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The Eastern Theater of World War I, 1914–1915 Ed. by Gerhard P. Gross (Review)

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The Eastern Theater of World War I, 1914–1915 Ed. by Gerhard P. Gross (Review) The Forgotten Front: The Eastern Theater of World War I, 1914–1915 ed. by Gerhard P. Gross (review) Keith D. Dickson Marine Corps History, Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2020, pp. 105-108 (Review) Published by Marine Corps University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/796388/summary [ Access provided at 3 Oct 2021 01:44 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. WINTER 2020 105 Keith D. Dickson, PhD The Forgotten Front: The Eastern Theater of World War I, 1914–1915. Edited by Gerhard P. Gross. Translated by Janice W. Ancker. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Pp. 404. $80.00 cloth.) This collection of essays was originally published in vast open spaces, numerous rivers, nearly nonexistent German in 2006 by the Bundeswehr’s Military Histo- roads, and a primitive railway network, a German ma- ry Research Office, which is responsible for German jor offensive in the east would accomplish very little. military history and research and supports interna- Instead, the decisive blow would fall on France. When tional scholarly projects on a number of topics. As the western front moved to stalemate in 1915, opera- part of the centennial observance of World War I, one tional opportunities for maneuver and envelopment of these projects has been an examination of the war, presented themselves on the eastern front. In 1915, drawing on the efforts of a new generation of schol- Germany and Austria-Hungary won their most sig- ars to gain new insights and perspectives. This book nificant victories, yet, as Strachan indicates, the victo- is the result of the 46th International Conference of ries were indecisive because of the distances involved Military History examining the eastern front between and the lack of logistics sustainment. The Germans, 1914 and 1915. The Association of the United States anticipating “the incipient clash between Teuton and Army, as part of its foreign military studies series, has Slav” (p. 18), misunderstood their experience on the made the findings of 19 scholars available to American eastern front in the Great War and would repeat their readers. mistakes again on a far greater scale between 1941 and In his introduction, editor Gerhard Gross out- 1945. lines the major themes of the conference that the es- Gross’s essay examines the conduct of the war on says address. In examining only the first two years of the eastern front, and notes that the German general the war, the authors sought to define how the war was staff “confronted the Russian Army with a mixture of both a direct experience as well as a learning expe- respect and disdain” (p. 37). This attitude within the rience for those on the front lines and on the home German military was only reinforced in the aftermath front. In addition, the authors examined this experi- of the Battle of Tannenberg and had a long-lasting ef- ence and the depiction of the war’s reality “in muse- fect on the public mind as well, which Gross indicates ums, memory sites, and modern media” (p. 3). continued throughout the Second World War. Gross The collection begins with the noted World provides another interesting insight into German vic- War I scholar, Hew Strachan, who provides a sum- tories in the east in 1915. The experience on the western mary of the strategic and operational considerations front had provided the German Army with valuable that shaped German planning. Even though Germany experience in the use of artillery supporting infantry feared Russian power and perceived it as the greater attacks to create breakthroughs. Nevertheless, Ger- threat, geography shaped the eventual operational de- man tactical and operational successes did not bring cisions that made the eastern front secondary. With its about the defeat of Russia, forcing Germany to seek other nonmilitary means to bring Russia down. Boris Khavkin takes the Russian perspective, ob- Dr. Keith D. Dickson is a professor of military studies at the Joint and serving that during 1914, the Russian Army exhibited Advanced Warfighting School, Joint Forces Staff College, National De- fense University. His most recent book is No Surrender: Asymmetric War- a capability for conducting an operational-level coun- fare in the Reconstruction South (2017). teroffensive employing two fronts simultaneously. 106 MARINE CORPS HISTORY VOL. 6, NO. 2 These were truly titanic battles that resulted in a de- mained strong after the war, Hoeres argues that sig- cision to achieve final victory on the eastern front in nificant political and ethnic-racial discontinuities 1915. Both Germany and Russia sought to bring about arose between the First and Second World Wars that the enemy’s decisive defeat. Although Russia suffered shaped German attitudes and approaches on the east- significant battlefield losses and gave up enormous ern front in 1941. amounts of territory, Khavkin stresses the importance Eva Horn’s essay takes note of the lack of German of the Russian contribution to the eventual victory of literary works related to the eastern front. “Germany’s the Allies, noting that much of the military effort of war in the east, the occupation that followed, and the Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey was directed military administration of the territory of Ober Ost at Russia during the first two years of the war, giving have been largely forgotten,” what Horn calls a “blind France and Britain valuable breathing space. Günther spot” (p. 159). The traumatic experience of the battles Kronenbitter highlights the lack of strategic planning on the western front, especially Verdun, became the between Germany and Austria-Hungary that led to a defining experience of the Great War and had no dysfunctional command system and a lack of coordi- counterpart on the eastern front. The war in the east nation that plagued both armies throughout the first was a completely conventional mobile war that took two years of the war. He observes that “in the ensuing place across vast landscapes among an alien multieth- months on the eastern front, discussions between the nic population. In fact, Horn concludes, the battles of allies concerning the command structure and mutual the eastern front actually presaged the Second World accusations of guilt and resentment were quite com- War battlefields more than the static, impersonal, and mon” (p. 82). Kronenbitter concisely lays out an ar- isolated battlefields of the western front. gument that much of the reason for the inability to Birgit Menzel observes in her essay on Russian achieve a decisive result against Russia on the eastern wartime literature that the First World War is not a front can be found in the lack of cooperation between prominent theme, largely because the historical mem- the general staffs of Germany and Austria-Hungary. ory of the Russian intelligentsia was dominated by the Piotr Szlanta offers the argument that Poland, October Revolution (p. 175). Her focus on Aleksandr as the battleground for much of the major battles on Solzhenitsyn’s novel August 1914 captures the military the eastern front, suffered under the occupation of all disasters of the first battles of the war as Russia’s first the major powers. However, this experience actually encounter with modernity. The army, as a reflection contributed to a postwar Polish nationalism and na- of Russian society, was incapable of responding to the tional identity that has survived to today. In his es- political, moral, economic, and strategic requirements say on Russian perceptions of the enemy, Hubertus F. of total war. Jahn notes that Russians prior to the war had a strong Igor Narskij examines the experience of the Rus- bias against Germany and its aggressive economic and sian soldier and counters Menzel’s view by asserting military policies. Even though Russian artists and that Russia’s backwardness was not unique. The shock intellectuals admired and imitated German culture, of modern war and the complexities of logistics and they promoted a picture of the enemy based largely large-scale maneuver of mass armies hindered all the on stereotypes and caricatures of the kaiser, while also combatants, not just Russia. He argues that Russian stressing Russian traditions and Slavophile heroes to soldiers in the first two years of the war were ade- build patriotic unity. quately supplied and the experience of military life Peter Hoeres examines the role of direct and in- actually “had a significant civilizing and disciplining direct experience on soldiers encountering both the effect” (p. 197). Narskij lays the blame of this collective vast spaces of Eastern Europe and the Russian peasant amnesia on the Bolsheviks, who erased these facts and soldier. Although Russians were viewed as “something dismissed entirely the experiences of soldiers in what foreign and unknown” (p. 144), a perception that re- they called the “War of Imperialism.” WINTER 2020 107 Hans-Erich Volkmann, in his essay on the Ger- These exhibitions served as propaganda to sustain the man military experience, stresses the alien world that war effort and public morale. Captured equipment, German soldiers found themselves in. Imbued with a uniforms, mock-ups of trenches, along with depic- sense of moral, intellectual, and cultural superiority, tions of soldier life were intended to acquaint civil- German soldiers encountered a multinational, multi- ians with life on the front lines, and indirectly, the ethnic, and multireligious population that resembled superiority of German culture against the barbarity nothing most Germans had ever encountered before. of Slavs, who were portrayed as inferior, destructive, Ironically, Volkmann notes that because the Jew- primitive, and lacking military skills. While these ex- ish population had strong attachments to Germany, hibits became less effective as the war wore on, Beil they were seen as conduits of German language and notes that these displays were repurposed in the inter- culture to the uncivilized Slavic east.
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