Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914

The Eastern Front #1

by Prit Buttar

The fighting that raged in the East during the First World War was every bit as fierce as that on the Western Front, but the titanic clashes between three towering empires--Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany--remains a comparatively unknown facet of the Great War.

With the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the war in 2014, Collision of Empires is a timely exposé of the bitter fighting on this forgotten front--a clash that would ultimately change the face of Europe forever. Drawing on firsthand accounts and detailed archival research, this is a dramatic retelling of the tumultuous events of the first year of the war, with the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in East Prussia followed by the Russo-Austrian clashes in Galicia and the failed German advance toward Warsaw.

Genres: History, World War I, Nonfiction, Military History, European History, Russia, Audiobook

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Prit Buttar studied medicine at Oxford and London before joining the British Army as a doctor. After leaving the army, he has worked as a GP, first near Bristol and now in Abingdon. He is extensively involved in medical politics, both at local and national level, and served on the GPs’ Committee of the British Medical Association. He appears from time to time on local and national TV and radio, speaking on a variety of medical issues. He contributes regularly to the medical press. He is an established expert on the Eastern Front in 20th century military history.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prit Buttar’s Collision of Empires is a serious book aimed at serious students of the First World War. I mean several things by “serious.” First, and most obviously, its subject matter – the Eastern Front of World War I during 1914 – is grim and sobering. If you are looking for a volume filled with knock-knock jokes, you should probably not read Collision of Empires.

More pertinently for our purposes, it is serious in the sense that it’s decidedly not a popular history. Buttar is a doctor by profession who has turned himself into an expert on the battles of the Eastern Front (Germany Ascendant, his sequel to Collision of Empires, is already on shelves). He is (probably) very good at medicine. Certainly, he is a top-notch researcher and a person who has spent a lot of time pondering the clash between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Serbia. None of this is to say, however, that he is a great writer. Writing is a separate skill altogether. The chief function of the written word is to impart information, which Buttar does. The art of writing, though, is to impart information gracefully, entertainingly, memorably. In this, Collision of Empires fails. This is not a book that is accessible to casual readers.

This is all a lengthy way of saying this book is drier than an Englishman’s wit. (And far, far less funnier).

World War I’s Eastern Front is often overlooked, at least relative to the amount of time spent detailing the battles on the Western Front. To some extent, this makes sense. Unlike in World War II, where the heaviest fighting took place in the East, the Western Front of World War I was the decisive theater. It is telling, I think, that the Germans actually emerged victorious in the East, knocking Russia out of the war entirely, but still could not achieve victory in the West. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to get an overall picture of the war without taking into consideration the Eastern Front, which encompassed East Prussia, occupied Poland, Galicia, the Carpathian Mountains, and Serbia.

Buttar begins promisingly enough by devoting a chapter to each of the three major empires vying for supremacy in the East. He starts with the Germans, probably the best military force in Europe. The Germans were well-trained, well-equipped, and well-led. They had an advantage in tactical flexibility, with individual soldiers taught to take over multiple roles, and with officers encouraged to adapt to conditions on the field. Of course, flexibility only went so far, since the Germans were caught in the strategic straightjacket of the Schlieffen Plan. The Schlieffen Plan required the major German effort to fall against France, with only a holding action against the Russians.

Those Russian troops were known as the “steamroller,” because of their seemingly endless reserves of manpower. The Russians had performed disastrously against the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Since then, the army had been reformed, and the threat of Russian military dominance greatly influenced German decision-making in 1914. The reforms, however, masked an unwieldy mass that was poorly led, haphazardly equipped, and woefully inept at combined maneuver and communication security. Their chief strength, as Buttar notes, was their ability to defend tenaciously. So, of course, their genius commanders kept throwing them onto the offensive.

The lesser of the “Great Powers” was Austria-Hungary. A rotting, polyglot empire, held together in 1914 with chewing gum and old duct tape, they made up for with bellicosity and belligerence what they lacked in modern weaponry, modern tactics, and skillful leadership.

After describing these players, Buttar provides a chapter explaining the strategic context of 1914. Pro-Serbian nationalists assassinate an Austro-Hungarian archduke. Austria-Hungary, eager to punish the Serbs, decide they’re going to war…and then delay interminably. Germany backs the Austrians, Russia backs the Serbs, so that it’s like two older brothers blindly sticking up for their smaller, loudmouthed siblings. (France plays the role of anarchic heckler, recklessly cheering Russia on).

War breaks out. The Germans attack in the West, going through Belgium to get at France. The Russians, acceding to French pleas, launch their own offensive into Prussia. The Austro-Hungarians, meanwhile, confused themselves by trying to decide where to make their stand: against the Russians, as Germany requested; or against the Serbs, who had provided the casus belli for the whole mess in the first place. (Austria-Hungary tried to do both simultaneously. Robbing Peter to pay Paul was only one of many, many failed strategies employed by the Hapsburg Empire).

Buttar does a credible job with the scene setting, and I liked the early chapters of this book. He takes his time carefully laying the foundation for what follows. Unfortunately, once we get to the fighting, things take a turn for the tedious. Buttar gives us a chapter for each of the major battles fought on the Eastern Front in 1914: Stallupönen and Gumbinnen; Tannenberg (which Buttar calls the only clear victory won by the Germans in WWI); the Galician campaigns; the Masurian Lakes; the first invasion of Serbia; and Łódź . Collision of Empires ends with the first Christmas, and a final recap chapter (which helped make sense of things I didn't realize I read).

The problem with Buttar’s handling of the battles is that they are stultifying. Buttar generally presents the battles from the Corps or Division perspective, meaning that he is dealing with large bodies of men, but avoids getting mired in the details of smaller unit actions. This approach splits the difference between an Army-level overview and a more detailed, boots-on-the-ground view. This tactic results in the worst of both worlds. There are too many details to be easily comprehensible, and too few experiential vignettes to provide any kind of visceral reality.

To explain, it’s easiest to present a representative narrative, in this case from the chapter on Tannenberg:

The Russian front was far from broken, though gaps were beginning to appear. Several days of intense battle had left Martos’ XV Corps almost completely exhausted. After trying in vain to reach Neidenburg, Samsonov and his staff spent the night in Orlau, where the advancing XV Corps had driven off the German XX Corps only a week before. Unable to contact Martos, Samsonov sent orders for a general withdrawal to Klyuev, adding that, for the moment, the commander of XIII Corps was responsible both for his corps and XV Corps, as well as fragments of XXIII Corps. XV Corps’ 6th and 8th Infantry Divisions had already started an orderly withdrawal before the end of 28 August…

Most of the concepts in this paragraph are abstractions. Various “Corps,” differentiated only by Roman numerals, are moving hither and yon, to places I’ve never heard of, for reasons that are not readily apparent, led by generals who have names but not humanity. It is not immediately clear why Samsonov is “trying in vain” to reach Neidenburg; it’s possible Buttar explains why, but I was too busy trying to find Neidenburg on one of the inadequate maps.

There are people who appreciate this kind of battle-writing. The hammer-blows of one corps moving here, another there, a third over yonder, as though these are not men on dusty roads wearing holed boots, but the small plastic figures of a game of Risk. (I’m sure these same readers will be disappointed to learn the Buttar does not include the orders of battle).

I’m not one of those people. That’s my bias. I like detail. I like being fully informed. I’m fine with troop movements. But I need to know certain other things. Why is this troop moving from here to there? Why is this town important? What was it like for the soldiers on the march? Who was Martos? Was he a drunk? Did he crack under pressure? (Buttar is not great on personalities, though he does better with some – such as the German’s Francois – than others). What did the battle look like? Sound like? This book has fewer of these details than any I’ve read in recent memory. This is a book that feels caught between audiences, too many mundane aspects for a general reader, yet not comprehensive enough for a War College class.

All this said, I recognize the dearth of quality books on the Eastern Front. There is no The Guns of August for this theater. By the time Buttar is done – I’m assuming he will churn out a volume for each year of the war – his work will probably stand as the definitive telling of this story. I will probably read it, respect it, and not love it.

[Abeselom Habtemariam · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘’By the end of the war, the conflict had consumed the empires of Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. The splintering of these empires created a patchwork of nations, from Finland and Estonia in the north to Yugoslavia in the south, sowing the seeds for conflicts that continued for the rest of the century’’

Contemporary books written about the first world war should have two main objectives, in my opinion. The first is to focus on an aspect of the war that hasn't been given an extensive attention to as yet. The second one is to convey information that recently came to light. This book is geared more towards the former than the latter objective. Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914, is the first of four books in Prit Buttar’s, The Eastern Front Series. It focuses primarily on the major battles of the great war in 1914, that took place in East Prussia, The Russian Poland Salient and Galicia. The study of this front is imperative for understanding the first world war as a whole. The events in the eastern front had profound consequences on the western front, with Germany being an important link between the two fronts.



The main belligerents on the eastern front in 1914 were The German Empire, The Austria-Hungary Empire and The Russian Empire. In contrast to the western front, the war in the east was a highly mobile affair, and it covered huge expanses of land. The Imperial Russian Army was highly hierarchical and was administered by The Stavka. The Tsar sat at the helm of it, and Grand Duke Nikolai (The Tsar's first cousin once removed) was its Chief of General Staff. The Austro-Hungarian army (K.U.K) fielded a multi-ethnic army. The dual monarchy had given recognition to eleven official languages under its umbrella. The army was de facto under the command of Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. The Imperial German Army was the most professional army of all the powers involved. Although Helmuth von Moltke the Younger started out as being the Chief of General Staff, he was replaced by Erich von Falkenhayn after the First Battle of the Marne in the west. Despite that, as far as the Eastern Front in 1914 is concerned, Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg were the centre of command.

The first three chapters are dedicated to the military doctrines, cultures and thoughts of the three armies in the decades prior to the war breaking out. These chapters mostly focus on lessons drawn from The Franco-Prussan war (1870-1871), mobilization plans that were under consideration should a war break out, the complex web of alliances in Europe and other important factors that are vital towards understanding pre-1914 Europe. The next chapter deals with the series of interconnected diplomatic and military escalations, generally referred to as ‘’The July Crisis’’. This is the period roughly between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 and The Austria-Hungary declaration of war on Russia on 6 August 1914. The subsequent chapters focus on the battles that took place on the Eastern Front, from the opening battle of Stallupönen to the battle of Łódź. The final two chapters analyse the consequences of a year’s worth of engagements and the expectations of the belligerents for 1915.

I thought the inclusion of the chapter on The Serbian front was an excellent touch. The ‘’quick and clean’’ Balkan war Kaiser Wilhelm II requested of The Austro-Hungarian Empire would eventually escalate into a world war. Essential to this escalation was the fact that the K.U.K armies, under Oskar Potiorek, were being held up in Serbia. The failure of the Austro-Hungarian war aims had had huge implications. It emphasized defeating Serbia swiftly and crushing any Slavic rebellion in The Balkans. Failing to accomplish those aims meant that Austria-Hungary couldn’t manoeuvre its armies out of Serbia quick enough to engage Serbia’s powerful ally Russia in Galicia. As such, discussions of The Serbian Front in examining the Eastern Front in 1914, is indispensable.




A major weakness I found with this book is the lack of adequate maps. I had to resort to referring to maps from other resources constantly. When present, the maps on the book are not of much help as an illustration tool. While the lack of maps is certainly a significant shortfall, one of the strengths of the book lies in its abundance of accounts from primary sources such as from commanders (e.g. Conrad and Mackensen), civilians (e.g. Helena Jabłońska’s memoirs from the sieges of Przemyśl), soldiers on the frontlines (e.g. The Hungarian Cavalryman Pál Kelemen) and Journalists (e.g. The notes of the French journalist Henry Barby from the Serbian front).

This is a very thick and technical book. Prit deals at the level of Corps and even at times divisions when describing battles and formations, while most other books choose the army level for analysis. The scope of the book, being limited to a single front during a single year of a multi-year war, has allowed for very detailed descriptions of events. Sometimes this might make the presentation a bit dry and give the book a feel of a reference book. So, I can only recommend this book for fellow World War I aficionados out there.

[Geevee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Armies of the Great Powers in Eastern Europe - Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia - entered the war with a mixture of fear and anticipation. None of them dreamed that the outcome would turn out to be so far from their expectations. Page 401, Chapter 15 Disappointments and Illusions

Pritt Buttar's book ably brings the reader through mobilisation to the closing weeks of 1914 and the realisation, that like the Western Front, the war on the Eastern front would not be over by Christmas.

The book starts with a informative introduction in the alliances and treaties that bound the big European powers (including France, Britain and Italy) to sides and promises that drew them to war after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

The next three chapters cover in detail each of the three main players (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia) and their recent military histories, including the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, as well as the doctrines and changes these had on their strategies, military organisation and ethos and mobilisation and supply plans.

From here we move to the early battles and engagements that bring the sides to put into play their plans and expectations. The early engagements are of movement but quickly, like those in France and Flanders, defensive positions coupled with artillery and machine guns created huge casualties and created immediate challenges of replacements and the logistic tail to supply a modern army gulping up men, machinery ammunition, food and other kit.

Chapters on Tannenberg, Galicia, the Masurian Lakes and Łódź then bring us through in more detail the campaigns from those hopeful days of August and September to the encroaching rains, cold and snow of November and December. Helpfully, the author also covers the Serbian campaign and the abject failure of the Austro-Hungarian army in its execution and performance to take, hold and subdue a nation seen as primitive militarily and incapable of withstanding the might of the Imperial and Royal army of the Hapsburg Empire. This campaign plays an important part in the Austro-Hungarian forces on the Eastern front as troops deployed to Serbia are needed to support operations against Russia. It is also important too for how the Imperial German army perceived their ally, and indeed how Russia and Italy viewed their neighbour and enemy.

Mobilisation, within the context of the operations on the Eastern front, as well as supply, training and quality of troops, alongside the capabilities of first and second line units and their commanders are covered within each chapter on the key battles and movements.

The final chapter, the earlier mentioned, Disappointments and Illusions is a good overview of what had gone before and what those armies had learned and achieved, if anything.

It is worth making the point at this stage, that this study is one of armies, corps and divisions. Lower level brigades and regiments/battalions feature little. This is understandable given the sheer size of the theatre and numbers of troops deployed, but at times one's understanding of and the positions and movements of these armies, corps and divisions is hard to keep track of. This is not helped by an absence of maps, and those that are provided are at best adequate providing little assistance with many of the operations and movements. Towns and villages are often not shown and nor are any view of ground conditions including contours.

However, with these criticisms aside, this book is a very welcome addition to the histography of the Eastern front in the English language. There are far fewer studies than there are of the Western front of the men who made the command decisions and the commanders who put into practice the operations that saw Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia clash numerous corps and divisions together and fight costly battles across huge spaces of land.

As 1914 faded, the Austro-Hungarian armies had lost 995,000 men killed, wounded or sick in Galicia and Poland - and a further 274,000 in the disastrous Serbian campaign. 44 per cent of its pre-war officer strength was gone along with 50% of its pre-war establishment. A catastrophe on its own but it created opportunity for Russia and left Germany worrying more about its ally and their capability and appetite for offensive operations. 1915 would show how worried or not they should be.

My copy is 2016 Osprey Publishing paperback version. There are 472 pages, 17 black and white maps and 32 black and white printed (not plate) photos. A useful list of key players along with sources, further reading and an index all feature.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those of us interested in World War One have needed a book like this for a very long time.

Here's the problem. Most Western accounts of WWI overemphasize the western front. In history and popular culture the planetary cataclysm of 1914-1918 narrows down to the understandably fascinating story of German's ultimately doomed invasion and occupation of northeastern France. This leaves off so many other aspects of WWI, including the epic Italian-Austrian war, the African campaign, and especially the eastern front.

There four empires (Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans) and a handful of smaller states fought enormous, sometimes chaotic battles often very different from what the Western front displayed. Campaigns occurred at similarly titanic scales, with millions of men, but were often based on maneuver rather than attrition. By 1918 the Russian empire had dissolved into civil war, the Ottomans collapsed into a series of states, Austria-Hungary shattered, and the German empire, having thrown everything into a final throw against France, ended. The human toll exceeded thirteen million casualties.

So the eastern front is a fascinating, horrific, and complex. Yet there hasn't been a single English-language book published on it since Norman Stone's solid book way back in 1975 (my review).

Into this silence steps Prit Buttar and Collision of Empires. In brief, this book offers a welcome, workmanlike account of the eastern front in 1914.

This is entirely a work of military history. Buttar offers next to nothing on culture, non-military policy, or biographies. It's about the campaigns from the astonishing German victory at Tannenberg to the futile, bloody debacle of Lodz.

Collision of Empires does a fine job of organizing huge amounts of information into a generally clear, chronological narrative. I was able to follow developments at large and small scales. Buttar's fondness for several low- and medium-level commanders helps give a human face to events often blindingly statistical. His assessment of top-level generals is balanced and thoughtful.

Buttar also offers excellent analyses of strategies and operations. His reflections are sometimes surprising, always insightful, and well informed. I especially appreciate his assessment of the front's two great losers, Austria-Hungary and Russia.

Personally, I was quite familiar with parts of this subject (Tannenberg, Masurian Lakes, Russian supply problems), but not others. The late 1914 campaigns in Poland, which covered no army in glory, were especially useful to learn about.

Several weaknesses lead me to hold back a fifth star. While the book is physically quite nice (fine images, from color cover to interior photographs), the text contains too many editing errors, especially in the first half: missing words, primarily. Its maps are badly needed, especially for readers not familiar with the intricacies of Galicia and Poland. Collision presents a series of battle maps which are very clear, but don't always address developments in the text. For example, the southeastern end of the Russian-Austrian lines is vital, especially for the rise of Brusilov, Russia's best commander, but rarely appears on maps.

The book also leans a bit too heavily on the area including Poland, eastern Prussia, and Galicia. This is obviously essential, but the focus drains attention from other key aspects of the eastern front. Austria-Hungary's attack on Serbia - the crux of the entire war's beginning, after all - needs more than one (albeit good) chapter. Russia's foreign policy gets clipped down to issues of Germany and Austria-Hungary, downplaying Russian interest in the Balkans and the Ottoman empire.

Collision of Empires looks to be the first in a series of books concerning this criminally underappreciated topic. I eagerly away Buttar's treatment of 1915; hopefully it will be available in early 2015.

PS: great political passage here,

It was a sign of the continuing tensions inside Russia that on the same day that military bands were playing the Marseillaise to celebrate the presence of the French head of state, Cossacks were suppressing striking workers singing the same tune in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. (92)

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer: ARC read via Netgalley.

What Americans are taught about the First World War amounts to something like: British, Germans, assassination, France, Russia, Czar, Zimmerman telegram, needed us to win, caused World War II.
It’s no surprise really that the closest we come to a National War Memorial for the First World War on the Washington DC Mall is the one for the locals. (It’s right across from the MLK memorial). It is not as big or awe striking as the memorials for the Korean, Vietnam, and WW II wars. In fact, the average person could quite easily be forgiven for thinking that it is dedicated to a person as opposed to honor dead.

The First World War is something that happens to people on Downton Abbey and other PBS shows. Sometimes you might see something about on the History or Discovery channels, when they are taking breaks from pawning and fishing.

The reason why I say this is because I doubt I am the right person to review this book. I say this despite the fact that I always make it a point to visit the WW I memorial in DC, that Owen and Graves are two of my favorite poets, and I love Blackadder.

Empires focuses on the Eastern front of the war, an area that in both Europe and the US undoubtedly needs more attention. It is a military work, tactics and other related issues are discussed.

And because of this I found the writing to be rather dry.

It is an important book, simply because in the discussion of the battles the reader can see the ground work not only for the coming generation’s conflict but also for what happened in the 1990s and 2000s. It does deepen the understanding of a war that many of us see as trench warfare only on the Western front.

Yet, I couldn’t help wishing the writing was a tad livelier.

I can’t speak for whether the conclusions reached are good ones. Buttar is very clear when he is dealing with a debatable issue, and while his conclusions seem sound, I am not in a position to judge. I found the “cast list” at the front of the book to be rather helpful in keeping track of names. Despite the dry tone, there was some personal detail about key players to make up for it. He does also show how the Franco-Prussian war influenced tactics and the army structure. Despite the dry tone, I learned a great deal.

It’s a dry book, but highly recommended for those who wish to learn more about the Great War or those who wish to learn. It would also make a good present for those interested in the development of warfare as well as military history. Like my brother.


Crossposted at Booklikes.

[Bill Kupersmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many readers, for me the First World War on the eastern front begins with the battle of Tannenberg followed by the February Revolution in Russia. There was a good deal of fighting in between. One is both grateful to Prit Buttar and disinclined to proceed into his further volumes covering the rest of the war in the east. For most anglophone readers, our much greater knowledge of the war in the west is due not only with our kinship with the men of the armies who fought there, but linguistic and political geography—many of the sites of battle have literally disappeared from the map of Europe, especially East Prussia. Having actually visited Poland, it's strange to follow events in 1914, when Poznan was in Germany, Warsaw in Russia, and Cracow part of Austria. I'm grateful to the audio version for knowing how to pronounce Przemysl (pr'shimmy-sill). I already knew how to pronounce Łódź! Clearly Buttar has mastered the languages needed to read the official histories, and his view is mostly on that level. We follow events on a large scale; a corps is usually the smallest unit we encounter. Mostly it's an army. Both the Russian and Austrian commanders were misled by their enthusiasm for the offensive, pressed even to bayonet point except that machine gun and rifle fire stopped them dead and hideously wounded. Cholera and typhus were also major killers. I was most enlightened by the account of the fighting in Poland to the south of Warsaw; I'd not realised how close the Russians came to being defeated, had the Germans been a bit stronger. The Austrian Marshal Conrad emerges as most deluded general even than the Russians (many of them Baltic Germans). Conrad wanted a war because he believed it would end the Empire's gradual decline. It got rapid decline instead.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fine narrative of the Eastern Front in the First World War is Dr. Buttar's first of a four-volume survey of that front and shouldn't be missed by those with an interest in its strategies, campaigns and battles. This theater is generally not well known in English-speaking countries and, aside from Norman Stone's excellent The Eastern Front, 1914-17, hasn't received anywhere near the attention it deserves. While the text itself is a little plodding (and the maps are inadequate), the battle pieces are of high quality, so if you are unfamiliar with the battles of Tannenberg, Lodz or the Masurian Lakes, here's your chance to learn about these massive clashes and why they were so important to the eventual outcome of the war. The various armies' and leaders' strengths and weaknesses are examined thoroughly. All in all, not to be missed by serious students of World War I. First Rate.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed analysis of the World War I struggle in the East--with the key actors being Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Serbia (as well as other Balkan countries). The story begins with the background leading up to World War I. The detail is good, providing background context.

Key leaders are well described--Conrad, Ludendorff, Hindenburg, and others. National leaders, too, are discussed, kings and emperors. We get a sense, after reading this volume, of those who might possibly shape events (although it is clear that much of what happened was beyond the control of any leader).

The combat was vicious, deadly, and confusing. Russia and Austria-Hungary had equipment and militaries that were not up to the standards of other nations. The Austrians and their empire could not afford basic necessities, such as artillery shells in abundance.

With the assassination of the Crown Prince, war became inevitable as the Habsburg Empire felt that it could not ignore the event. Serbia was given an ultimatum that they could not accept. With that, the Empire began mobilizing--as did other powers, east and west.

The book gives a good picture of the weakness of a supposedly powerful empire. Conrad, leading the Habsburg forces, was not up to the task. Many of his generals likewise were not adequate to the challenge. A badly designed invasion of Serbia bled the Austrian forces dry. The Russians mobilized more quickly than anticipated and advanced. A disaster at Tannenberg devastated Russian armies at the hands of the German forces (led by Ludendorff and Hindenburg).

The volume follows the first part of the conflict in the east.

Much detail. However, the lack of maps insured that the text was somewhat ungrounded. It was hard to visualize the geography of battle. Further, the blizzard of corps and divisions and so on was overwhelming. It was hard to keep up with units of many armies from a number of combatants. Throw in the plethora of names (often changing as generals were cashiered) and it can get to be heavy reading after a bit. Some appendices that summarized what units were involved when (a kind of duper "order of battle") would have been very helpful.

Overall, though, a nice volume, even though sometimes a bit confusing.

[Heinz Reinhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second read through of this fine book, and it was equally as good of a read as the first time around. I have imported my first review from my now non-active goodreads account as I feel it say's what I still observed about the book. This is the first not in a trilogy but a projected four (possibly five) part series on the Eastern Front in WWI. All the best in health and wisdom to Mr. Buttar to complete his task as he is one of the best military historians of the current day. This book is highly recommended.
Since it is the centennial of the First World War, one can expect a veritable flood of publishing to be undertaken for the battles and characters of the Great War. The Eastern Front, however, of that war has been largely ignored, save for the Battle of Tannenberg, for decades. Now, with this book, that is finally starting to change.
The first of a prospective trilogy on the war on the Eastern Front, this book starts off by delving into the military and political cultures of the three main protagonists of this sordid, bloody tale.
The German military/political culture was the best prepared for war when it came in 1914. The German military was the worlds model of efficiency, professionalism and tactical flair. It also helped, wonders, that their last several times of having to take up arms were all horrendously successful ones. For all of the outward appearances of German military superiority, and there was plenty to go around, the Germans had a serious sickness at the heart of their system that would prove to be a huge wrench within the inner workings of their otherwise flawless system: the decline of their heretofore amazing General Staff. Headed, when war came, by the nephew of Moltke the Great, the General Staff was a beautiful, sleek vessel of martial glory...without a captain at the helm. Moltke the younger, or lesser, was a soft handed man who failed, or refused, to steer the ship with the firm hand that his uncle would have used. As such, the former virtue of the German Army (it's ability to allow considerable freedom of action among subordinate commanders, especially forgivable if such actions brought victory) would, in the opening weeks of the WWI, prove to be one of its loose fitting wheels. But, that was not apparent from a cursory, or even deep, examination. The German Army was still the most flexible, best trained, best led and best equipped armed force in the world. And if it was outnumbered, considerably, by its prospective opponents of France and Russia, it could rely on its considerable qualitative superiority to over-match their combined foes quantitative superiority.
Russia was an Empire with almost insurmountable internal problems. As such it shouldn't come as any surprise to any student of the First World War that these internal tensions were mirrored within the Czar's armed forces as well.
The Russian Imperial Army was riven between two camps divided along ideological lines: whether to modernize and adopt the lessons learned form observing the Germans and their own, painful, experience in the failed battles with Japan a decade earlier and those other officers who favored the old virtues of elan and the offensive spirit. As such the Russian Army's mass would be, nearly, overcome by the internal bickering among its own top generals and a less than smooth guiding hand from a Czar who was clearly out of his element when attempting to delve into the minutia of military affairs. However, despite these obvious, and glaring flaws, Russia could field a couple of advantages that would give any opponent, even the Germans, necessary pause. First of all, funded by their new allies the French, the Russians were hastily modernizing. Large numbers of machine guns, rapid firing artillery, telephones, motor transport and over a thousand miles of newly laid rail lines could all be brought together in an, as it turned out to be, effective mobilization strategy that assured that the Russian Army of 1914 was not the anachronism that it was against the Japanese in Manchuria and northern Korea. The other, obvious, advantage was manpower. Russia simply out-massed everyone, and could, by themselves, out-mass both the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans just by themselves. Only time, and the baptism by fire, would tell whether or not these advantages would mean anything.
The Austro-Hungarians, not the Turks, were the true 'sick man of Europe'.
The Hapsburg Empire was dying, both from within and from without as smaller, younger, yet far more aggressive powers such as Italy and Serbia were looking predatorily towards a bloated, rotten edifice next door that may, or may not hold treasures to anyone bold enough to seize them by force. Their own armed forces were, in a word, a joke. The Austrian Army and its other constituent parts (the Hungarian Honved and the regional forces mustered by the Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Galician Ukrainians and Bosnians) was outdated, ill trained, poorly led at the best of times, sadly under-equipped, and all around simply not ready for the spotlight of main event status. And yet, so much of the death and tragedy that was the First World War can be laid at Vienna's door step.
When the war did come, it showcased all of the failings of all the major powers.
The Hapsburg forces were crushed, almost easily, by small, seemingly insignificant Serbia who swatted them out of their country not once but twice. Austro-Hungarian forces invaded southern Poland in an insane attempt to destroy a grouping of Russian armies that outmassed them over two to one. The result, the near annihilation of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the first month of war and the Russian invasion of the Empire itself, was a foregone conclusion. The only bright spot, for any of the three powers, in the early days was for the Germans, The Russians, as part of a larger strategic idea shared with the French, invaded Eastern Prussia in an attempt to smash the German forces there and to draw German forces eastwards from the Western Front. The Russians were both successful and most definitely not in this regard.
Despite a successful action at Gumbinnen which saw the Germans fleeing from the Russian forces, the Germans rallied and under the leadership duo of Paul Von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, turned around and crushed the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg (where an entire Russian army was slaughtered). The Germans then struck back and drove the Russians out of Germany, smashing another Russian Army at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, and then invaded Poland.
Although the Russians were able to stop the Germans before Warsaw and drive them, and their Austro-Hungarian allies, mostly out of Poland in, yet another, counterattack the Russians learned something truly damaging to their cause, one that would spell the doom of the Czar's forces.
Pritt Buttar makes the excellent point that the Russians, in their offensive outside Warsaw and subsequent drive back towards the German frontiers, showed them the amazing flexibility of the German Army and its awesome, inherent power. Much like the Union Army in the US Civil War would be overawed by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, so would the the Russians come to be overawed by the German Army during the First World War. This would give the Germans a psychological advantage that they would never relinquish. The Russians could smash the Austrians anytime they dared to show themselves. But the Germans, even if badly outnumbered, could seemingly never be beaten. While not entirely true, it held enough of a ring of truth to it that the Russian Army, even its High Command (Stavka) and even their best generals, like Brusilov, began to believe it. This made the Russian Army, as the war progressed, less and less able to muster the will to face the Germans in open battle so that by 1917, the year of Revolution, the Russian Army would simply quit fighting, believing that defeat was an inevitability.
But as this book ends with the Christmas season of 1914, that is for a later volume.
This is an excellent book that delves into the fine details of the war in the East. Every major protagonist, even the Serbs, are detailed and if the tactical details are a bit much for some, for hardcore students of military history this book is a godsend.
If you love military history, Eastern European history and the First World War in general, this is a must read.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buttar does a great job of bringing personal experiences of the men who fought in the war to life. This helps with the dense historical narrative. Great book, I will read the rest of the series. My only complaint is the dearth of maps. With so many armies, units, and geographic points, more and better maps are definitely needed.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read some of this six years ago and borrowed it from the library, again, to finish reading it as preparation for reading the other volumes Prof. Buttar has written about the war on the eastern front 1914-18. My failure to finish this volume and further postponement of the reading of the other volumes has nothing to do with any lack of readability or fascination with the subject. Things have moved on since Norman Stone's groundbreaking history of the Eastern Front in WWI first challenged English speaking readers absorption in the minutia of north west France and the trench warfare there - not that it wasn't important but WWI was much more than that and Eastern Europe as Timothy Snyder, along with others, has demonstrated so eloquently was the real birthplace of the 20th century.

This is an excellent history, my failure to finish is exclusively due to way to much to read, I will be returning to this book and will move onto his other volumes. In the meantime if you are an aficionado of WWI history then expand your horizons and discover so much more about the war that did not end wars.

[Dana Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeah, it's dry... duh?

There seems to be a large number of comments here knocking this book for being dry or inaccessible, and somehow expecting "Guns of August but in the east". To that I say: read the back cover?

Ignoring the fact that "Guns" is an overdramatic, somewhat inaccurate, and incomplete telling of its battle in its chosen theater, the scope of Collision of Empires book is very clear: is a strategic, operational, and tactical overview of the Eastern Front. It is not a zoomed in detail or a collection of soldier journal entries. It's purpose is to fill a wide gap in WW1 books, being the overview of the front, and I think we are lucky to have this synthesized record of the events that are largely forgotten.

This book excels in setting up the background of the actors involved on the Eastern Front, without dallying too much in the political setup which is well documented. It chronologically organizes events from August to December of 1914, and does a fairly good job of helping the reader understand relationships between the Northeast subfront and southeast subfront. You'll get a detailed description of operations in most of the engagements in the whole front, sometimes zooming in and sometimes placing withing grand strategy. It's dry as hell, but again, it's a sorely needed record. There's some but very little soldier journals which are placed to emphasize a particular event, but the scope of the book is not this and there are plenty of records, books and memoirs that present that Information ad nauseum.

I find my understanding of the sequence of events to be so much greater after this, in particular how the forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary interacted and the operational drama between them. I am particularly pleased that the Serbian front gets a lengthy chapter, which explains its major consequences to the overall effort of AH, and this is something that's usually a footnote in overviews.

The downfall here is as others have mentioned, the maps where provided are clear and good, but about half or more of the text describes movements that aren't shown on maps. A good imagination is required if you need the visuals. Additionally, the Corps and Division names sorely need prefixes to help denote Russian, German or AH. Other than that, I found the operational and tactical descriptions sufficient to get a sense of why things like Tannenberg, Masurian Lakes, Galicia, Łódź and others were as critical as you hear.

Overall, once again, this is a great addition to the WWI overview genre, and if you understand it's scope, it's for you.

Note: people say there's no "Guns of August" for the east, which I think is untrue. For Tannenberg, there's "Tannenberg 1914" by Dennis Showalter, for Galicia there's "Fall Of the Double Eagle" by John Schindler, and for Serbia there's "Serbia and the Balkan Front 1914" by James Lyon (absolutely wonderful book). "Guns" isn't even the best book about the Battle of the Frontiers, for which I recommend "The Marne 1914" by Holger Herwig, which actually includes the pivotal battle of the Marne which Tuchman insanely omits.

[Steven Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good read but at times I found it a bit samey. If I could summarise it I'd say the intro and the conclusions are the best bit about it. When the author is discussing the actors and their roles leading up to, and after the events then it's quite engaging but in the middle, the meat of it... it becomes a bit confusing

4th Corp moves here and is attacked by 2nd Corp, whose flanks were protected by the two divisions of the 3rd replacement Corp which was tied down by the cavalry attached to....... like what? I felt at times I needed to read it with a note pad. And I couldn't even go "well that sounds like a German name so they're obviously German" given some of the generals also had Germanic names.

It's an interesting book, the main focus is very much on Tannenberg as you would imagine from a book focusing on the Eastern Front in 1914 alone but part of me did feel the Serbian front could have gotten more love. Perhaps I'm just being negative. It's an ok read and seems to be part of a series, so perhaps it'll pick up in the next book. No spoilers, I want to see who wins.

[Patrick Pillow · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a big fan of Dr. Buttar’s landmark work on the Eastern Front in World War Two, I was excited to crack his work on the even lesser known Eastern Front of World War One. This however, is a tough read.

I give it 4 stars because I love Dr. Buttar’s books. What makes them great is his ability to inject personal accounts to give a human side to the myriad of Corps and divisional movements throughout the story. However, I would assume to archives available from firsthand accounts are even harder to uncover over a century later.

This account is so well researched and I appreciated his approach to cover all of the major powers leading into 1914. However, this is a dry and at times, hard to stomach read. I pushed through but will be taking a break from the 2nd volume until a much later date.

[Alex Van Houdt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The painstaking detail that went into this does leave it a little dry. If you aren’t at least a bit familiar with tactics, force structure, and carrying out operations, this probably isn’t going to be your favorite WWI history.

BUT. If you are, I haven’t come across much like this, and it shines a light on the often overlooked Eastern Front.

I might need a little break before going into his history of 1915 on the Eastern Front though.

[Einzige · Rating 3 out of 5]

So you think you like history?

First of all the Eastern Front of World War I gets a depressingly small amount of attention despite how important it was and just how much more varied and chaotic it was compared to the Western Front.

Secondly and most relevantly to anyone interested in this book – history publications exist on a spectrum, with highly detailed scholarly works on one end and pop history books vomited out by journalists on the other.

This book serves as a good reminder of the value of quality pop history, because while it is still a pop history book it certainly gives you a taste of what academic work is like. Accordingly the largest part of this book are just descriptions of military formations and their movements/plans. While its not all like this below is an excerpt of what to expect and will perhaps help you understand why such a well researched book on an interesting topic is rated so surprisingly low:

XVII Corps was to move up in support of I Corps, while I Reserve Corps covered the army’s southern flank. If the Russians turned to face François, XVII Corps would take them in the flank. The weakness of the plan, however, was that the three German corps would arrive on the battlefield in echelon, with I Corps entering combat first, followed by XVII Corps, and I Reserve Corps not even expected to take part in the main battle. Prittwitz was in danger of mounting as disjointed an advance as Rennenkampf had on 17 August.

A great book but just not a great book for your average reader.

[Frank Szafranski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read for World War I buffs. It is a comprehensive look at events leading up to the war and how events rolled out on the Eastern Front. Rare is the book that covers this topic and the author does this masterfully. The book only covers events on the Eastern front through 1914, so it is a snapshot of the war brought to light with pictures and maps. It is well documented and worth the time of the avid WWI follower. My interest is personal as my grandmother lived in that area during that time and it gives one pause.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed account of lesser known parts of WWI. While I've read a lot about events on the Western Front, the Eastern Front is far less covered by history books and classes or historical fiction about the period, so I learned quite a lot from this.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was what Austria wanted, a great and mighty nation surging over a small country, the ruin of Serbia which it pursued systematically by steel, fire, by pillage and incendiarism in towns and villages, and also by extermination, by the massacre of the Serbian people.

Collisions of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914 by Prit Butar is history of the first year of World War I from the little talked about eastern front. Butar is a graduate of Oxford in medicine and served in the British Army as a doctor. He has written two other historical books and a novel.

When asked about World War I most people with some history background will mention the the assassination of the Archduke in Serbia and Russia leaving the war. Almost everything else involves the the Western front: The German invasion, trench warfare, no man’s land, and the eventual German defeat. What is missing from most people’s understanding is that the country that started the war -- Austria-Hungary, and the country that was the reason for the declaration of war -- Serbia, are rarely mentioned after the assassination. Butar concentrates his effort or the Serbia, Russia, and Austria-Hungary (with the Germany concentrating its efforts to the west).

If anyone was expecting a short war it was Austria-Hungary. It was dead-set on punishing Serbia regardless of what the rest of the Europe wanted. Austria-Hungary was the pit bull with it teeth permanently locked on Serbia’s neck. The pit bull, however, had no teeth. Of the nations involved on the Eastern Front, only Serbia fared better than expected in the opening of the war.

One point that is mentioned Austria-Hungary itself. It claimed to be a great empire, but in reality it was not. It was two kingdoms with two different citizenships. Each was mostly independent in internal matters, but shared a common foreign and military policy. Austria-Hungary was made up of many nationalities with little common interest. Unlike Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary had no single dominant ethnic group. It is difficult for a nation to rally around a flag when everyone has their own flag. The Habsburg Empire was essentially held together by memories of their glory days. If the Ottoman Empire was “The sick old man of Europe”, Austria-Hungary was not far behind.

Collision of Empires is an excellent study on the mostly forgotten Eastern Front of World War I. Diplomacy, strategies, and the opening battles of the war are covered in this text. It is well researched and cited. This forgotten part of World War I is not only where the war started, but also the area most changed by the war. New countries were formed, empires fell, millions died, refugees crossed borders, and revolution began in Russia. Collision of Empires is a must read for any WWI historian or anyone with an interest in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quirk of the Great War is that its initial contestants usually cease to be subjects of interest to the historical imagination once Europe’s titans are involved. The Great War conjures up images of the western front, of France and the United Kingdom in a bloody grapple with Germany, dug into the fields of Belgium. The war began, however, in the east, ‘over some damn foolish thing in the Balkans’ – over Austria’s reaction to the assassination of its heir by a Serbian nation. Collision of Empires looks at the war where it started – Austria. Covering only the war’s beginning in 1914, Pritt Buttar examines the brutal, clumsy opening to the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Germany against Russia and Serbia.

The author's title is well-chosen, for despite the intricate timetables developed by the respective' empires general staffs, the powers involved were plainly not ready for modern war. Austria's commander worshiped the indomitable Spirit of the Offensive, just as Italy's commander did. That attitude, which led to twelve Battles of the Insonzo on the Italian front, is similarly productive here. Some problems, like a mass of men with repeating rifles, machine guns, and solidly defensible territory, cannot be solved simply by throwing another mass of men at them. From the Baltic to Serbia, here mighty armies are thrown at each other and rebound with sickening thumps. Such was the advantage of defensive combat that the Dual Monarchy failed even to subdue tiny Serbia. The attack at all costs mentality failed across the front, from plains and lake country to the hills and mountains of the Austrian invasion routes. At the year's end, the only power capable of feeling remotely capable of its accomplishments would again be little Serbia.

Collision of Empires is highly detailed, as one might suspect considering its sharp focus on the first few months of the war. The author begins with respective chapters on Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia's political and military cultures before covering the opening campaigns. Illustrations are generous, but the maps leave one wanting; there are precious few of them, they only show attack routes, and they're so zoomed in that an atlas is in order to get a reader's bearings. There's no faulting the overall narrative, though, which combines a seasoned east-European historian's commentaries with a fast retelling of the war. According to an interview with Buttar, this is the first part of a trilogy. I look forward to the rest.

[Val · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prit Buttar covers a similar time and subject to Barbara Tuchman's book The Guns of August, but on the long Eastern and Southern fronts, which are less well known.
A map showing the borders and important railway lines may be helpful:
http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archiv...

The fighting took place in a region Buttar refers to as Poland, which had been a province of Russia for 150 years and was smaller than the current country, and in Galicia, a kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire which does not now exist. At the time the border was between Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary. He gives both the contemporary names of towns and the modern ones where they are now different (and in different countries). He also includes plenty of maps. All this made the toing and froing of armies across large areas of Central Europe much clearer.
There is a lot of detail, of the strategy, the personalities of the commanders, the troop deployments, composition and morale, all the battles and their effectiveness, and the place of all this in the overall conflict. His final chapter is an excellent summing up and there is an extensive list of further reading (which I am unlikely to be examining - this was enough). He explains it all very well, although the casual reader is unlikely to appreciate quite such a meticulous account. It certainly made this war front much clearer to me; if he writes a shorter less detailed book of the conflict with the same clarity and precision, it will get five stars.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mostly read books about World War II but have started to read about World War I as well since the way that it ended almost guaranteed that the next one would happen; it was just a matter of time. So having read a number of accounts of the first world war, I felt this would be somewhat repetitive to what I already knew. But Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914 by Prit Buttar focuses on the Eastern Front between Germany and the Hapsburg Austria-Hungarian empire against Tsarist Russia that saw action on a much larger scale that that in the west. But most of what I read about and was familiar with had been mostly between the allies, Britain and France, against Germany and the Austria-Hungarian empire. Based on archival research and first-hand accounts of the fighting that took place in Prussia, Poland, Galicia, and the Carpathian Mountains, it is clear that the battles were every bit as violent as those on the western front. The reality of a two-front war took its toll on Germany and the Central Powers as the war ground on leaving all participants trying to keep up with the momentous events that engulfed them all.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question, this is the best book on the First World War I have read in many years. Incredibly well researched, Buttar digs back into the doctrines, strategies, and senior leadership of the protagonists on the Eastern Front in order to better describe how they each went about fighting their respective campaigns. He does so in a way that doesn't leave you mired in the "geekery" of warfare, but rather ensures you never want to put the book down.

I can hardly believe that Buttar did not spend his entire career as a line officer in the British Army -- as opposed to having only spent a few years in the Army Medical Corps. His keen insight and ability to concentrate on relevant details allows the reader to benefit from his hard background work. Not only is he a gifted writer, but a military historian of the very first rate.

[Benjamin Finley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started off great with the first few background chapters but that all changes when the author gets into the battle of Tannenberg. Unless you are a doctoral student of early 20th century Eastern European military history you will quickly get lost in all of the details about corps, battalions, fronts and flanks. It was a bit overwhelming and too much.

In hindsight I should not have been surprised since this is a ~500 page book on the Eastern European campaign in just the first year of WWI.

[Doubledf99.99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative read about The Great War's, Eastern Front, the first few chapters covers the major players, the armies, generals and politics. The remainder of the book covers the battles up to the end of 1914.
Good appendices, with location/place names that have changed since 1914, lots of notes, the only thing I didn't like were the maps, thought they should've been more detailed, and end up using maps from Wiki which were very good.

[sslyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way more than I'll ever need to know.

[Donato Colangelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Credit where credit is due.
I am no historian, but I have a strong interest in WWI. I have read several accounts about the war, almost all of them being famous titles among the popular literature. And yet, such a deep insight into the Eastern front is nowhere to be found.
Having read the ebook of “Collision of Empires” I must as soon as possible find a printed edition and read it all again. The reason is always the same: maps. The author in this case provides some 16maps of battles, simple but essential drawings that help to decrypt - so to speak - the incredibly tangled series of movements, clashes and consequences of the decisions that were taken on the fields by commanders. Reading ebooks does not allow the reader to rapidly look at maps if needed. For this simple reason, I strongly advice to buy and ready any paper print edition.
Coming briefly to the quality of the book, it is simply amazing. There is no Austro-Hungarian or Russian “botch” that is not accounted for and explained, for instance, and there are many. The author does not simply report what occurred on the fields, but also why and how it could have been worse or better. The prose is rich, the reading is never boring. Apart from being a story of armies clashing in great expanses of land, it is a story of personalities clashing on a background of personal resentment, political affiliations and camaraderie. General view of school children is that Russians were inferior soldiers than Germans, and this Buttar confirms in part. What is missing from the popular take on this aspect is that Russians could have been much better if their army was led by more capable generals. Russians were good at defense, simply because it required less training and was therefore a sort of natural feat of humans put in danger. Was it not for the weakness of the leading figures, Rennenkampf and Rutzky, for instance, Tannenberg and Łódź could have told another story. Same thing applies to the weakest of the Powers involved in the clashes of those months, Austria-Hungary. Led by a man religiously convinced of his theoretical understanding of war, the k.u.k. Army was led to disasters after disasters. The lesson one can learn from Conrad is that religious fanaticism about anything, also war doctrine, is recipe for failure. Conrad failed because he was not brilliant. He was not von François, to name but one. No surprise his Army achieved little or nothing in the war. Finally, Germany. I was amazed to learn that the losses in the first skirmishes with the Russians were heavy for them: again, school simplifies too much. It was a hard battle against a numerically superior enemy invading with two Armies, while the bulk of the German Army was trying to execute Schlieffen plan on the West. It was a mix of luck (Russian commanders were, as said, not good enough) and good strategy to help the German and to allow them to achieve what has been portrayed as a mythic victory at Tannenberg. Here I could not help but to find parallels with the later Battle of France of June 1940. But was the German Army only lucky? Actually not. It was indeed the best, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of artillery. Germany had the most powerful Army because, as Buttar states towards the end of this book, it had “the best pool of capable wartime leaders” which knew how powerful an help “troops morale” can be. German officers regarded the successes as being due to the efforts of the men, and this heightened the levels of trust among soldiers towards the leadership. Thanks to this, even German reservists were capable of performing outstandingly. This alone is enough to explain why Conrad was terrible as Chief of Staff: according to his doctrine, it was the aggressive stance of an Army and the continuous pressure exerted on the enemy that boosted troops morale. Unfortunately for him, battle terrain alone suffice to threw this idea out of the window many times in those first months of war to his disappointment.
All of these aspects, and many more besides, are well described and discussed by the author in the book. It helps a lot to put what happened in the right, human, perspective. It will be possible to explain why such shortcomings and victories, going from the microscopic to the macroscopic, from the ideas and attitudes of single men, up to the movements of huge numbers of people.
A book that deserves to be read carefully, but a wonderful reading!

[Derek Weese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since it is the centennial of the First World War, one can expect a veritable flood of publishing to be undertaken for the battles and characters of the Great War. The Eastern Front, however, of that war has been largely ignored, save for the Battle of Tannenberg, for decades. Now, with this book, that is finally starting to change.
The first of a prospective trilogy on the war on the Eastern Front, this book starts off by delving into the military and political cultures of the three main protagonists of this sordid, bloody tale.
The German military/political culture was the best prepared for war when it came in 1914. The German military was the worlds model of efficiency, professionalism and tactical flair. It also helped, wonders, that their last several times of having to take up arms were all horrendously successful ones. For all of the outward appearances of German military superiority, and there was plenty to go around, the Germans had a serious sickness at the heart of their system that would prove to be a huge wrench within the inner workings of their otherwise flawless system: the decline of their heretofore amazing General Staff. Headed, when war came, by the nephew of Moltke the Great, the General Staff was a beautiful, sleek vessel of martial glory...without a captain at the helm. Moltke the younger, or lesser, was a soft handed man who failed, or refused, to steer the ship with the firm hand that his uncle would have used. As such, the former virtue of the German Army (it's ability to allow considerable freedom of action amongst subordinate commanders, especially forgivable if such actions brought victory) would, in the opening weeks of the WWI, prove to be one of its loose fitting wheels. But, that was not apparent from a cursory, or even deep, examination. The German Army was still the most flexible, best trained, best led and best equipped armed force in the world. And if it was outnumbered, considerably, by its prospective opponents of France and Russia, it could rely on its considerable qualitative superiority to over-match their combined foes quantitative superiority.
Russia was an Empire with almost insurmountable internal problems. As such it shouldn't come as any surprise to any student of the First World War that these internal tensions were mirrored within the Czar's armed forces as well.
The Russian Imperial Army was riven between two camps divided along ideological lines: whether to modernize and adopt the lessons learned form observing the Germans and their own, painful, experience in the failed battles with Japan a decade earlier and those other officers who favored the old virtues of elan and the offensive spirit. As such the Russian Army's mass would be, nearly, overcome by the internal bickering amongst its own top generals and a less than smooth guiding hand from a Czar who was clearly out of his element when attempting to delve into the minutia of military affairs. However, despite these obvious, and glaring flaws, Russia could field a couple of advantages that would give any opponent, even the Germans, necessary pause. First of all, funded by their new allies the French, the Russians were hastily modernizing. Large numbers of machine guns, rapid firing artillery, telephones, motor transport and over a thousand miles of newly laid rail lines could all be brought together in an, as it turned out to be, effective mobilization strategy that assured that the Russian Army of 1914 was not the anachronism that it was against the Japanese in Manchuria and northern Korea. The other, obvious, advantage was manpower. Russia simply out-massed everyone, and could, by themselves, out-mass both the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans just by themselves. Only time, and the baptism by fire, would tell whether or not these advantages would mean anything.
The Austro-Hungarians, not the Turks, were the true 'sick man of Europe'.
The Hapsburg Empire was dying, both from within and from without as smaller, younger, yet far more aggressive powers such as Italy and Serbia were looking predatorily towards a bloated, rotten edifice next door that may, or may not hold treasures to anyone bold enough to seize them by force. Their own armed forces were, in a word, a joke. The Austrian Army and its other constituent parts (the Hungarian Honved and the regional forces mustered by the Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Galician Ukrainians and Bosnians) was outdated, ill trained, poorly led at the best of times, sadly under-equipped, and all around simply not ready for the spotlight of main event status. And yet, so much of the death and tragedy that was the First World War can be laid at Vienna's door step.
When the war did come, it showcased all of the failings of all the major powers.
The Hapsburg forces were crushed, almost easily, by small, seemingly insignificant Serbia who swatted them out of their country not once but twice. Austro-Hungarian forces invaded southern Poland in an insane attempt to destroy a grouping of Russian armies that outmassed them over two to one. The result, the near annihilation of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the first month of war and the Russian invasion of the Empire itself, was a foregone conclusion. The only bright spot, for any of the three powers, in the early days was for the Germans, The Russians, as part of a larger strategic idea shared with the French, invaded Eastern Prussia in an attempt to smash the German forces there and to draw German forces eastwards from the Western Front. The Russians were both successful and most definitely not in this regard.
Despite a successful action at Gumbinnen which saw the Germans fleeing from the Russian forces, the Germans rallied and under the leadership duo of Paul Von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, turned around and crushed the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg (where an entire Russian army was slaughtered). The Germans then struck back and drove the Russians out of Germany, smashing another Russian Army at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, and then invaded Poland.
Although the Russians were able to stop the Germans before Warsaw and drive them, and their Austro-Hungarian allies, mostly out of Poland in, yet another, counterattack the Russians learned something truly damaging to their cause, one that would spell the doom of the Czar's forces.
Pritt Buttar makes the excellent point that the Russians, in their offensive outside Warsaw and subsequent drive back towards the German frontiers, showed them the amazing flexibility of the German Army and its awesome, inherent power. Much like the Union Army in the US Civil War would be overawed by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, so would the the Russians come to be overawed by the German Army during the First World War. This would give the Germans a psychological advantage that they would never relinquish. The Russians could smash the Austrians anytime they dared to show themselves. But the Germans, even if badly outnumbered, could seemingly never be beaten. While not entirely true, it held enough of a ring of truth to it that the Russian Army, even its High Command (Stavka) and even their best generals, like Brusilov, began to believe it. This made the Russian Army, as the war progressed, less and less able to muster the will to face the Germans in open battle so that by 1917, the year of Revolution, the Russian Army would simply quit fighting, believing that defeat was an inevitability.
But as this book ends with the Christmas season of 1914, that is for a later volume.
This is an excellent book that delves into the fine details of the war in the East. Every major protagonist, even the Serbs, are detailed and if the tactical details are a bit much for some, for hardcore students of military history this book is a godsend.
If you love military history, Eastern European history and the First World War in general, this is a must read.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the things that always bothers me about historical scholarship is that everyone seems to focus in on certain aspects of larger topic and relentlessly publish materials based on that one thing till the end of time. Readers of mine can attest that I get rather annoyed when books that talk about the American Civil War seemingly pretend that The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the few battles worth discussing in the entirety of the war. Anyone with one brain cell will understand that that is not true, and that there are MANY topics worthy of discussion, but the sheer volume of books, videos, movies, and other material about that one moment in time is somewhat ridiculous. Another great example is the endless discussion of Roman History when I can’t imagine there being that much more to say that hasn’t already been said about it!

World War I has its own set of issues in this regard, considering most of the material that one finds on the war is generally about prominent Western Front battles such as Verdun or The Somme, or The US entry into the war itself. So, imagine my surprise when I was scrolling through my library list for books on World War I, and noticed this book specifically about The Eastern Front. I jumped at the chance to dig into it. Usually seen as the long forgotten era of the war, finally someone in The West was taking notice! Unfortunately, despite the quality of the material, this book is not the sort of history book that I enjoy for reasons you’ll soon find out.

The type of history book that I enjoy is more of a look at the socio-political tensions in any sort of conflict, not the kind that meticulously hits you with a tsunami of data including various dates, regiment numbers, miles walked, supplies totaled, and bullets shot. This is exactly the sort of book this is in every way possible. I’m sure that there are those out there that enjoy this sort of history analysis, but I feel like when looking at historical events in this sort of way one loses the overall picture of what’s happening when one focuses in on minor details such as serial numbers on equipment and other bits and bobs that I’m being a bit facetious about in this review.

I will hand it to the author, that he has taken a portion of World War I scholarship that is completely ignored in The West, when speaking of the Eastern Front, and has written easily the best-researched book I have ever read about that particular war theater. That said, I wish the author would have taken a more “pop history” or journalistic approach to his writings as books like this are only going to really fascinate people that love numbers and statistics, and that is undoubtedly NOT me. Collision of Empires – The War on the Eastern Front in 1914 is a beast in terms of research and detailed writing, but be warned that this writing style is not for everyone.

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

In regards to criticism the book opened with a few chapters on pre-war politics and alliances, which were too little to be truly informative, and too much in a book about the Eastern Front. Furthermore, it contained one chapter on the fighting at the Serbian border (southern front for Austria-Hungary) that barely scratches the surface and is not enough information to provide a solid overview. It should have rather been omitted in my opinion, especially as there is no respective chapter on the western front (second front for Germany) either. Moreover, the author failed to find a proper way to guide the reader through the thicket of similar units fighting on both sides (German XVII corps versus Russian XVII corps, or Austrian Fourth Army versus Russian Fourth Army and so on). Last but not least, though there are several maps to assist the reader with the described fighting, some lengthy described battles have no maps at all. Plus, the maps are too small and do not contain all of the details. I just don't understand why these maps aren't full page, but rather squeezed onto a page with the rest of the narrative.

The book dealt with all the major battles in the East stating with the opening battles in East Prussia between Russia and Germany, and in Galicia between Russia and Austria-Hungary respectively and ending with the Battle Of Lodz. What the book did well was showing that the central powers had no coordinated strategy for the war in the East. While Germany was fighting in Prussia against superior Russian forces, Austria-Hungary attacked in Galicia for the sake of its Army's offensive spirit. Once the Austrian forces ran out of steam the Russian Army counter attacked and drove them back far beyond their original starting point. Later in the year a combined attack of the Germans towards Warsaw and of the Austrians through Galicia regained most the lost territory. During the offensive both Armies complained to each other that there were no supporting efforts of the other Army. Then the Russian offensive began and the costly gained territory was lost once again.

It was a different war of attrition than in the West but no less bloody and costly in human lives. All kinds of shortages combined with diseases caused thousands more to die. Wounded were often abandoned and left to die by the retreating armies.
A side of the book I liked very much were the short diary entries of the involved soldiers interwoven with the narrative. Overall a solid book worth reading.