Carpathian Disaster: Death of an Army

by Geoffrey Jukes

The Russian Army in the First World War — brave but badly-led and only half equipped — had suffered defeat after defeat during two years of agonising battle. One general alone, Alexi Brusilov, possessed both the will and the genius to organise it for victory. In the summer or 1916 he was to seize the opportunity to do so which a jealous high command had hitherto refused him . . .

Genres: Russia

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

A former civil servant and scholar in international relations, Geoffrey Jukes spent 14 years in the UK Ministry of Defence and Foreign and Colonial Office, specialising in Russian/Soviet military history, strategy and arms control. He was a Senior Fellow in International Relations at ANU from 1967 to 1993, and an Associate of the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies (the Middle East & Central Asia) until his death in 2010.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

My interest in history dates back to my years in elementary school. Back then I was hooked by the Second World War, which seemed omnipresent at the time in terms of the available books, movies, and TV shows. And among the books that often attracted my young eye were the Ballantine series of illustrated histories. Edited by Barrie Pitt, these short books offered concise histories of their subjects supplemented with a generous selection of photos, maps, and line drawings – all of which perfect for the novice reader fresh to the topic.

Evidently these books were a success for the publisher, as Ballantine subsequently expanded them to cover a range of subjects. The orange-banded “Campaign” series and the red-banded “Battle” series were supplemented by ones featuring “War Leaders” (distinguished by a purple band), “Weapons” (which was blue-banded), “Politics in Action” (black-banded), “Human Conflict” (yellow-banded) and even “Full Colour Specials” (royal blue-banded). Yet for all of their variety of coverage the predominant focus of these books was the Second World War and the events surrounding it – namely the Nazis and the Holocaust. In retrospect, it’s probably not surprising that for a while I thought that it was the only event of note in the entire 20th century.

Nevertheless, there were a handful of volumes in the various series which took the battles and the personalities of the First World War as their focus. Among them was Geoffrey Jukes’s account of the Brusilov Offensive. A former civil servant who specialized in the Soviet bloc, Jukes was a prolific contributor to the Ballantine series, producing three Battle volumes covering the Eastern Front during the Second World War before turning his attention to its predecessor.

If Jukes’s bibliography is anything to go by, researching the events of the campaign was not easy. With few works available at that time about the First World War in eastern Europe, Jukes relied heavily on memoirs and general accounts of the period. This likely explains why the campaign itself takes up such a relatively small part of what is already a short work, with the events of the offensive covered in a scant 25 photo-filled pages. Much of the rest of the book is taken up with an extended examination of its context, addressing the prewar Russian Army, the first two years of the war, and even the looming threat of revolution. Though informative and often insightful, given the amount of space devoted to it and the book’s intended focus much of it comes across primarily as padding designed to compensate for the lack of details about its ostensible subject.

As a result, what is intended as an introduction to the pivotal Russian campaign of the First World War becomes instead a potted, Brusilov-lionizing summary of the first two years of the war on the Eastern Front. While undoubtedly useful at the time given the lack of similar studies, the decades since its publication have seen the publication of numerous books that have eclipsed it in value, such as Timothy Dowling's The Brusilov Offensive and David Stone's The Russian Army in the Great War. Readers today are best advised to pass on Jukes’s book in favor of reading those works, many of which were written with the benefit of improved archival access and the increased scholarly attention given to this part of the war as a consequence.

[John E · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of all of the Ballantine war books I have encountered, this is one of the lowest rated I have read. It is really a very short history of World War I on the Russian Front and of the Russian army in the war. The title does not fit the text: the war was a disaster on the whole front jot just that in the Carpatians. Even though book is short the writing is repetitive and Jukes perpetuates the overriding sin of talking about places that are not on any of the maps included. Too much about just shuffling of organizations and Generals to keep anything straight. Hopefully, his larger study of the Eastern Front in World War I is better.

[George Kasnic · Rating 3 out of 5]

My interest in history was fueled by these books in the 70's. They have not aged well, but still provide a survey of their subject. This one is more about the state of the Russian Empire military in WWI, its weaknesses and sacrifices. It does do a good job of exploring the sapping of the will to fight, and the growth of activism on the part of the soldiers and peasants who constantly paid the price of poor logisitics, poor leadership, poor tactics, and poor decisions. In recounting the action from a high operational standpoint, you get the feeling of the constant dislocations of forces, reallocations of units, and ponderous nature of redirecting effort. But you also get lost in the names and numbers, which begin to blur after a while. The book does contain a wealth of maps detailing the military movements at the appropriate level, as well as many photographs, and the detailed line drawings of military weapons which are a hallmark of the series.