[.ca] The First World War, Vol. 1: The Eastern Front 1914-1918 (ISBN 0415968410)

The Unabashed English View of the War - Part Two:
Peter Simkins, a former senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, picks up in this volume of Osprey's Essential Histories series where he left off at the end of 1916. As in the first volume, Simkins' narrative is clear and concise, but skewed with an Anglo-centric focus that downplays the participation of non-Englishmen on the Western Front. Rather than the standard section on "background to war," Simkins begins this volume with a discussion of Allied and German strategic choices for 1917. Since this volume is a continuation of the first, the normal sections with background material on the warring sides and the political issues are omitted, which renders this volume less than ideal as a stand-alone. The author provides ten maps to support his narrative: the Western Front 1914-1918; the German withdrawal in 1917; the Battle of Arras; the Nivelle Offensive; the Third Battle of Ypres; Operation Michael; the end of Operation Michael; the German 1918 offensives; the Battle of Amiens; the final Allied offensives. As in the first volume, Simkins' Anglo-centric bias is evident in the maps, which primarily emphasize British offensives. The lack of any maps depicting the American St. Mihiel or Argonne offensives, or the Franco-American counterattack at Soissons are noteworthy omissions. Air operations are also slighted in this volume, as in the first. Simkins' narrative begins with the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917, followed by the British offensive at Arras and the French Nivelle offensive. Simkins is honest that the Arras offensive represented a mixed bag, with the capture of Vimy Ridge to its credit, but balanced against the highest daily casualty rate of the war for the British. Simkins also notes that the British were slow to modify their tactics, e.g. using tanks in "penny packets" over bad terrain. Although the author notes that the British had "ambiguous objectives and a faulty plan" in describing the follow-up offensive that resulted in the Third Battle of Ypres, his discussion fails to convey the utter stupidity of that offensive. Indeed, throughout the text, Simkins defends the British BEF commander, General Douglas Haig, despite enormous evidence that Haig's bull-headedness caused unnecessary loss of life by maintaining an almost religious belief that "one more push" would gain a breakthrough at Ypres. Nor does Simkins ever discuss whether Haig's belief that a breakthrough at Ypres would prove decisive was really justified other than a few small channel ports, no major objectives were near Ypres). In covering the fighting in 1918, Simkins is honest about the defects in the British defenses that facilitated the initial German success in the spring offensives, although again he avoids mentioning mistakes made by higher British officers, i.e. Lieutenant General Gough. Simkins' coverage of the Allied efforts to blunt the German offensives is good, but he criticizes General Pershing's reluctance to send in the partly-trained American divisions piece-meal (failing to note that Pershing was planning for the long-term and that it was not his fault that the Allied front had virtually collapsed). It is also interesting that Simkins' map which depicts the final Allied offensive in September-November 1918 shows no French participation. American successes at St. Mihiel and in the Argonne are mentioned, but off to the side, as if they were sideshows. The crucial role played by the arrival of American forces in 1918 - often exaggerated by American authors - is minimized here. Simkins does fail to note that British forces held less of the front than either French or American troops at the end of the war. In the final sections, Simkins once again displays unabashed Anglo-centrism with his "portrait of a soldier" (British Private Noakes) and "portrait of a civilian" (British munitions worker Caroline Webb). These characters are so similar to the two British characters described in the first volume (both soldiers were English privates born in 1896) that it is apparent that the author made no effort whatsoever to personalize the war from the French or German perspectives (or the loyal Canadians and ANZACs who came to defend the empire). Certainly Ernst Jünger's memoirs would have been a suitable basis for representing a German point of view, and there are numerous French memoirs as well. According to this type of historiography, the only people on the Western Front who mattered were Englishmen. The final section, on how the war ended skimps over unrest in Germany that led to the collapse of the monarchy and it is odd that there is no mention of the total casualties suffered by each of the combatants. A final section summarizing the human and financial costs of one of the most vicious wars in history would certainly seem appropriate, but it is not provided. Overall, this volume is not quite as good as the first.

The Unabashed English View of the War - Part One:
Peter Simkins, a former senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, provides an excellent summary of the First World War on the Western Front in Osprey's two volume Essential Histories series. Simkins brings his vast knowledge of the subject to bear and delivers a tight narrative that hits all the highlights of the war on this front; overall, this is an excellent summary. Unfortunately, Simkins also brings an unabashed over-emphasis on the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France - at the expense of the French and Americans. British mistakes tend to get glossed over in this account and the role of Britain in the Allied victory borders on exaggeration. Simkins is also unwilling to swerve in the slightest from conventional wisdom on this subject and accepts unequivocal German war guilt at face value (views on this subject are highly controversial and have evolved over time, but Simkins eschews both controversy and historiographical evolution). While Simkins' two volumes offer an excellent summary of the First World War on the Western Front, readers should be aware that this is the "official" BEF version of events, with much less balance from other participants. The author's opening section on "the road to war" is excellent and carefully weaves together the wide diversity of factors that led to the outbreak of the First World War. While the author's assessment that "the primacy of Germany's responsibility for war in 1914" is obvious based upon its preparations of an offensive war plan, the guilt of other actors (such as Russian cultivation of Serb ultra-nationalism that led to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand) is alluded to but not exposed. The section on opposing armies, while brief, is also excellent. The author includes ten maps to support his narrative: European alliances 1914-1916; the rival war plans; the battle of the frontiers; the First Battle of Ypres; the Battle of Neuve Chapelle; the Battle of Loos; the Western Front 1914-1918; the Battle of Verdun; the Somme Offensive 1 July 1916; and the final phase of the Somme offensive. The author's English bias is evident in the maps, with five of ten maps focusing on British battles but only one on a French battle; even the map on the 1914 Battle of the Frontiers fails to depict the doomed French offensive in Lorraine. Given the importance of the Battle of the Marne, a map should also have been included on that subject over a relatively minor battle like Neuve Chapelle (which was important in English eyes, but otherwise no more significant than the many failed French offensives in 1915). The author's narrative of the fighting in 1914-1916 is clear, concise and often insightful. While Simkins notes the standard criticisms of the German Schlieffen Plan - logistical weakness and Moltke's weakening of the critical right wing - he also notes that the Germans failed to adequately address Belgian resistance: "what really harmed their plan was the need to detach some five corps from their right wing to invest Naumur, Maubeuge and Antwerp." As Simkins sees it, the Germans put inadequate forces into their main effort, then diverted too many forces from that weakened effort on secondary tasks, then loss their nerve due to a puny Allied counterattack on the Marne. Simkins also views the German decision to revert to the defense on the Western Front in November 1914 - instead of finishing off the depleted BEF - as "a huge mistake." Aside from ignoring the exhaustion of Germany's own troops at that point, Simkins exaggerates the value of the BEF remnants in the fall of 1914, which were perhaps 5% of Allied troops on the front. In fact, the original BEF was essentially destroyed by this point and the Germans had no ability to destroy the dozens of new divisions being raised in England, Canada and Australia. After detailing the various offensives of 1915, Simkins concludes the narrative section with accounts of the two great set-piece battles, Verdun and the Somme. The discussion of the Somme is adequate, but fails to convey the "mission creep" in the German plan that caused a deliberate attritional battle to transform into a major bloodletting for both sides. On the other hand, Simkins' discussion of the Somme follows the standard British line, that while losses were high, the offensive succeeded in "gutting" the German army of pre-war regulars and thereby contributed to victory later. In reality, the Somme was an expensive failure that "gutted" the BEF far more than the Germans and it was the combination of having to fight both Verdun and the Somme in 1916 that really strained the Germans. The only real omission in this volume is the lack of any real detail on the air war (e.g. the "Fokker scourge"). The final sections in this volume are paeans to British sensibilities about the First World War. The section, "Portrait of a Soldier" details the experiences of a 19-year old British private who served only six months in the period of this volume. Certainly highlighting one of the "Old Contemptibles" of 1914 or one of the New Army "Pals Battalion" members would have been more representative of the British war effort in this period. This section is followed by "Portrait of a Civilian" which - surprise, surprise - covers a British female auxiliary. Obviously, no attempt was made to balance this volume with French or British perspectives. The section on home fronts does provide three paragraphs each on Germany and France, but this is relatively an afterthought. Overall, this volume is an excellent summary of the first two years of the war on the Western Front, albeit for an Anglo-centric perspective.

Mostly About Russia in WWI:
The book is very well written and has some unusal photographs, but it should be titled "Russia Through the Great War and Into Revolution." If I had been looking for a book concentrating on Russia, I would have given it all 5 stars. The author is clearly very knowledgeable on Russia: I have a Master's in Russian plus additional years of work, and I can tell he knows his stuff well enough to choose the right things to say and can get them across very well. But if you are interested in the Austro-Hungarian side of the war, as I was, there will be very little here for you. The text has about the same emphasis as the illustrations: of 42 pictures, 26 are of Russians (including the 8 large ones), 10 are of Germans, and 2 are of Austrians if you count the officer in the photo of the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty who appears to be in an Austrian uniform. Four pictures of Lenin, but not a single one showing Austrian-Hungarian soldiers, and but a few of Germans (though they are interesting ones to have chosen). Of the seven books recommended for further reading, four are on Russia, none on Austria-Hungary. I hope they do another one in the series with a different emphasis, then I would be happy to have the set.

Concur with Other Reviewers:
The other reviewers peg this book right. It is visually very attractive, has excellent maps, well-chosen artwork, vivid writing in the British popular scholarly style. Compact, but with lack of explanations--who are the Uniates? Specialists know, but the general reader may not. But the skimpy bibliography revels what the others point out--Nicholas and Alexandra was a fine best-seller in 1968, but it is hardly the best word on the Russian Revolution today. No foreign-langauge sources. Nothing of political role or organizational issues with the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and German multi-ethnic armies and their impact on the fighting and eventual collapse of the three empires. I hope his other works in the series are more balanced. Also, why do the Brits have a monopoly on this kind of historical series?

An Outdated Summary by an Outdated Author:
This Osprey Essential History volume, concerning the Eastern Front, has its good points and its bad points. On the plus side, the volume is well written and provides a thorough summary for the Russian Front in the First World War, given its size limitations. On the negative side, one need only look at the bibliography, which has only seven sources listed, none of which were written after 1971. In the past thirty years, a great deal of new information has been uncovered about Russia in the First World War - none of which seems to have been incorporated by the author. Readers will probably be unfamiliar with the name of Geoffrey Jukes - and they should be, since Jukes did most of his writing for the old Ballantine series back in 1968-1971 and has written nothing significant in nearly two decades. In fact, the best part of this volume concerns the 1916 Brusilov offensive, which Jukes wrote a book about in 1971. Jukes does have a great deal of insight into Russian history, insight which is interwoven throughout the pages of this summary, but the insight is from another era, from the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, not only is much of the information outdated, but the focus is overly Russo-centric, with little attention given to German or Austrian perspectives. The First World War: The Eastern Front 1914-1918 consists of a brief introduction and seven chapters. The first chapter provides an 8-page summary of Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian capabilities. The war itself is covered in the second chapter, which covers the fighting in 50 pages. The next three chapters attempt to add depth to the narrative by providing case studies on typical Russian soldiers, civilian life (mostly in Russia) and the last days of the Romanov dynasty. The sixth chapter covers the Bolshevik seizure of power and the Russian withdrawal from the war, followed by a brief conclusion. There are 10 maps including: Russia in 1914, the Battle of Tannenberg, the Lodz-Warsaw campaign, Galicia 1915, the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, the fall of Trebizon, the Brusilov offensive, the invasion of Romania, Lenin's route into Russia and the front-line in 1918. Concerning the campaign summaries themselves, readers will be disappointed by the flimsy coverage of the 1914 East Prussian and Galician campaigns in a couple of pages. Jukes repeats an oft-quoted legend as fact about the alleged feud between the two Russian army commanders (Samsonov and Rennenkanpf) that supposedly contributed to the Russian defeat in East Prussia; readers should consult Dennis E. Showalter's 1991 Tannenberg: Clash of Empires on page 134 to see the actual facts. While Jukes' campaign narrative does get better after this shaky start, it remains rather shallow until he approaches the 1916 Brusilov offensive, which he knows so well. Jukes makes the interesting point that Brusilov, "deliberately violated the principle of concentration of force to increase his chances of surprise." The Turkish front is covered in some detail in 1915-1916, particularly joint Russian army-navy operations along the Black Sea coast, but then drops from sight. Jukes tends to harbor an antiquated view of the Russian army as poorly equipped, clumsy and incompetent. In the discussion of the relative armies, Jukes cites Russian weakness in key weapons, "Machineguns were in equally short supply. In 1914 Russia had just over 4,100 (less than one per infantry battalion)..." In fact, Russia had two machineguns authorized per infantry battalion like most other European armies of 1914 and in starting the war with about 950 infantry battalions, the amount of machine-guns needed to equip the front-line infantry and cavalry units would have been about 2,000 weapons. Jukes also mentions a "deficiency of 350,000 rifles at the outbreak of war.." which is a misstatement, since Russia started the war with adequate numbers of small arms but was unable to replace losses by early 1915. These perceptions of ill-equipped Russian masses were not appropriate for 1914; the Russian army that started the war was equipped with solid, reliable weapons like the Mosin-Nagant rifle, Maxim machine-gun and Putilov howitzer. Furthermore, many of the Russian officers and NCOs had recent combat experience, which the Germans lacked. It was not lack of weapons that hindered Russian operations in 1914, but poor logistics, inadequate command and control, and an inefficient reserve system. Jukes also misses the fact that Russian military modernization after the disastrous Russo-Japanese War was one of the cassus belli from the German point of view (see David G. Hermann's 1996 The Arming of Europe). Jukes' figures on pre-war defense spending are way off, "Parsimony was the rule in Austria-Hungary's defense spending. As late as 1911 it was less than a quarter of Germany's, and just over a quarter of Russia's." In fact, Austrian spending was 52% of Germany's and 37% of Russia's. Jukes fails to note that Russian defense spending was greater than Germany's every year during the period 1904-1912. Jukes does make some interesting points about the disintegration of the Russian army in 1916-1917. He cites the burden created by the Romanian entry into the war in 1916, requiring 70 Russian divisions to cover a new front in Moldavia, as draining Russia's last combat reserves. Another key factor often overlooked is the decline of Russia's rail system - run-down by the war, bad weather and mismanagement - which led to the food shortages in the major cities that instigated the collapse of the Romanov monarchy. Jukes also makes the point that the Tsarist regime made no effort to dispel revolutionary propaganda and relied solely on blind obedience from below; "STAVKA never attempted persuasion, or even telling the troops why Russia was at war..." In sum, readers will find this volume a useful overview but they should be wary of the lack of recent research incorporated into its text and the dated views based upon out-worn assumptions.