The Russian army has had moments of brilliance, such as the defeat of Napoleon and the logistical miracle of following him from Moscow to Paris. There is no doubt that the army which was responsible for ninety percent of German losses in WWII (thanks in large part to the supplies provided by the U.S. and the U.K. at no charge) played a key part in the defeat of Hitler.

Today however, we see a Russian army that sadly fits the stereotype in many people’s minds; poorly trained, led and equipped. Once again, without total mobilization, the Russian army is simply too small and poorly led for the job of defending its immense country.

Is the stereotype accurate when looking at the Russian army currently in the field? This book helps to put the challenges of that army in an historical context.

With the defeat during the Crimean War, the new Czar realized that his army while large, could not compete with those of other European nations.  Thus began, over the next 50 years, attempts to update the military skills of the officer corp., the weapons, training, etc. of the entire Imperial Army.  But serious questions arose and continued to rise as rapid changes in military technology raised doubts about long held beliefs and new theories of the military art.  Those same questions would worry the military minds of other European powers.  To give a couple of examples:

• The old theory was that the troops would line up for attack at 250 paces from the enemy, but with smokeless powder (hence a longer range), that distance began to expand to 500 paces, then 1000 and eventually over a kilometer and a half from the enemy forces.  This meant that the killing ground was expanded and what steps could be taken to minimize lives?
• Along with the infantry, direct fire artillery since the time of Napoleon had played a major part in any attack or defense.  But with the longer range of infantry weapons, the artillerist was more open to withering fire so new tactics such as indirect fire had to be worked out.

Many officers had theories to answer these and other questions, but at the same time there were vested interests which refused to acknowledge these and many other problems.  Top generals, who fought during the Napoleonic wars still believed in the shock value of cavalry, and their influence ate up huge sums of the military budget.

Financial concerns were also a top priority.  Training was often poor, especially further away from St. Petersburg and due to tight budgets, for example, the artillery was limited to only two rounds of certain types of ammunitions per gun per year!  Bullets were expensive so large rattles were used to imitate the sound of machine guns firing. 

And yet, despite the stereotype of the dark plodding masses, gradually the army learned and moved on; allowances for more initiative at the lower levels was encouraged and a Staff school was set up to create a more professional officer class.  A major problem however, was that seniority still ruled and the more professional staff officers were cut off from reaching the highest levels.

The book covers not only the areas above, but a basic description of the war with Turkey (1877-78) and Japan (1904-05) to the eve of WWI.  It does not go into the financial arrangements with France which lead to much of Russia’s fail development prior to the war (all of which was aimed at moving the Russian army faster against Germany), but does give some detail on the under estimation of the Russian army as to the amount of munitions needed for modern war (despite the experience of the war with Japan), but then so did most of the other European nations.

An interesting book for the military historian, but it can be dry and academic.  I would like to see similar books on the German and French armies during the same time.op

iance, such as the defeat of Napoleon including it logistical excellence in its ability to follow him all the way to Paris. There is no doubt that it won the Second World War by inflicting ninety percent of the German casualities (helped in large part by the supplies provided at no cost by the U.S. Yet currently, we see a Russian army that fits the

With the defeat during the Crimean War, the new Czar realized that his army while large, could not compete with those of other European nations.  Thus began, over the next 50 years, attempts to update the military skills of the officer corp., the weapons, training, etc. of the entire Imperial Army.  But serious questions arose and continued to rise as rapid changes in military technology raised doubts about long held beliefs and new theories of the military art.  Those same questions would worry the military minds of other European powers.  To give a couple of examples:

• The old theory was that the troops would line up for attack at 250 paces from the enemy, but with smokeless powder (hence a longer range), that distance began to expand to 500 paces, then 1000 and eventually over a kilometer and a half from the enemy forces.  This meant that the killing ground was expanded and what steps could be taken to minimize lives?
• Along with the infantry, direct fire artillery since the time of Napoleon had played a major part in any attack or defense.  But with the longer range of infantry weapons, the artillerist was more open to withering fire so new tactics such as indirect fire had to be worked out.

Many officers had theories to answer these and other questions, but at the same time there were vested interests which refused to acknowledge these and many other problems.  Top generals, who fought during the Napoleonic wars still believed in the shock value of cavalry, and their influence ate up huge sums of the military budget.

Financial concerns were also a top priority.  Training was often poor, especially further away from St. Petersburg and due to tight budgets, for example, the artillery was limited to only two rounds of certain types of ammunitions per gun per year!  Bullets were expensive so large rattles were used to imitate the sound of machine guns firing. 

And yet, despite the stereotype of the dark plodding masses, gradually the army learned and moved on; allowances for more initiative at the lower levels was encouraged and a Staff school was set up to create a more professional officer class.  A major problem however, was that seniority still ruled and the more professional staff officers were cut off from reaching the highest levels.

The book covers not only the areas above, but a basic description of the war with Turkey (1877-78) and Japan (1904-05) to the eve of WWI.  It does not go into the financial arrangements with France which lead to much of Russia’s fail development prior to the war (all of which was aimed at moving the Russian army faster against Germany), but does give some detail on the under estimation of the Russian army as to the amount of munitions needed for modern war (despite the experience of the war with Japan), but then so did most of the other European nations.

An interesting book for the military historian, but it can be dry and academic.  I would like to see similar books on the German and French armies during the same time.

In the period from just before the First World War until the early 1940s, Stefan Zweig, an Austrian born in the Hapsburg Empire, was one of Europe’s leading authors. His books cover biographies, poems set to music, novels, hundreds of articles, reviews, and more. Yet, in 1942 he and his wife committed suicide in South America over their distress of the state of the world and their view of the future.

Zweig believed that each generation would experience one trying movement, be it war, plague, inflation, or social disruption. But he believed that his generation which was raised in the structured, secure world of the late Hapsburg Empire was doomed to experience each of those trials, one after another which put it to a test seldom seen in history. That does not mean that he viewed all change as negative, for he saw the emancipation of women from their corsets and their entry into politics as positive; so too was the easy mingling of the sexes in sports, social events without chaperones, and the greater freedom of people to choose the direction of their lives. Yet he did not see or connect that that same freedom blended with youthful idealism and ignorance of the world could lead to dangerous movements such as Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

Victor Davis Hanson in his The Father of Us All; War & History, Ancient & Modern gives due credit to The Age of Battles as one of the finest examples of military history as indeed it is. Since it was first published in 1991, Weigley gives a continual history of warfare, mostly in Western Europe, from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. Starting with the revolutionary tactics of Gustavus Adolphus and ending with the defeat of Napoleon, the author traces the continual quest for the “decisive battle” as a short cut to victory.

After the terrible bloodbath of the Thirty Years War, which left Germany devastated with millions of dead, it seemed as if Europe had made a conscious decision that warfare had to be restructured. One of the key steps to this process was Hugonis Grotius, the historical rules for the limitation of war were formalized. These rules were loosely going back to the rules of chivalry (which were never terribly effective) covered dealing with civilians, plunder, and more. Many rulers in Europe recognized that while war was not going to disappear, they could at least try to limit the overall damage. It was amazing that with the rise of nation states and greater concentration of power and wealth, those who ruled suddenly realized that they had a personal stake in limiting wars which could be dangerous to their position and existence.

One of the pleasant things about histories by Figes is that they are so readable. Like two of other histories of his I have read, (“The Whisperers” and “A People’s Tragedy”), Figes has the ability to bring the past alive and make you feel as if you are part of the action. He does not concentrate on battle scenes (although battles are covered), but he centers on the lives of the ordinary soldiers. In this book he gives short shift to Florence Nightingale but points out the breakthrough of a Russian surgeon, Dr. Nikolai Pirogov who used an early form of triage as well as anesthesia.

Despite the common view of the war, it was the French who supplied most of the troops, not the British and it was the French, not the British who better supplied their men with everything, from tents to food to warm coats for the cold Crimea winter, etc. Among the allied armies, approximately eighty percent of the deaths were due to disease, frostbite, etc.

It is also interesting to note that there were very real plans for a coalition whose goals was the breakup of the Russian Empire, including invasions of Russia from the Baltic, uprisings in Poland and an invasion from the Crimea into the area of Kiev. But as the causalities began to mount, the enthusiasm for such great plans began to wane and in the end a settlement was made.

For all the loss of blood and lives, Russia was able to regain her position within 25 years and continue to create problems in the Balkans. Her meddling and ambitions led to World War I thanks to a system that refused to believe that the world was changing and was all too often in the hands of a single man who could be unbelievably foolish.

A big book (about five hundred pages) but an interesting one which never goes off into tangents that do not serve to tell the main story. This is my third reading of these excellent history and each time I pick up some interesting tidbit in which historians (even amateurs such as myself) delight.

I am re-reading Orlando Figes’ (for the third time) excellent The Crimean War and I was struck by the plight of all the soldiers (particularity the British, Russian and Ottoman). The daily trials of poor food, lack of medical facilities, diseases, abuse from officers including whipping enlisted men can make the horrors of actual battle seem less terrible.

In this reading, I have come to realize that alone among armies in the West, the Russian army seems to have consistently been the worse abuser of its own men. From the time of Peter the Great, through the list of Czars, into the First World War, to today, the average Russian soldier has been seen as truly expendable and faceless. With that mindset, we have seen repeatedly the failure of the Russian Empire and today, the ability to field a successful fighting force against a lengthy list of enemies. Yes, the military was effective in WWII, but in face of the brutality of the German opponents and given the total ruthlessness of Stalin and his generals, the average Russian soldier had nothing to lose by throwing himself into the cauldron of war. Throughout history, the Russian soldier has been poorly led, poorly equipped, lacking in logistical support and abused by his own officers. Indeed, such a luxury as a graves unit was virtually unknown. During Czarist times, until WWI, returning soldiers were often not allowed to return to their own villages (to disguise the human losses). When peasants were drafted for the military, their send off was an actual funeral procession while in WWII, when a high Soviet officer was asked about the lack of care for the dead, he is reported to have said that if a man does not return home, it will be assumed he was killed in the war.

The following from Figes’ book captures the pity those soldiers at the time of the Crimean War earned. As Figes writes,

Robert Harris, the author of Fatherland has taken a key event in the history of France and created a novel that is a thriller and educational.  Written from the perspective of a key player in the events, the reader is drawn into a world of the “deep state” before the term was used.  It serves to remind us that those who have power seldom are ready to relinquish it, especially when they know no other life and possess no other skills that those they have acquired in the acquisition of their power.

 After their loss to Germany in the war of 1870, the French nation was torn between a paranoid fear of another German attack (a preventative war) and the French desire for revenge.  France, which had always been the predominant military land power on the continent was humiliated; it was other people’s lands which were despoiled and looted, not the sacred soil of France!

To achieve their desire for revenge, which included repossessing the key provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which the French had taken from the Germans centuries before, the French military was lavished with money and prestige.  They represented the honor of France and stood for the glory which had to be taken back from the new German empire.

In 1895, a Jewish officer of the General Staff was convicted in a secret military trial of passing secrets to the Germans.  Sentenced to life on Devil’s Island, he was isolated from the world; his wardens were not allowed to speak to him, he was chained to his bed at night, his view restricted by high wooden fences, his mail restricted and censored, his was a living hell of a punishment, especially for a man convicted on forged evidence. 

The rest of the story is well known, how another French officer by the name of Picquart gradually comes to realize that the prisoner, Alfred Dreyfus is innocent of the charges and that Major Esterhazy was in fact the real traitor. Shocked by the injustice done to Dreyfus, Picquart reports his findings to the army powers that be only to find out that they had known of the injustice but had decided that to save the “honor” of the army, nothing was to be done.  In fact, new evidence was “discovered” which further condemned Dreyfus.  What follows is an example of a handful of brave men including Picquart who fight against powerful forces within the government who use every tool at their disposal including humiliation, intimidation, and violence to cover up their crime against Dreyfus.  What is the importance of one man against the needs of the State?

In this excellent novel, we see nobility in the acts and courage of a man willing to lose all in the pursuit of justice.  We see prejudice in the antisemitism of France at that time. We also see courage, fear, and determination, not in fictional characters, but in those who lived these trying events. I can see readers finishing the novel and wondering which of those traits they would possess in a time of trials.

The North won the Civil War for many reasons: more manpower, greater industrial strength, tremendous capital, a better idea. They also won because they had three generals who believed in total war. It was not enough to defeat an enemy in the field; no, one had to tear the insides out of the enemy. Bring war with its flames and cruelty to the very hearths of the enemy to make them realize what war really was and is to this day. Those three generals are Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip H. Sheridan. These men knew that with the material, industrial and manpower strength of the Union, they could win and were determined to ensure that there could be no future Civil War.

In the year 1683, a vast Ottoman army is laying siege to Vienna, the heart of the Hapsburg Empire. The Ottoman army was subsidized in part by the king of France, who although Catholic, opposes the also Catholic Hapsburg Emperor. Then, from the wooded heights, the famous Polish winged hussars smash into the Ottoman army and from another direction troops from Franconia, northern Italy, Bavaria, and Saxony break the Ottoman flank. Vienna was saved and from that day forward the Ottoman Empire begins to degenerate and weaken until at the end of World War I it finally falls.

After conquering most of North America, the United States was filled with success and energy.  The expansion of the economic power of the United States was viewed with awe by the Europeans and dynamic politicians, such as Theodore Roosevelt, while Henry Cabot Lodge believed that it was the destiny of the United States to carry on into what is now called the “third world” to bring Christianity, modernity and progress to the inhabitants of those regions.  Our soul was pure (unlike the Europeans who only sought to exploit those foreign lands) and we were sure that we would be welcomed with open arms as saviors. At least that was the theory.