Norman Stone

'Without question one of the classics of post-war historical scholarship, Stone's boldly conceived and brilliantly executed book opened the eyes of a generation of young British historians raised on tales of the Western trenches to the crucial importance of the Eastern Front in the First World War' Niall Ferguson 'Scholarly, lucid, entertaining, based on a thorough knowledge of Austrian and Russian sources, it sharply revises traditional assumptions about the First World War.' Michael Howard

The Eastern Front 1914-1917

Bryan Alexander

A powerful, very useful history of WWI's underappreciated eastern front. 

Stone takes the story from Tannenberg up to the Bolshevik revolution, focusing on military affairs. He addresses campaigns and battles, while also spending time on supply, support, and reinforcement needs, which adds a hefty amount of logistical, administrative, and political context.

One of Stone's major arguments is that the Russian empire's warmaking capacity actually wasn't all that backward. Its material underpinnings were quite good, all things considered, and improved greatly during the war. Russia's biggest problem was poor leadership, from fatally divided command to older commanders failing to learn from reality. A persistent north-south split (35) prevented Russia from offering a coherent strategy, and weakened its ability to sanely allocate forces. Only Brusilov appears effective.

Other nations don't come off much better. Stone demolishes Austria-Hungary's leaders, and consistently takes down Ludendorff's reputation as a fine German commander. Some appear competent, like Mackensen.

Other fascinating insights:
-the eastern front was a war of maneuver, compared with the western front's notorious static lines. (92-3)
-far from collapsing, Russia actually modernized through the war.
-WWI armies' ability to field large amounts of reinforcements was unusual, and decisive in shaping static battlefields. (265-6)
-Russians called for scorched earth, but rich landowners could evade it w/bribery. Meanwhile, locals applied extra scorching to Jewish property. "'even the most extreme anti-Semites have been moved to complain of the treatment of the Jews.'" (184)
-Russia actually mobilized a relatively small proportion of its population, as compared to other nations. (216-17)
-eastern front armies relied heavily on horses for transport and as attack cavalry, but this turned out badly. Those units consumed huge amounts of supplies, and ultimately moved too slowly. (49)
-Russia sent some reinforcements to the western and Greek fronts. Some had a wild career:

  

  Some of these troops later took a role in the unrest of the French army in 1917, and there was also trouble in Salonica. Some were repatriated; others were sent to the Sahara for penal service unless they agreed to serve with the Whites [anti-Bolshevik forces in the post-WWI Russian Civil War]. (220, note)



 
While some criticize Stone for being too dense (long sentences, vast paragraphs), I did not find this to be the case. His prose is well structured, especially for grappling with large, deep issues. Moreover, he has a fine, snarling wit, which leavens things:

  

  Ludendorff's swollen reputation should be drowned in the Carpathian snows. (111)
Böhm-Ermolli... could be trusted to be more sparing with recognition of reality. (114)
The Czechs could be forgiven for concluding that, whatever Austria had achieved against the Turks, she has failed to save Western civilization from the Hungarians. (125)
[Bernard Pares] seems to have been retained [by the British Foreign Office] mainly because he had an energetic impracticality that gave him unique feeling for Russian liberals (144, footnote)
Like most autocracies, its strength was, not that it governed harshly, but that it governed less. (214)
The [Russian] army's statistical office was the Glavny Shtab, which was run, almost by definition, by incompetents, who had failed to make a career in anything other than this department, which was regarded as a water-paper basket. (215)

  



Maps: very good, but more are needed, especially for the Gorlice battles.

Some events should have received more extensive treatment, like the sieges of Przemyśl. We read one mention of Oskar Hutier (189), and are left to wonder to what extent his eastern front experience shaped his 1918 so-called Hutier infiltration tactics. But that's a sign of a powerful book, that we want more of it.

Sources: the book is dated, emerging in the 1970s. It was groundbreaking then, but it would be terrific to see an updated account working with whatever can be found in Russian archives, plus addressing the past generation of WWI scholarship.

Overall, a fascinating, powerful, useful book.

The Eastern Front 1914-1917

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