the author relies heavily on Norman Stone. Unlike with Dennis Showalter's book, there is no attempt to give the reader a feel of either being there or an appreciation for the equipment and organization challenges.
The book also suffers from poor editing. The author often uses rare (or possibly original and unique)spellings for the names of the Russian generals, and confuses the Russian XX and XV corps. At the end, one is left with the question: What was the point of writing this? Yes, the pictures are nice, but so what? The maps are poor, not showing the roads and variation of terrain. Anyone who buys this book will enjoy it to some degree to have a pleasant rehashed and re-run account of their favorite battle. I suppose there is a need in our civilization to repeat accounts, to keep publishing for the sake of publishing, but as there is nothing new here, the style alternates between that of a college term paper and a cut-and-paste ransom note. Finally, it is unfortunate that the author muddies the waters by suggesting that General Rennenkampf had been in a fight with General Mischenko in Manchuria--and provides a reference to Stone for that, when Stone showed that not only Rennenkampf was in a hospital at the time, any brawl between Russian generals was between Mischenko and Bezobrazov. If you are going to rely heavily on a secondary source, you really should read it closely.
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