Norman Stone (1) (1941–2019)

You could argue that the WWI Russian front set up the remaining history of the 20th century. The early assault on East Prussia, although eventually disastrous for the Russians, may have slowed down the Germans just enough to keep them out of Paris, the eventual failure of the Brusilov Offensive contributed heavily to the Revolution, and the development of the munitions industry during the war dropped a fairly well developed industrial base into Stalin’s lap.


Norman Stone’s The Eastern Front 1914-1917 covers this interesting period very well. All the military campaigns – invasion of East Prussia and the German riposte; campaigns in Galacia, Brusilov offensive and Romanian intervention – are all well described, but the real strength of the book is the detailed analysis of politics, infrastructure and economics. Soviet histories tend to exaggerate the deficiencies of Tsarist Russia in order to provide contrast with the glories of Communism; however, Stone makes it clear that there’s not that much exaggeration. Tsarist politics produced a surplus of antiquated generals who hated each other and were seemingly more interested in seeing their counterparts defeated than the enemy; the historical pre-eminence of Russia artillery had distorted into an emphasis on permanent fortresses, which were obsolete by WWI but which still absorbed the lion’s share of Russian artillery and shell production (fortress commanders went to the length of hiding munitions stocks, lest they be transferred to infantry units that would “waste” them); Russian traditional secrecy made it difficult to have weapons manufactured overseas – blueprints were supplied grudgingly, were in Cyrillic, and had Russian measurement units; and communications were primitive even by 1914 standards. The entire Russian army had fewer than 40 radios, insufficient technicians to use them, and no cryptographers; there were some automobiles, motorcycles and airplanes but they were usually broken down and underutilized when they worked; thus, Russian commanders either had to move around on horseback or broadcast in the clear to communicate with their troops. The Russians had shot themselves in the foot in western Poland, where roads, rail and telegraph lines had been deliberately kept undeveloped to act as an obstacle to an invading army; this probably would have worked if the Russians were on the defensive (after all, that’s more or less what happened in 1941) but was of no use at all when they were trying to invade East Prussia or Galacia.


If they had been given the time, the Tsarist Russian might have been able to pull it off. By 1916, factories were producing munitions on the same scale as the Western allies and General Brusilov had put together an offensive strategy that prefigured some of the German 1918 stormtrooper tactics and which almost collapsed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Brusilov offensive failed due to internal army politics, German intervention, and the poor decision to transfer troops to Romania. (Stone makes the interesting point that politicians on both sides focused on gaining “allies” which were often worse than useless; Romanian intervention simply handed over the Ploesti oil fields to the Central Powers and absorbed more Russian troops than if Romania had remained neutral).


Fairly dense reading, but well worth it to explicate a usually obscure part of WWI history.… (plus d'informations)

Being a turgid history of WWI's Eastern Front, viewed almost entirely from the Russian perspective. The book clearly reflects extensive scholarship, but is less than pleasant reading. The author fell asleep the first day his historiography class met; rule one of the historian's style manual, identify each player by their full name, exists for very good and sufficient reasons, and the second, identify their position or role in the story, is like unto it. The author, as far as I can remember, doesn't use a full name in the entire book; he's slightly better on role, but not much. And most of these people are well and truly nobodies; you're not talking about familiar figures such as Hindenburg and Ludendorff, or even semi-familiar ones such as Conrad and Brussilov, you're talking about corps commanders. His emphasis on logistics is justifiable; certainly that's an understudied aspect of warfare which was crucial here, but how interesting can one make Russian shell production statistics or musings on rail capacity? Less justifiable is his obsession with economics; his concluding chapter says nothing about the big conclusions he has reached about the war, it's simply his take on the economic roots of Russia's revolution. His military narrative is good enough, if muddy, and there are plenty of maps, but they are very small and seem rarely designed to illuminate the places he mentions. I'm glad the blurbers enjoyed the book, but they are more easily entertained than I..… (plus d'informations)