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The Carpathian campaign of 1915, described by some as the "Stalingrad of the First World War," engaged the million-man armies of Austria-Hungary and Russia in fierce winter combat that drove them to the brink of annihilation. Habsburg forces fought to rescue 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers trapped by Russian troops in Fortress Przemysl, but the campaign was waged under such adverse circumstances that it produced six times as many casualties as the number besieged. It remains one of the least understood and most devastating chapters of the war-a horrific episode only glimpsed previously but now vividly restored to the annals of history by Graydon Tunstall. The campaign, consisting of three ...
"This is a definitive account of the Austro- Hungarian Royal and Imperial Army during the First World War. Graydon Tunstall shows how Austria-Hungary entered the war woefully unprepared for the ordeal it would endure. When the war commenced, the Habsburg Army proved grossly under strengthen relative to trained officers and manpower, possessing obsolete weapons and equipment, and with the vast majority of its troops proved inadequately trained for modern warfare. Well over one million Habsburg troops mobilized creating an enormous logistical challenge of forging an army from the diverse cultures, languages, economic and educational backgrounds of the Empire's peoples. Graydon Tunstall shows how the army suffered from poor strategic direction and outdated tactics and facing a two-front offensive against both Russia and Serbia. He charts the army's performance on the battlefields of Galicia, Serbia, Romania, the Middle East and Italy through to its ultimate collapse in 1918"--
Definitive new history of the Austro-Hungarian Royal and Imperial Army during the First World War.
The Tomlinson Prize–winning, “stimulating and informative” account of one of the most significant clashes on the Eastern Front of the Great War (Journal of Military History). Bloodier than Verdun, the battles for Fortress Przemyl in present-day Poland were pivotal to victory on the Eastern Front during the early years of World War I. Control of the fortress changed hands three times during the fall of 1914. In 1915, the Austro-Hungarian armies launched three major offensives to penetrate the Russian encirclement and relieve the 120,000 people trapped in the besieged fortress. Drawing on myriad sources, historian Graydon A. Tunstall tells of the impossible conditions facing the garrison...
Discusses and examines the possible causes of World War I.
This is a volume of comparative essays on the First World War that focuses on one central feature: the political and cultural "mobilization" of the populations of the main belligerent countries in Europe behind the war. It explores how and why they supported the war for so long (as soldiers and civilians), why that support weakened in the face of the devastation of trench warfare, and why states with a stronger degree of political support and national integration (such as Britain and France) were ultimately successful.
World War I was the first large-scale industrialized military conflict, and it led to the concept of total war. The essays in this volume analyze the experience of the war in light of this concept's implications, in particular the erosion of distinctions between the military and civilian spheres.
This book is an innovative comparative history of how German and British soldiers endured the horror of the First World War. Unlike existing literature, which emphasises the strength of societies or military institutions, this study argues that at the heart of armies' robustness lay natural human resilience. Drawing widely on contemporary letters and diaries of British and German soldiers, psychiatric reports and official documentation, and interpreting these sources with modern psychological research, this unique account provides fresh insights into the soldiers' fears, motivations and coping mechanisms. It explains why the British outlasted their opponents by examining and comparing the motives for fighting, the effectiveness with which armies and societies supported men and the combatants' morale throughout the conflict on both sides. Finally it challenges the consensus on the war's end, arguing that not a 'covert strike' but rather an 'ordered surrender' led by junior officers brought about Germany's defeat in 1918.
An authoritative study of World War I’s often-overlooked Romanian front. In contrast to the trench-war deadlock on the Western Front, combat in Romania and Transylvania in 1916 foreshadowed the lightning warfare of World War II. When Romania joined the Allies and invaded Transylvania without warning, the Germans responded by unleashing a campaign of bold, rapid infantry movements, with cavalry providing cover or pursuing the crushed foe. Hitting where least expected and advancing before the Romanians could react―even bombing their capital from a Zeppelin soon after war was declared―the Germans and Austrians poured over the formidable Transylvanian Alps onto the plains of Walachia, roll...