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)

My Amazon Review of T.G. Otte's, July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914"

T.G. Otte, a Professor of Diplomatic History at the University of East Anglia, has written an exhaustive and difficult to read study of the diplomatic maneuvers undertaken by the major powers on the eve of World War I. He covers the period from the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 to Britain’s entry into the war the following August 4^th on a day-by-day basis. The problem for the lay reader is that there are way too many characters and you have to continually update your score card to understand what is going on.

Otte is not interested in the broad historical forces that caused World War I, but rather he focuses in on the flesh and blood human beings who by their actions precipitated the war. His theme is similar to Margaret Macmillan’s “The War that Ended Peace…..” which discusses how the major powers increasingly narrowed their options making war more or less inevitable. Instead of taking 24 years to narrow options, the diplomats in his story take less than six weeks as peaceful option after peaceful option is foreclosed upon.

Otte has a set of clear villains. They are the Austria-Hungary leadership, mainly Foreign Minister Berchtold, who are so narrowly focused on Serbia; they fail to understand the European consequences of their actions. They are the “Sleepwalkers” Christopher Clark writes about. Next are the Germans, Kaiser Wilhelm, Chancellor Hollweg and Foreign Minister Jagow, who issue the “blank check” to Austria on July 5^th thereby surrendering their foreign policy to that narrowly focused dying empire.

Other diplomats singled out for blame include Maurice Paleologue, the French Ambassador to Russia, who conveys far more hawkish sentiments than that of his government to his Russian counter-party Foreign Minister Sazanov. Had Paleologue been more discreet and Sazanov less aggressive, the Russian mobilization of July 29^th might have been delayed giving more time for diplomacy.

Britain’s Sir Edward Grey comes off the best as he frantically tried to come up with diplomatic solutions to the crisis. This is a different take because many historians blame Grey for not forcefully signaling Germany that Britain would enter the war on the side of France thereby acting a major deterrent. Here Grey is the neutral mediator. I am not sure what to believe. One last point when Otte discusses the role of Eyre Crow an Assistant Under-Secretary in the foreign office rather than being an above the fray civil servant, he fails to disclose that he was the long time anti-German hawk in British foreign policy circles.  

For the Amazon URL see: http://www.amazon.com/review/R26M9257ZKBDTR