EUCOM Battle Knowledge Centers

Volume 1 of 2. Max Hoffmann was Chief of Staff to Von Prittwitz, the aristocratic General charged with defending Germany's East Prussian heartland at the outbreak of the Great War. Prittwitz was as inept as his name suggests, and when the Russians steamrollered west far faster than the Germans had expected, he panicked and sought permission to retreat behind the River Vistula. But Hoffman kept his head and conceived a bold scheme to attack and annihilate the Russian advance. This was the operational plan that was already being put into effect when the dynamic duo of Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrived in the east to take over from the disgraced Prittwitz in late August 1914. The result was the total triumph of Tannenberg, soon followed by the twin victory at the Masurian Lakes.

During the night of 24 to 25 May 1913 three high-ranking military officials wait for hours outside a hotel in the centre of Vienna. At around 2 AM, they hear the shot of a Browning. They know that one of their own has just ended his life: Colonel Alfred Redl, the former deputy head of the Evidenzbüro, the Austro-Hungarian General Staff's directorate of military intelligence, and confidant of the heir to the throne. His suicide note reads: "Levity and passion have destroyed me." What no one had known: for almost a decade he had betrayed significant and damaging secrets to the Italians, the French and the Russians.

Although the myriad of alliances and suspicions that existed between the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires in the early 20th century proved to be one of the primary triggers for the outbreak of the First World War, much of the actual fighting between these three nations has been largely forgotten in the West. Whilst battles such as Ypres, the Somme, and Passchendaele have been inscribed deeply on the public consciousness, with the exception of perhaps Tannenberg, the conflicts in the East do not hold the same recognition. In this book, Prit Buttar seeks to correct this imbalance with a magisterial account of the chaos and destruction that reigned when three powerful empires collided. His harrowing narrative is driven by first-hand accounts and new, detailed archival research to create a dynamic retelling of the tumultuous events of the first year of the war, examining the battles of the Masurian Lakes and Tannenberg in East Prussia, followed by the Russo-Austrian clashes in Galicia, the failed German advance towards Warsaw, and the vicious fighting in the Carpathian mountains.

Raging for over four years across the tortured landscapes of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the First World War changed the face of warfare forever. Characterized by slow, costly advances and fierce attrition, the great battles of the Somme, Verdun and Ypres incurred human loss on a scale never previously imagined. This book, with a foreword by Professor Hew Strachan, covers the fighting on all fronts, from Flanders to Tannenberg and from Italy to Palestine. A series of moving extracts from personal letters, diaries and journals bring to life the experiences of soldiers and civilians caught up in the war.

This book brings to light Russia's undeservedly-obscure military past, rectifying the tendency of American and Western military historians to neglect the Russian side of things. Russia, as both a Western and non-Western society, challenges our thinking about Western military superiority. Russia has always struggled with backwardness in comparison with more developed powers, at some times more successfully than others. The imperatives of survival in a competitive international environment have, moreover, produced in Russian society a high degree of militarization. While including operational and tactical detail that appeals to military history enthusiasts, this book simultaneously integrates military history into the broader themes of Russian history and draws comparisons to developments in Europe. The book also challenges old assumptions about the Russian military.