Returning to the study of Europe in the early 20th century, one is struck by the foolhardy willingness with which monarchs, parliamentarians, statesmen, diplomats all considered all out war as a viable national policy. Here we look at 'the great seminal catastrophe' from the perspective of the two major Central Powers. Stung by the Serbs, A-H felt war was the appropriate response, the Russians were all in in their support for the Serbs, the Germans equivocated and, very quickly, the lights went out. In both empires, the war was considered defensive, started by the Russians and thus, a source of solidarity and determined nationalism. We know that the Germans had a plan and they almost succeeded in the west and were deft enough to win in the east. Not so the Hapsburg armies. The Serbs repulsed them in less than a week and the Russians routed them within a month. Before the Germans turned the tide at Tannenberg, the Russians had raped, pillaged and plundered their way across East Prussia and Galicia in a manner that presaged the events of a generation later. Indeed, the author states that, between the Russians and the internecine bloodletting amongst the incredibly diverse races in the Hapsburg Crown lands, the 'bloodlands' started on this, and not the later, Eastern front. Jews and ethnic Germans were particularly abused in the attempt to Russify the newly captured lands. "The Tsarist army's invasions in the east....offer the closest link between the the campaigns of 1914 and the genocidal horrors of the mid-twentieth century." The refugee crises that followed had differing consequences. The Germans welcomed their East Prussian neighbors and strengthened their resolve. The Austrians deplored the hundreds of thousands Galician Jews and Ukrainians, felt put upon by their arrival and were angered that their breadbasket had been destroyed - not a positive or constructive civic response. As the war progressed, though, it was the British who assumed the mantle of the archenemy in Germany. The blockade was, per the international rules of the era, illegal. Thus Britain's 'starvation war' grew into what the Germans were fighting. As the war wore on, the Central powers knew they were over-matched and Germany militarized its society in order to find a strategy of survival. Food shortages led to widespread starvation and a collapse of civic order in both empires. Then in early 1917, the Germans made the decision that guaranteed the loss of the war - they authorized unrestricted submarine warfare - and assured the US would join the Entente. The irony of the timing of their decision is that the British were nearly bankrupt, the French as spent as they were, and most importantly, the Russians were a month away from removing the Tsar. The eventual collapse of Tsarist Russia, followed by the Bolshevik plea for peace offered Germany a chance to win prior to the American arrival changing the balance of forces. They shot their load in 1918, failed, and pretty much fell apart. Let me set forth some of Watson's closing thoughts. "The First World War was a catastrophe for central and eastern Europe. The new republics that replaced the old, discredited empires were themselves undermined by the war's bitter legacy. Impoverished, insecure and frequently with large, resentful minorities, most proved unstable. War had rent the fabric of their multi-ethnic societies and disastrously exacerbated racial divisions, bequeathing lasting antagonisms above all against older Jewish and new German minorities. Within a decade, there was little left of Wilson's new democratic order, for most of the east had fallen under the rule of autocratic strongmen."
As most of my reading on this topic for the past half century has been from the British or Entente perspective, this book has been an eye-opener. It delves deeply into what was happening, what was thought and how the war was managed by the two key central powers. Thus, I commend it to someone seeking to round out their understanding of the Great War. However, as good as this book is, I found that its lack of attention to the goings on on the fronts to be a minus.The author is writing about matters from the perspective of the two Central powers, but assumes a vast knowledge of military history by his readers. I'd vote for some more background on the actual fighting itself.
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