My Amazon Review of Alexander Watson's "Ring of Steel"

 The Central Powers’ Long Slog in the East

 

University of London historian Alexander Watson has written a history of World War I through the eyes of the defeated Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary. It is a long slog, 608 pages in the paperback edition, but the reader will get a real sense of the tribulations their armies and people suffered during the war. A war caused largely by Austria-Hungary and Germany with a big assist from Russia.

 

Most of the focus of the book is on the bloodlands of the East and the fear Russia’s invasion of both countries in 1914 engendered in Vienna and Berlin. At the outset of the war Austria lost a good part of the granaries of Galicia which set the stage for the mass starvation that was to come. Later the British navy would induce mass starvation in Germany and of a sudden the Central Powers were surrounded by a ring of steel.

 

If the Central Powers did not have imperialist war aims in 1914, the Russian onslaught and the stalemate in the west, both Germany and Austria sought food security in the East and Germany longed for the French iron mines. And it was those goals that maintained the necessary popular consent for most of the war.

 

Germany’s hope for a swift victory died in the Marne Valley and Austria simply was not up to fighting a major war. Its leadership went from failure to failure. Its polyglot empire couldn’t stand the strains of modern war. Meanwhile all of the participants in the East turned on their Jewish populations with wave after wave of pogroms. Germany’s problem was that it had Austria for an ally.

 

Watson as many others have noted the fateful decision of Germany to start unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 sealed its fate by bringing the United States into the war. The pressure from the populace and the military was too great, but had they waited less than a year the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 could opened the way to a German victory in 1918 without the United States in the war. When defeat came it came, it came not from a “stab in the back,” but rather from a collapse in the morale in the German Army. 

 

Watson has offered up a strong, but way too detailed history of the Central Powers at war. It would have benefitted from a little bit less detail and more coverage on the role of Ottoman Turkey in the war.

For the full amazon URL see: The Central Powers' Long Slog in the East (amazon.com)