AUGUST VON MACKENSEN, 1914–1916 Richard L. Dinardo
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MODERN SOLDIER IN A BUSBY: AUGUST VON MACKENSEN, 1914–1916 Richard L. DiNardo Winston Churchill once described the war on the eastern front in World War I as “the unknown war.” Certainly in terms of commanders, this has remained true, at least for the English speaking audience. Despite the best eff orts of Holger Herwig, Norman Stone, Hew Strachan and others, coverage of the war has remained largely Anglo-centric and oriented towards the western front.1 Consequently this has skewed the amount of attention paid to both commanders and developments during the war. Nowhere has this western bias been felt more than in the coverage given to the major commanders and battles. Bookshelves fairly groan with works on Douglas Haig, Helmuth von Moltke and Erich Ludendorff , or on operations such as the Somme or the British 1917 campaign in Flanders.2 Lately the French Army and some of its major personalities have been the subjects of scholarly monographs.3 Major commanders and staff offi cers who made their names on the eastern front on both sides of the confl ict remain relatively unknown. 1 Winston Churchill, Th e Unknown War: Th e Eastern Front (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931), Holger H. Herwig, Th e First World War: Germany and Austria- Hungary 1914–1918, (London: Arnold, 1997), Norman Stone, Th e Eastern Front 1914–1917 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975) and Hew Strachan, Th e First World War Vol. I: To Arms (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2 Just a sampling of the literature includes Denis Winter, Haig’s Command: A Reassessment New York: Viking, 1991), Andrew A. Wiest, Haig: Th e Evolution of a Commander (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), Anika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), Roger Parkinson, Tormented Warrior: Ludendorff and the Supreme Command (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), Tim Travers, Th e Killing Ground: Th e British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London: Routledge, 1987), Prior and Wilson, Passchendaele: Th e Untold Story (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), Ian Passingham, Pillars of Fire: Th e Battle of Messines Ridge June 1917 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998) and Peter Hart, Th e Somme: Th e Darkest Hour on the Western Front (New York: Pegasus Books, 2008). 3 Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005) and Michael S. Neiberg, Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003). 132 richard l. dinardo Recent scholarship on the imperial Russian Army has greatly improved our understanding of that institution.4 Nonetheless, recent scholarly studies of the major Russian fi gures the war, such as Grand Duke Nicholas, Alexei Brusilov, Vladimir Sukhomlinov and Mikhail Alexeev, to name but a few, are still lacking. Likewise on the Austro-Hungarian side, only Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf has been the subject of a recent study in English.5 In terms of operations on the eastern front, Dennis Showalter broke new ground with his work on Tannenberg. Still, coverage of the major operations between Tannenberg and the Russian Revolution has been scant until recently. Graydon Tunstall has outlined in vivid detail the horrors of the Carpathian front during the winter of 1914–15, and major studies of the Gorlice-Tarnow off ensive and the ensuing con- quest of Poland and the Brusilov off ensive have also appeared. Th e German operation against the Baltic Islands in October 1917 has gar- nered both article and book length studies.6 Finally, the subject of occupation policy, both in the west and east, has attracted attention that has brought forth several interesting works.7 4 See for example William C. Fuller, Jr., Th e Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), David Schimmelpennick van der Oye and BruceW. Menning, eds., Reforming the Tsar’s Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: Th e Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 5 Lawrence Sondhaus, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: Architect of the Apocalypse (Boston: Humanities Press, 2000). A classic study of the Austro-Hungarian Army is Gunther E. Rotherberg, Th e Army of Francis Joseph (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1976). 6 Dennis E. Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Reprinted Edition) (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 2004), Graydon A. Tunstall, Jr. Blood on the Snow: Th e Carpathian Winter War of 1915 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), Richard L. DiNardo, Breakthrough: Th e Gorlice-Tarnow Campaign 1915 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2010) and Timothy C. Dowling, Th e Brusilov Off ensive (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). For Operation ALBION, see Richard L. DiNardo, “Huns With Web-Feet: Operation Albion, 1917” War in History Vol. 12, Nr. 4 (November 2005): pp. 396–417 and Michael B. Barrett, Operation Albion: Th e German Conquest of the Baltic Islands (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 7 Larry Zuckerman, Th e Rape of Belgium: Th e Untold Story of World War I (New York: NYU Press, 2004), Mark von Hagen, War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Jonathan E. Gumz, Th e Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)..