Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson

Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I Reviews

• 
  Matt

  If you’ve run across any of my other reviews of World War I-related books, you will know that I have spent approximately the last three-and-a-half years trying to learn everything I can about the Great War. I can pinpoint the date because this was a conscious decision I made when I learned that my wife with pregnant with our first kid. I thought to myself, “Self, you’re about to lose a bunch of your free time. You better choose one thing – besides wine – as a hobby, and go with it.” I chose WWI for a couple reasons. One, the centenary was coming up (now, of course, we’re in the midst of it); and two, I didn't know anything about it. (Also, I had been told that World War I pairs well with Yellow Tail chardonnay).
  
  Things I knew about WWI three-and-a-half years ago: (1) It started because one guy shot another guy in Sarajevo; (2) Snoopy shot down the Red Baron, thereby assuring Allied supremacy of the blue yonder; and (3) The Americans won it, because AMERICA! (You’re welcome as always, Europe).
  
  It’s taken awhile, and a lot of books, a lot of wine, a lot of money spent on books and wine, and a lot of time reading those books and drinking that wine, but I’ve just started to grasp how that Sarajevo assassination precipitated a world crisis, and a bit about how that crisis played out.
  
  As we all know, a little bit of knowledge – and that’s what I have, a little bit of knowledge – is a dangerous thing. It has me putting on airs. I now have strong opinions on things that I never knew existed only a short while ago. It has given me a bit of a contrarian streak. And in that spirit, I purchased Alexander Watson’s Ring of Steel.
  
  This small-child-of-a book (566 pages of text, another hundred plus pages of notes - this book is nothing if not well-cited) not only tells the story of the First World War from the perspective of Germany and Austria-Hungary, but it dares to take an apologist’s stand. At every point where Germany and Austria-Hungary are to blame, Watson offers up a defense. (Well, at just about every point. There is no one on earth who can logically defend Austria-Hungary’s bungled diplomacy following Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. It was just so bad. This is one of the strong – and obvious! – opinions I have formed).
  
  Ring of Steel starts where every WWI book is legally obligated to begin, with the July Crisis. Austria-Hungary attempted to use the death of its unloved heir as a pretext for going to war with Serbia, which had been fomenting a dangerous pan-Serbian nationalism that threatened the integrity of the Habsburg Empire. But instead of just going to war, Austria-Hungary tripped over its untied shoelaces and fell flat on its face. Germany, needing to prop up its main ally, gave Austria the infamous “blank check,” a historical moment that feels more like one frat boy accepting a dare from another frat boy than it resembles dead-serious international diplomacy. In any event, Austria-Hungary proceeded with extreme, self-defeating slowness, assured of Germany’s support, while Germany’s bellicose, bipolar Kaiser tried to shove all the toothpaste back into the tube. The end result – obviously! – was Germany invading France via Belgium.
  
  After the July Crisis, Ring of Steel moves onto the war itself. But it does this in a unique way. It does not present a chronology of battles, battlefields, and overmatched generals. It is not interested in the positioning of Army A vis-à-vis Army B. Instead, Ring of Steel tackles the war using a topical, thematic approach. The chapters present a series of discussions, rather than a series of sequential events.
  
  The chapter on the opening stages of the war, for instance, does not present the usual narrative. It does not move methodically from the siege of Liege to the Battles of the Frontier to the climactic conflict on the Marne. Instead, it devotes a great deal of time to examining claims of German atrocities. Contemporary Allied propaganda depicted the Germans as Huns bent on rape, murder, and the bayoneting of infants. Directly after the war, many of these claims were debunked, and thus, German brutality came to be seen as mostly myth. Recently, there has been a pushback against this position, with certain historians – I’m thinking of Max Hastings, here – treating the Imperial German Army as proto-Nazis engaged in a dry run of World War II war crimes. Watson pushes back against the pushback, in a (somewhat, but not entirely) successful effort to re-contextualize alleged atrocities.
  
  Similarly, in the chapter on the war on the Eastern Front, Watson steers clear of recapitulating the mistakes and movements that led to the crushing defeat of the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg. Instead, Watson focuses on the invasion of Prussia by Russian troops. I thought this was a neat inversion of the typical WWI narrative, which focuses on the victimization of Russian and French civilians. Here, you see things from the point of view of a German civilian, just as innocent and shabbily treated as their Allied counterparts. (Later sections of the book detail the plight of German civilians as a result of the Allied blockade – a blockade that considered food to be “contraband”).
  
  One of the most interesting chapters takes on the notion of German plans for Europe following victory against the Allies. As Watson writes, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg’s war aims program:
  
  

  [S]tated boldly that ‘the general aim of the war’ was ‘security…for all imaginable time.’ This disarmingly simple aim was to be the basis of German policy throughout hostilities. While it was defensive in conception, the intention to achieve everlasting security was extraordinarily ambitious. When combined with a world view that regarded security as a zero-sum game to be won through domination not cooperation, it soon slid into aggression. To secure Germany ‘for all imaginable time’ could not, even in Bethmann’s mind and certainly not for the more hawkish elites around him, mean merely a return to the unstable status quo of the last peacetime years. Instead it required permanent control of invasion routes and the subjection of dangerous neighbors: ‘France must be so weakened as to make her revival as a great power impossible for all time. Russia must be thrust as far as possible from Germany’s eastern frontier and her domination over the non-Russian vassal peoples broken.’

  
  
  Watson notes, rightly, that German war aims were not the cause of the war. That is, Germany did not go to war in 1914 to secure these goals. Rather, they developed quickly as the war progressed. It is also worth noting that while Germany’s goals seem, on paper, to be the working paper of a DC Comics supervillain, they are exactly what the Allies did to Germany, once they won the war. What the Germans planned, the Allies did, with only an arguable difference in magnitude. (Redrawing of national frontiers? Check. Creation of demilitarized buffer zones? Check. People forced from their homes, or forced to get a new passport? Check. Reduction to a non-great power? Checkmate).
  
  In all my reviews of WWI books, I make reference to the fact that I’m on a literary journey. It’s my way of leaving bread crumbs for those who are also interested in this mammoth subject, and want some ideas about where to start, or where to go next. To that end, I should note that this is second or third level reading. It operates under the assumption that you have some structural framework in your mind that outlines the broad parameters of the war. Watson does not take any time to catch you up to speed. He writes as though you already know the general history of WWI, and proceeds to give you the German/Austria-Hungarian version of it.
  
  This is a dense book. Watson imparts of a lot of information. Fortunately, Watson is a decent writer. For the most part, he clearly expresses his thoughts and ideas, and he never bogs down in subjects that are objectively uninteresting (I’m thinking of the chapter in Hew Strachan’s book To Arms that is devoted to financing the war, and spends more time on bond yields than I’m comfortable with). He's a PhD, but I never felt like he was trying to keep me at arm's length as a reader. Every once in awhile, Watson will write one of those quintessentially British sentences that go on for a paragraph, are dreadfully passive, and are studded with clauses. But for the most part, I have no strong comments about the style, which means that it imparted information without either frustrating me, or causing my heart so soar at the poetry of its prose. I think the highest accolade I can give is that a book with such complex arguments and nuance was such a breeze to get through.
  
  A book like this – with such a clear point of view – can’t help but go too far. Does Watson oversell the Germans and Austro-Hungarians? Sure. This would be a problem if it was the only book on World War I that existed. It’s not, though, and so it is an excellent way to balance the scales. The Triple Alliance was not comprised solely of saints, martyrs, and lovers of small animals. But neither was it the second coming of a barbarian horde. It was a collection of people – and Watson gives them their due as people.
• 
  Cold War Conversations Podcast

  I thought this would be a slog at 800+ pages, but found it a surprisingly readable and a thought provoking book.
  
  Ring of Steel tells the story of World War 1 from the "other side of the hill" and claims to be the first modern history from this viewpoint.
  
  Being a World War 2 devotee this book really opened my eyes to the German/Austro Hungarian viewpoint and decision making in World War 1. It really is a fascinating read telling the story of how Germany and Austria-Hungary initially mobilised the support of their populations to but as military losses mounted, and Allied blockades caused hunger and hardship on the homefront, doubts set in.
  
  Whilst politics are key to understanding the German/Austro-Hungarian position social and economic effects of the war are covered extensively too.
  
  Some nuggets from the book that I hadn't necessarily realised:
  
  Russia mobilised before Germany, sparking German fears of invasion from the East that unified support across all political divides of the German and most of the Austro-Hungarian populace.
  
  The general belief in Germany and Austro-Hungary that the war was purely a defensive reaction contrary to the Allies view of Germany/Austro-Hungary as the aggressor.
  
  How complex the Austro Hungarian Empire was with its collection of separate nationalities and eleven spoken languages creating no ethnic, language, or national unity as in Germany.
  There’s many more, but I’d recommend buying the book for those.
  
  Whilst a lot of books are currently being produced from the Allies point of view Alexander Watson has filled a vacant space in our knowledge of the German and Austro-Hungarian viewpoint. Highly recommended.
  
  
• 
  Kuszma

  Elégtétel, amikor az ember brutális leárazáson vesz valamit, és az öt csillagnak bizonyul. Persze, valahol szomorú, hogy efféle könyvek raktáron maradnak, mert nem kapkodja el őket a nép, és végül egy „Akció!” matricával a hasukon találják magukat valami könyvesbolti piramison (ami a szociális otthon megfelelője könyvéknél), de hát most mit csináljunk, ilyen az élet, és ha így alakult, ne hagyjuk ki az alkalmat. Watson vaskos monográfiája az első világháborút tárgyalja, de nem általános megközelítésben, hanem a központi hatalmak két kulcsállamára, Németországra és az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchiára fókuszálva*. Újszerűségét az adja, hogy e két birodalom fő problémáját állítja középpontba: a bezártságot. Ők ketten ugyanis Közép-Európát birtokolták, ami ugye szép régió, de vállban szűk kicsit, keletről az oroszok bökdösnek a könyökükkel, nyugatról a franciák, a tengeren lépten-nyomon az ángliusok lépnek a lábujjunkra, hogy az olyan kavicsokról a cipőnkben már ne is beszéljünk, mint az apró szerb állam vagy Románia. Ez egyfajta klausztrofób érzést okozott az érintett társadalmakban, hogy a politikai elitről már ne is beszéljünk, ráadásul egy elhúzódó világháború esetén várható nehézségek kiindulópontja. Nyersanyag- és élelmiszerhiányt ígér, ami abból fakad, hogy mi sem könnyebb, mint elzárni ezen országokat a világkereskedelemtől, mert mezőgazdaságuk és iparuk teljesítőképessége ugyan imponáló, ám azért nem végtelen. Ez, az éhínség és a gazdasági összeomlás veszedelme a hurok, ami végig ott volt a németek és az osztrákok nyakán, bár több-kevesebb sikerrel próbálták kihúzni a fejüket belőle.
  
  (Közbevetőleg jegyzem meg, mert később nehéz lenne beilleszteni: a kötet egyik legnagyobb erénye, hogy láthatóvá teszi a lényegi különbségeket, amelyek a Habsburgok és Vilmos Németországa között feszültek. Itt nem csak arról van szó, hogy utóbbiak sokkal potensebb iparral és hadsereggel rendelkeztek, és hadvezetésük is klasszisokkal tehetségesebbnek bizonyult, mint az osztrákoké**. Ennél fontosabb, hogy Németország többé-kevésbé egységes nemzetállam volt, aki megdöbbentő hatásfokkal volt képes mozgósítani saját népességét, és kiaknázni erőforrásait – gyakorlatilag egészen 1918-ig. A Monarchia ezzel szemben ómódi birodalmi berendezkedés volt, Isten tudja, mennyi népcsoporttal, nyelvvel és kultúrával, akiket csak a császár személye - és nem elhanyagolható mértékben a katolikus vallás - kötött össze. Bár a háború kezdetén sikerült meglepően jól mozgósítani ezeket a széttartó célokkal rendelkező közösségeket, de lehetett sejteni, ez nem fog mindig ilyen flottul menni***. Ferenc József házi birodalma egész egyszerűen túl sok energiaveszteséggel működött, sosem volt képes elég erőt koncentrálni, mert az elszökött a rosszul összefabrikált intézmények résein, a nemzetiségek közötti konfliktusokban, no meg a fogalmatlan hadvezetőség kezén. Nem túlzás tehát azt állítani, hogy 1.) az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchia voltaképpen már 1915-re elveszítette a háborút, fennmaradását jórészt annak köszönhette, hogy a németektől rendre vérátömlesztést kapott, ám ezzel csatlós szerepbe lavírozta magát 2.) mindez pedig világosan illusztrálja a nemzetállamok erejét az idejétmúlt birodalmi szerveződésekkel szemben, amelyek a tömegháborúk világában egyszerűen már képtelenek voltak tartósan olyan teljesítményt nyújtani, amit az új követelmények megkívántak. Nem is csoda, hogy amikor az egésznek vége lett, úgy hullott szét az egész, mint egy kártyavár.)
  
  A bekerítettséggel kapcsolatos problémákra a tengelyhatalmak sokszínű válaszokat adtak. Ott volt például a propaganda, amely sokáig fennmaradó negatív klisékkel ajándékozta meg a régiót. A németek azt is felismerték, hogy ha a jövő háborúiban is helyt akarnak állni, akkor létre kell hozniuk egy éléskamrát – és erre a keleti búzaföldek, Ukrajna és a Baltikum fekete talaja tökéletesen alkalmasnak tűnt. Gondolták, elég megfelelő számú német telepest odapaterolni, ők majd felvirágoztatják a barbár végeket, szütyőjükben a vetőmaggal meg a Goethe-összessel****. Megszületett tehát az élettér-elmélet, ami aztán a Mein Kampfban támadt fel újra, még agresszívabban. Ludendorff, a német hadigépezet szíve és esze egy pillanatig sem habozott, az elfoglalt területeket a lehető legjobban kiszipolyozta. Igaz, mindezt nem tette olyan brutálisan, mint később a Harmadik Birodalom, de azért megmutatta nekik az utat, amin el kell indulni. Mindezeken túl a németeknek volt még egy csodafegyverük arra, hogyan lehetne kitörni a kontinentális ketrecből: a tengeralattjárók. Bevetésük azonban – Watson szerint – kapitális hibának bizonyult. Mert igaz ugyan, hogy a totális tengeralattjáró-háborúval mély sebet ejtettek az antanton, de korántsem akkorát, hogy az elvérezzen. Cserébe viszont magukra húzták az USA haderejét és korlátlan ipari kapacitását – ráadásul pont egy olyan pillanatban, amikor az oroszok kiléptek a konfliktusból, és úgy festett, a központi hatalmaknak a többéves kimerítő birkózás után sanszuk van a győzelemre. A teutonok nyilván úgy vélték, hogy Amerika messze van, és mire összeszedi magát, addigra késő lesz a franciáknak és az angoloknak. De tévedtek. Úgyhogy hiába gyürkőztek neki 1918-ban, hogy döntő csapást mérjenek az ellenre, ekkorra már annyira ki voltak merülve, ellenfelük pedig olyan fölényben volt az emberek számát tekintve éppúgy, mint felszerelésben, hogy reális esélyük nemigen volt a sikerre. Offenzívájuk összeomlása pedig egyben azt is jelentette, hogy minden erejüket elherdálták, a várható ellencsapások elhárítására pedig egyszerűen nem maradt kapacitásuk*****.
  
  Pazar elemző kötet, ami mellesleg megteremti a kontinuitást az első és a második világháború között. Persze ez a kontinuitás nem újdonság: sokan vizsgálták már a mérgező békét, ami nem megoldotta, hanem konzerválta a nemzetek közötti feszültségeket. Ugyanakkor Watson rámutat még egyre-másra. Például itt van az a régió, amit Snyder „véres övezetnek” nevez: ez a Baltikumtól a Balkánig terjedő sáv, benne Belorusszal és Ukrajnával. Ezen a területen ugyanis már az első világháborúban kialakult a gyakorlat, hogy a felek megkíséreltek etnikai homogenitást létrehozni – és bizony ez a folyamat az első világháborúban kezdődött******. Ennek nyilván a zsidó kisebbség volt a legnagyobb vesztese, akik rendre két tűz közé szorultak. De a többiekre is rájárt a rúd: a Monarchia hadserege a rutén civileket vegzálta, a németek meg a baltiakat igyekeztek másodlagos állampolgári szerepbe kényszeríteni. Szóval a minták kialakultak. Amikor pedig vége lett a háborúnak, az áldozatok revansot vettek*******, az agresszió körhintája pedig nem szokott leállni. Mert ezek az újabb áldozatok (ha tehették egyáltalán), rákontráztak az erőszakra********, és így tovább, és így tovább. És nem akadt senki, aki a tetteseket elszámoltatta volna. Ez pedig, nyugodtan kijelenthetjük, tökéletes táptalajt teremtett ahhoz, amit a régió a második világháborúban elszenvedett.
  
  * Törökországról és pláne Bulgáriáról e könyvben nem sok szó esik, ami mondjuk érthető. Watsont nem a periféria érdekli, hanem a központi hatalmak súlypontja, ami nyilván nem Anatóliában, hanem valahol Poroszföldön vagy a Ruhr-vidéken keresendő.
  ** Persze ezzel nem mondtunk sokat. Az osztrák hadsereg „agya” ugyanis az a Conrad volt, aki minden idők egyik legalkalmatlanabb vezérkari főnöke. Valószínűleg egy kimiskárolt félszemű kandúrmacska is okosabb döntéseket hozott volna, mint ő. Tragikus, hogy egy efféle nímand döntött milliók életéről.
  *** Természetesen a legnagyobb tüske a Birodalom talpában – ezt Watson nem győzi eleget hangsúlyozni – a magyarok voltak, akik a háború folyamán gyakran olyan hatást keltettek, mintha nem is az osztrákok mellett, hanem inkább ellenük harcolnának. A fő problémát az élelmiszerszállítások kérdése jelentette, amit a Tisza vezette kabinet folyamatosan próbált elszabotálni, esetenként kifejezetten az éhezés szélére taszítva Bécset. Másfelől Tiszáék nagy lendülettel vétóztak meg minden olyan törekvést, ami a Monarchia föderalista átszervezésével, vagy a demokratikus jogok kiterjesztésével volt kapcsolatos, ezzel pedig bizony közvetve sokat tett azért, hogy a birodalmon belül a feszültségek végül robbanásig fokozódjanak.
  **** Mindig fázom, amikor a katonák próbálnak meg „kultúrát” vinni valahova. Annak olyan gumibot és bikacsök szaga van. Lásd SZFE és Szarka ezredes esetét.
  ***** Bár a háború után Ludendorff első számú hirdetője volt az ún. „tőrdöfés-elméletnek” (vagyis hogy a küzdelmet nem a hadsereg veszítette el, hanem a hátország, a civilek), de ez csak önmentegetés volt, a felelősség ocsmány áthárítása. Az igazság az, hogy 1918 őszére a nyugati fronton a németeknek már csak 300.000 hadra fogható emberük maradt, miközben az amerikaiak éppen készültek partra tenni vagy kétmillió bakát. És ez a 300.000 is már alig várta, hogy megadhassa magát.
  ****** Tegyük hozzá: az etnikumok ellen folytatott háborút nem a központi hatalmak művelték legbrutálisabban, hanem a cári orosz hadsereg, ami mindenhová vitte magával antiszemitizmusát, és olyan pogromokat rittyentett a galíciai zsidó kisebbség ellen, hogy még.
  ******* Kivéve a zsidók. Ők ritkán vághattak vissza,főképp azért, mert mindenki őket akarta először elgyepálni, és a hátuk mögött nem állt egy nagyhatalom sem, aki eredményesen meg tudta volna védeni őket.
  ******** Nyilván nem véletlen, hogy azok között a németek közül akik a békekötés után mindenüket (házukat, vagyonukat) elveszítették, mert menekülniük kellett mondjuk Lengyelországból vagy az új Csehszlovák államból, hatszor annyi tömeggyilkos került ki a második világháború során, mint a népesség egyéb részeiből.
• 
  Anthony Taylor

  Trapped.
  
  Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson is an excellent look into all aspects of The German Empire and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. From politics, objectives, tactics to actions and personalities a full account of why the war started, how was thought and why the Central Powers lost is laid bare.
  
  Watson is English, but the narration is not biased, it’s fair in my opinion. Of course on one of history’s most important events there are differing opinions and others may not agree on this. My one complaint however, is that it is probably too short. For such a colossal subject the book is only 566 pages of text.
  
  I was though, impressed with the topics and themes Watson covers. From how the war actually started; with the Habsburg Monarchy issuing its 14 point demands to the Kingdom of Serbia in order to provoke war; to how it ended with the entire focus on German aggression and the need to hold self determination in Central and Eastern Europe. There much myth busting afoot. There is also great analysis. For example, why did General Erich von Falkenhayen plan to ‘bleed the French white’ at Verdun, how it nearly worked, but why it failed. The greatest catastrophe for the German’s in unrestricted submarine warfare and how Austria-Hungry became a sidekick to Germany.
  
  Explanation of the controversial and near on illegal British blockade which formed part of the ‘Ring of Steel’ is explained and is interesting. As today history and attention falls on Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Such is life, history is told by those who win. However, we are coming away from the this one sided approach. Germans did violate international law, invading Belgium and devastating occupied areas of resources and men, such as at Ober-Ost. But this was no more or less than other actions, other states took at the time.
  
  Ultimately the Central Powers lost through exhaustion. Being cut off from the outside world and making disastrous decisions, such as the Zimmerman Telegram, the sinking of the Lusitania or the last grasp attempts of the naval command to death charge against the Royal Navy which triggered the revolution. The encirclement ultimately starved the civilian population and limited essential military supplies to the front. In some ways it’s amazing they held out for so long! What amazes me more is Germany, a strong, confident and new county gave up everything for the dying Habsburg Monarchy. It is clear that no one expected a long and devastating war like no other.
  
  The war is absolutely the tipping point in world history, todays world is a direct result of the war. WWI and WWII are essentially part of one long 30 year conflict. Creating a weakened, fractured and lost modern Europe. Wilson’s 14 points were completely misguided and wrong, from a president who did not understand the Central Powers. Is he as much to blame for WWII as the politicians who took the world to war in 1914? Maybe, maybe not.
  
  The book is essential reading in the history of Europe and the Great War. I was completely hooked and could not put it down until it was finished. As I have said above, it should be longer. More focus could be given to the battles, conditions on the front line and what when on in the palaces, at general HQ or in the homes of ordinary citizens. However, this is not make or break for this excellent work.
• 
  Charles

  Social, political, military, and diplomatic history of Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire Central powers during the Great War of 1914-1918.
  
  
  Early war Landsers of the Imperial German Army. Note the Pickelhaube helmets discontinuted in 1916.
  
  My dead tree, format, soft back was a door-stopper of 832-pages which included footnotes, bibliography and an index. It had a UK 2014 copyright.
  
  
  Alexander Watson is a British historian and author of military and political history. He is the author of three (3) non-fiction books on WWI. This was the second book I’ve read by the author. The first being,
  The Fortress: The Siege of Przemyśl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands (my review).
  
  Firstly, this is an advanced/intermediate-level text on WWI. It would be very helpful for a reader to have a firm background in early-20th Century Military and Diplomatic history and WWI to fully appreciate this book. In particular, the period in eastern and central Europe should be well understood. In addition, I recommend having a period atlas on-hand to reference the much-changed place names throughout.
  
  TL;DR Synopsis
  
  Watson’s narrative follows a traditional chronological account, skipping about with individual chapters on significant historical: social, political, military, and diplomatic events for the four-year duration of the war. Note this book severely restricts itself to events within Germany and Austria-Hungary. The other Central Powers, and Entente powers are only discussed to the extent they affected events in Germany and Austria-Hungary, in which the former receives more consideration than the later. The majority of the narrative is the struggle of these two powers, and their eventual complete exhaustion against the greater material and population resources of the Entente. While the war was militarily lost by the Central powers on the Western Front, the effect of the war on their populations, the post-war collapse of empires, and the formation of the new, imperfect states of central and eastern Europe were well-covered.
  
  The Review
  
  Reading this book was like chewing on a log. Its long. Frankly, it was not the military and diplomatic history I anticipated. It’s very dense, and introduced me to societal areas of the conflict I was unfamiliar with. I also found the content to be also somewhat uneven. Significant wartime events found in other histories of the conflict were missing, although others previously unknown were uncovered. The writing was very much in the new style of the history from below. That is, demoting Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his able staff-officer Erich Ludendorff at
  The Battle of Tannenberg to examine the state-of-mind of serving landsers (soldiers) in the trenches and their hausfrauen (housewives) now in single parent households waiting in breadlines. However, in order, the author’s historical focus was:
  
  1.
  Social
  2. Political
  3. Military
  4. Diplomatic
  
  Generally, the sequence was chronological hinging on well-known key events in the conflict. For example, the political and diplomatic mishap in the Balkans that triggered the war, the Mobilization Race, the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, the Unlimited U-Boat War, and the Collapse of Tsarist Russia, etc.. Interleaved amongst these were chapters pausing the action, to discuss the early 20th century, eastern European politics of ethnicity, others discussed cultural and social questions in the multi-ethnic Austria-Hungary. (Ethnicity and territory are a perennial Eastern/Central European issue) Many chapters described the Materialschlacht (massive use of weapons and munitions) on both Central power’s military and the populace's need to manufacture them. Anecdotes from newspapers, diaries and memoirs were used to provide context. In the end, the populace (soldiers and civilians) were starved-out by the British blockade, and the German army was eventually buried beneath the weight of the Entente's production capability and surfeit of manpower. The evolving relationship between Germany and Austria-Hungary during the course of the war was well covered. The book’s narrative also delves into the description for the Hapsburg dynasty’s military and political failures which crippled the war in the east, and burdened the militarily stronger Imperial Germany.
  
  The effect of reading this book is that of a good, albeit uneven lecture course for a student with the right background.
  
  Watson is a good writer. The narrative was clear and factual. It was also written in British English. The book was professionally edited. I found no mistakes in the text. I noted that this book was not as slyly amusing as the author’s later book
  The Fortress: The Siege of Przemyśl and the Making of Europe's Bloodlands. However, the general tenor of the book was measured and generally academic.
  
  Use of maps was OK. Maps were located in the front of the book. I prefer maps to be interleaved with the narrative. There they provide immediate context. I also would have liked the territorial maps to have separated chronologically, rather than having one regional map with “tide water” lines for territorial extents. Use of tables and charts was scant. A picture is worth a thousand words.. The photographs provided were good.
  
  The narrative was largely Imperial German and Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg-centric. Hapsburg related prose was in minority to the German. Most of the contextual anecdotes were either German or Austro-Germanic too. The Hapsburg narrative was mostly Austrian, followed by Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Ruthenian (modern Ukrainian) and Jewish. I suspect this was due to the availability of German and Austrian-Hungarian Germanic archives vs. those of the post-war successor states?
  
  I felt it was a problem with the book, that Germany and Austria-Hungary were the only two, albeit the more important of the Central Powers in the narrative. It made the book feel very uneven. There was almost no discussion of the Ottoman Empire, and only a very small bit on Bulgaria. For example, I don’t recall any mention of the Ottomans entering the war on the side of the Central Powers in 1914 or the German diplomatic effort to do so. The Entente defeat at the Battle of Gallipoli is unmentioned, despite its affect on German and Austro-Hungarian morale.
  
  Through the social history, I received sense of what life was like for the population inside The Ring of Steel. Note there was little or no mention of British, French or Russian and much later American besiegers and occupiers. The cherry-picked anecdotes for life within the besieged territories of: soldiers, storekeepers, bourgeois gentleman and madams, and housewives over time showed the: initial enthusiasm, mid-term stoicism and eventual despair experienced by Germans and Austrians over the course of the war. For example, the rise in the cost of food, the eventual rationing and the element of starvation were particularly well done. However, a key point of the narrative was the divisive effect of the British blockade amongst the multi-ethnic (and implicitly multi-religion) eastern and central European populations of the Imperial German, Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist Russian Empires. These ill-at-ease societies fractured along ethnic lines under the stress of the war. The Hapsburg and Russian civilian/military interaction in captured, and re-captured territories were called-out as the precursor to the dehumanization of ethnic populations in the Nazi and Communist eras and more recently in the Balkans.
  
  The political history was well done. The German politics of the war were familiar. However, there have been a lot books written on them. Most folks picking up this book, will already be familiar with them. Of supreme interest, was I received a lot of missing insight into Austria-Hungary. The organizational problems of the Austria-Hungarian Empire were large. The shambolic, dual-state nature of the Empire could not operate in crisis. Count István Tisza de Borosjenő et Szeged the Hungarian prime minister, politicked to put Magyar interests ahead of the Empire’s. (Austrian PMs hewed more closely to the Empire's interests.) As a result the Hungarian Magyars were amongst the last in the Empire to starve, to the detriment of the Empire as a whole. The army in almost all respects was likewise hamstrung by the politics of the dual monarchy. In particular, funding and ethnic divisions severely degraded its effectiveness. In addition, the Austro-Hungarian war leader, Fieldmarshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf was a liability. None of his campaigns during the war were successful. That he hung-on, in a command position, until the end of the war was an striking example of the military/political bureaucracy's malfunction. This book is worth reading just for the explanation of Austro-Hungarian politics.
  
  The military history was mixed. In places it was brilliant. In others it was absent. For example, there was an amazing analysis of the
  German Verdun offensive and a pretty good one of the
  Battle of the Somme. However, there was no description of the Battle of Tannenberg, the conquest of Romania, Battles of the Masurian Lakes, or Operation Faustschlag, except in the political context. In general the eastern front, the Italian front, and the Macedonian front, received short-shrift military history-wise. Although, in the east the
  Brusilov offensive was well covered.
  
  Of interest was the militarization of the already authoritarian German and Austro-Hungarian societies as they attempted a full, but inefficient mobilization of all their resources. This did not end well. In addition, the military plundering of captured territories for food, materials, and manpower for their homelands as the war progressed was well covered.
  
  Another omission was, other than the U-Boat campaigns, the naval war was ill covered. In particular, the British/German naval competition contributed to the cause of the war. Actions in the North Sea and adjacent to the British Isles were mentioned, although not The Battle of Jutland. However, Austro-Hungary had a naval presence in the Adriatic. Engagements were fought with the Italians. Submarines were active in the Mediterranean threatening East of Suez. Forcing the Bosporus during the Battle of Gallipoli was a major Entente naval surface engagement. Finally, the Baltic became a 'German Lake', with the bottling-up of the Tsarist fleet, allowing for unobstructed commerce along its shores.
  
  Still there was much that could be learned from this book.
  
  For example, I found that until the conquest of Romania and its Ploesti oil-reserves, the Central Power’s oil came from Austro-Hungarian Galicia. Galicia was also the Austro-Hungarian bread basket agricultural region. Galicia was lost early in the war to the Russians. It was also the scene of heavy fighting early in the war. The oil fields were recovered relatively unmolested (unlike Galicia’s agricultural assets) in the unmentioned
  1915 Gorlice–Tarnów offensive. Galician oil exclusively fueled the early U-boat campaigns and wartime petroleum needs.
  
  Finally, the diplomatic history was good. It’s possible, the military history contribution suffered for a better diplomatic history? All diplomatic high points like The Zimmerman Telegram and American Neutrality were adequately covered. In particular, the diplomacy of the British Blockade, Territory Annexations as War Goals, and the Treaty of Brest Litovsk were well done. I would have liked there to have been more discussion of the bargaining between the Entente and the Central Powers over Italy’s defection to the Entente.
  
  This was a thick book, in which a lot of research was invested. Political foolishness by the weak Austro-Hungarians drew them and the Germans into a conflict with a more populous power block with larger economies. The Central Power’s need for a quickly resolved war failed. Over the course of four years of constant military pressure and blockade, the material advantages and larger manpower pools of the growing Entente Powers out-produced, starved-out, and attrited the Central Powers. This was despite the Central Powers almost completely mobilizing their populations and substantial victories on the Eastern Front. Deprivations faced by the German soldiers on the Western Front, and their families at home over the long term caused the German western bulwark to crumble. (The war was lost on the Western Front.) The dependent Austro-Hungarians with their ethnically fragmented population was swept along with Germany’s surrender. Watson also makes the point that WWI was the ignition point for central and eastern European, toxic ethnic strife that hasn’t ended even today. The imperfect, ethnically-oriented successor states of Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist Russian territories (like The Ukraine) are still problems today.
  
  I wanted this book to contain more military history, of which the author does a good job. However, this would be a worthy read for an interested and prepared student of WWI. Germany and the western front of WWI traditionally get the most popular attention. This book’s most important contribution was in describing the war in eastern and central Europe not just in military terms. WWI in eastern and central Europe was not a sideshow for millions of folks (properly volks). This book was a good adjunct to a study of WWI for a part of the world that is under represented in the literature.
  
  Readers may want to read
  The Eastern Front 1914-1917 by Norman Stone (my review) before reading this.
• 
  Ray

  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though the subject material was a little dry. I particularly enjoyed the use of diary entries and letters from home/the front which the author used to illustrate his points with a human touch.
  
  It explores the societal effects of the war on the populations of the main Central Powers - Germany and Austro-Hungary. It shows how initial enthusiasm turned to disappointment and dejection as the war dragged on and the loss of men and materiel mounted. This was not helped by the dastardly English blockarding ports so that the civilians on the Home Front were slowly starved.
  
  The loss of support amongst the civilians at home set up a feedback loop when the wave of troops released from the Eastern front in early 2018 failed to provide the knockout blow to France and England as had been anticipated. In the end the German army was barely holding on, and Austria collapsed from within as its constituent nations voted with their feet.
  
  Stupidly the victorious Entente imposed a swinging peace, leading to resentment and rancour, which all but guaranteed a re-match. This duly occured in 1939 as a populist orator exploited the myth that the undefeated armies at the front were betrayed by treasonous civilians, the stab in the back - dolchstoßlegende - to lead an aggrieved nation back to war. Not that it worked out any better for the Germans.
  
  Well worth a read.
• 
  Andrew

  Ring Of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, by Alexander Watson, is just as it sounds. A gigantic tome of information on the life and times of the Central Powers (excluding Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire) as they fought in World War I. Germany and Austria-Hungary are often maligned as the evil empires that started WWI I much of the Anglo-Saxon world, and as both powers lost the war, history continues to be written, mostly, by the victors. Watson takes the opposite approach, looking at the Central Powers perceptions of the war and its beginnings. To be sure, the Austro-Hungarian and German governments did wish a war to commence, especially against the alarmingly powerful Tsarist Russia. Germany also had a bit of a grudge against France, which had been ongoing for more than a century. Austria-Hungary had a beef with Serbia as well.
  
  So, when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was assassinated by a terrorist group with either tacit or explicit support from the Serbian government, and the Russians began to mobilize a bit to much for their liking, the German and Austrian high command thought it a good opportunity to act. France and Russia themselves seemed to want a war, as each coveted territory held by Germany or Austria-Hungary. Britain became involved, as the narrative goes, after the implementation of the Schliffen plan, a German offensive through neutral Belgium that would circumvent the massive fortifications on the German-France border. However, Britain seemed poised to attack Germany at any time as well, calling on their age-old policy of divide and conquer in Europe, to keep any one nation from getting to big.
  
  This book follows these issues from the German and Austrian perspective. Serbia had a long history of antagonism toward Austria (and vice versa) and France had been looking for white hot revenge on Germany for the latters victories in 1871 and 1898. Russia had racially motivated claims on Austrian Galicia. Britain wanted to contain German power on the continent and expand its colonial holdings at both Germany and the Ottomans expanse. Clearly, the evil empire theory can be expanded to include all combatants.
  
  Watson also examines the viewpoint of the German and Austro-Hungarian people at this time. The food shortages that hit the Central Powers due to mismanagement, hostile blockade, and poor yields was devastating for most people. War fervour, loyalty and national hegemony are examined. This period also saw the rise of racially motivated cleansings perpetrated by the central powers (and a few of the Entente members as well) targeting those deemed disloyal. Predictably, Jews, Polish, Ruthenian and Czech subjects of both Empires were targeted with deportation, and sometimes martial violence, often unfairly. Watson notes that Jewish volunteers in both Empires came out in droves at the beginning of the conflict, and racial minorities in the Hapsburg domains often came out to try and curry favour for greater autonomy. This autonomy was suspect to the ruling German and Hungarian landed-gentry, and was often met with outright hostility later in the war.
  
  The soldiers on the front-line and the war are also examined in detail. German soldiers faced the same hardships as those they fought, with terrifying artillery bombardments, suicidal charges into machine gun fire, and trench life dominating. Psychological strain and physical harm befell them everyday, and many fought bravely in a conflict that was deemed to be defensive by the citizens of the Central Powers. The war aims of the Central Powers are also examined. They originally started off as small, with Austria wishing to teach Serbia a lesson, and possibly set up a puppet government or even directly annex the state. German war aims were much more modest off the bat, however. Germany originally wanted France to destroy her border fortresses, and possibly set up a puppet state in Belgium. They also wanted to "move Russia as far away from our borders as possible" which was ambiguous enough, but probably entailed freeing the Baltic states and possibly creating a sovereign state of Russian controlled Congress Poland. However, as the war expanded, their war aims grew. Security became the watchword, and Germany wanted to dismember both France and Russia to ensure "security for all time."
  
  Watson takes a look at all of these things using an unbiased lens and tone. He does not fall for the history of the victors, but looks at the Central Powers for what they were: European states that had their own aspirations, insecurities and social, racial and class issues. This can be said of all powers at the time, including Entente Russia (who collapsed in 1917 due to class strife) France (with its multi-ethnic colonial Empires and class issues) and Britain (ditto with France). Watson's take on this is refreshing.
  
  The book itself is an interesting social history of the Central Powers during WWI. It is a side of the conflict that is rarely scene, and the deep examination of German and especially, Austro-Hungarian society is fascinating as it is rare in modern history books. A small criticism would be the lack of economic information on the Empires at this time. Although Watson examines the crop yields of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and comments briefly on the inflation experienced during the war, he does not go into detail on the economic background of these issues. Although some would find that dry, it would have tied the whole book together neatly, and would have helped to offer a background on some of the monetary issues faced by the Central Powers. Alas, another book maybe.
  
  All in all, a great read and a refreshing take on WWI that is often unheard of in Western historical literature. Worth a read for WWI buffs and those interested in Germany and Eastern Europe.
• 
  Sotiris Karaiskos

  Most books about the First World War are in one thing clear: Germany and Austro-Hungarians were the bad guys and their opponents were the good ones. This is why we often see things from the side of these good people, often overlooking what happened on the other side. This lack is trying to supplement this book and I think it does in an impressive and historically correct way. It does not, of course, take their place, nor the writer try to overlook their responsibility for the start of the war and the very great crimes they have done during the war, what it does is to show us their own perspective, the suffering of their peoples, but also the crimes of their opponents who shaped their thoughts to a certain extent. He does this by presenting us a comprehensive chronicle of the participation of these two countries in the first World War, the causes that made them engage in this armed conflict, until the causes of their final defeat. After reading, I can say that I feel that I have a more complete picture of the First World War, so that is a book that I recommend to those who are interested in this issue.
  
  
• 
  Steven Peterson

  This is an outstanding work. It speaks of Germany and Austria Hungary as surrounded by a "ring of steel" in World War I--Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, (later) the United States, and some smaller countries. They were outnumbered.
  
  This story is told from the perspective of Germany and Austria-Hungary. It is the story of government and the people. It is less of a military history. If you wish a detailed description of the masterful defeat of Russian forces at Tannenberg, you won't get it. There are only four pages out of a volume of 566 pages that even mention this battle. Of course, there are other volumes that focus on the battles and campaigns in great detail (e.g., Collision of Empires: The War on the Eastern Front in 1914), and one can refer to them for that aspect of the war.
  
  The volume provides considerable information on how warfare affected the people back home. Over time, with the British blockade of sea lanes, which Germany depended upon for food and other key goods, there was a slow strangulation of Germany. Austria-Hungary? Some of its bread basket was occupied by Russian forces for a time, creating great hardship at home. Indeed, there is much discussion in this book of the interrelation of military issues and what was occurring in the two home countries. There is also considerable discussion of the political consequences in both Germany and Austria-Hungary from the war.
  
  We learn a great deal about major figures--in Germany, from Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the Kaiser and Western generals to key political leaders. The same with key players from Austria-Hungary. One immediate lesson: military leaders in the German military were much more able than their colleagues from Austria-Hungary.
  
  This is a terrific book. Sometimes, reading becomes a bit tedious from the massively detailed discussion of various elements of the conflict. But persevering is very much well worth the effort.
• 
  Ryan

  This book does a good job synthesizing recent WWI scholarship while also making its own unique contributions. The in-depth discussion of Austria-Hungary is especially interesting. Much of the material about Germany will be familiar to those who have read up on the subject, but Watson restores some much needed sanity to the historiography by taking a comparative approach. Germany’s “unique” aggression and barbarity has been a theme in discussions of the war since 1914, and this theme was re-purposed after 1945 to create the Sonderweg. Historians like Fritz Fischer believed that “Hitler was no accident” because the groundwork for German imperialism and aggression was present in 1914. Hence, there was continuity in history with Wilhelmine Germany being a sort of proto-Third reich. Recent works about Germany’s atrocities in Belgium, Southwest Africa, and its administration in the Baltic states have all emphasized this supposed continuity.
  
  Watson does not apologize for or downplay German atrocities during the war. He does, however, compare them with Germany’s peers. Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottomans all come off worse in this comparison, and the British and the French don’t fare well either. In Watson’s view, the responsibility for the 800,000 civilians who died in Central Europe from malnutrition is split between the British, who deliberately blockaded food deliveries, and the Central powers for mismanaging their war economies. To my knowledge, this famine caused the highest number of civilian deaths during the conflict.
  
  The discussion of the treaties that ended the wars is also very engaging. Watson suggests that Brest-Litovsk should not be characterized in such negative terms as it sometimes is, because the Germans were actually releasing many nationalities (Lithuanians, Finns, Latvians, Estonians, Poles) from the Tzarist empire and granting them more autonomy. It created an Eastern Europe that looked more like contemporary times than it did during Romanov or Soviet hegemony. The treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain, and Trianon also come in for some criticism (Trianon was especially harsh). The Allies’ desire to create post-war security by dismantling Austria-Hungary and downsizing Germany were not all that different from Bethmann Hollweg’s annexationist war aims meant to achieve “security for all time”. When discussing Eastern Europe in particular, Watson seems very skeptical that self-determination, at least as practiced by the victors, was ever a good idea, since in the long run it fostered more irredentist violence and authoritarianism. This perspective is a thoughtful way to connect the WWI era to Timothy Snyder’s concept of “the bloodlands”.
• 
  Jerome Otte

  An excellent and comprehensive history of the Austrian and German war effort during the First World War. One of Watson’s main arguments is that the history of these nations from 1914-1918 played a major role in Europe’s later catastrophe in the 1930s and 1940s. “The great material and emotional investment,” of Germany and Austria-Hungary, he writes, “ensured that defeat, when it came, would have a catastrophic impact on their societies.” Germany’s defeat was to a large degree psychological.
  
  Watson describes all of the ill-formulated decisions made by the governments in Berlin and Vienna, governments that, Watson argues, knew little about their society’s suitability for total war, or lack thereof. For example, the crisis atmosphere in Vienna before the war was to some degree justified by problems related to its ethnic diversity, but most of these ethnic groups simply wanted more autonomy, rather than full independence, and were willing to compromise, one of many distinctions that Vienna failed to appreciate. At the same time, the disconnect between German diplomacy and military strategy was one of the causes for the war’s outbreak, and one of the causes for America’s entry into the war.
  
  Watson does a great job showing these two powers at war, from their initial victories to their eventual defeat. He describes the ebb and flow of the Central Powers’ fortunes and the impact it had on the civilian population. His depiction of Germany,a powerful, modern nation-state, and Austria-Hungary, a backward multi-ethnic melting pot held together by flimsy compromises was very interesting. He also explores many related issues that other histories tend to overlook, like how the people of both nations reacted to inept leadership, and how the war prompted invasions and forced migrations that led to considerable ethnic tensions later. The Central Powers’ administration of the territory they conquered is also given good treatment.
  
  Watson shows how both powers were surrounded on all sides by hostile nations with superior forces and stronger economies, and how this influenced their decision to try for a quick victory in the west before bringing overwhelming strength to bear on the east. But, of course, 1914 turned out to be disappointment, and they were stuck with a costly eastern front and the eventual intervention of the US (forced by German ham-handedness into a war it wanted to avoid), which blocked any hopes of any kind of victory on the western front. They were able to keep fighting for so long more or less because they simply had no choice, and because they were successful in stirring up their populations against the enemy, although this was easier done in Germany than in Austria-Hungary.
  
  A great history of these nations’ war efforts. Much of the book’s perspective deals with the Central Powers’ military and population, meaning we get little regarding their intellectuals, or the German politics of the war; still, Watson does an admirable job explaining this from Austria-Hungary’s perspective, since that side of the issue is so much more complicated.
• 
  Shoti

  History is written by the victors. This is why I found the idea of ​​writing about World War I from the point of view of the losers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, fascinating by its uniqueness. Ring of Steel is one of the best history books I have ever read. Watson's eloquent writing and his intellectually satisfying analysis of causality are all the more captivating thanks to his attention to defusing certain long-standing historical myths.
• 
  Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer

  Engrossing account of the First World War examining the war exclusively from the viewpoints of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians and also examining the war holistically, looking particularly at its impact on society as well as the trends and forces set in motion which would lead to the horrors of the Second World War.
  
  A key theme of the book is that for both societies the war was by necessity a total people's war - relying for its success on a mobilisation of all parts of society bottom up as well as top down and with the home front as crucial as the front line. This was achieved more effectively in Germany (especially after the olive branch offered to and accepted by the Social Democrats at the war's outset) than in the Dual Empire where the split nature of the Empire (Watson portrays a negative picture of the Hungarians in particular) and the need to appeal to local and nascent national sympathiser meant that even when it was successful such appeals sowed the very seeds of the Empire's destruction. In Germany the consensus held for some time but finally unravelled into a class and left/right driven civil war.
  
  Particularly interesting areas where Watson focuses and which are often omitted in traditional Allied focused accounts of the war include: the traumas of the Russian invasion of the East of Germany which in turn convinced most of the populace that the War was one of national and personal survival; the effects of the English economic blockade first in the economic hardships it produced, second in installing a view of England as the main and most hated enemy, thirdly in fracturing society as different groups (largely national and ethnic but also people against government in Austro-Hungary, but in Germany Prussia versus Barvaria, cities versus rural areas, the armed forces versus the home front, and even inter-service and inter-rank in the army and everywhere Gentiles versus Jews) accused each other of hoarding, profiteering or preferential treatment; the Germans use of economic plundering, deportations and forced labour in occupied areas and their realisation that the new all out war made the maintenance of buffer zones a post war necessity thus meaning even a defensive war naturally lead to aggressive war aims, something which in turn lead to the breakdown of social cohesion as the people realised that the army was fighting for outright victory rather than a negotiated peace; the disastrous decision to move to unrestricted submarine warfare; the effect of the Russian revolution, disastrous in Austro-Hungaria exacerbated due to the governments inept handling of the peace terms with Russia which set in force nationalism which quickly broke up the Empire and more complex in Germany - encouraging agitation at home, but also freeing up the Eastern armies for a final all out push in the West (one Watson argues could have succeeded if the Germans had concentrated in Amiens, a choke point for English supplies) which once it failed combined with the increasing tensions in the army's ranks to lead to rapid collapse.
  
  Logically written, each chapter (each of which are presented effectively chronologically but also themed) starts with a context and ends with a summing up (often skilfully contrasting the German and Austro-Hungarian situation) and a logical segue way into the next chapter. Sometimes too detailed and with an over-emphasis on statistical tables, but excess detail is clearly signposted and easy to skip. A real area of strength of the book is how it usefully focuses in sometimes on individuals or individual towns to illustrate a more general point.
  
• 
  Thomas

  I received this ARC free from the publisher through Net Galley.com. I give this book 3 stars. Two major defects: Promised maps are not there(Maps in Table of Contents says"to come") and about 1/2 of charts/tables do not load properly. Strengths: The author has done an impressive amount of research--120pp of footnotes, 60+pp bibliography--many of the sources are in the original German. The book reads well, w. the major focus on the home front,i.e, how the 2 governments harnessed the population to support the war. I posted this so the publisher could fix the defects and make it a 4 star book. My Kindle edition does not give page numbers, but the table of contents shows it to be 800pp, including footnotes, etc.
  In an interesting comment in the Epilogue, the author mentions that a high proportion of those who lost their homes/farms at the end of WWI participated in Holocaust crimes. The bibliography is excellent. A final puzzling note--the index is missing.
  
  I have not received a corrected version of this ebook(7 months after above review) and therefore recommend that it should only be purchased in a print version.
• 
  Bob H

  It's more than a military history: this book tells us much about the economic and social events of the war, and from the standpoint of the two empires' peoples. We also see the decisions, often mistaken, by their leaders: the Austro-Hungarian policy of reprisal and atrocity (far more extensive than the Germans', we find); the German decision to open U-boat warfare against neutral shipping, bringing in the US on the enemy side; the missteps in peace negotiations in Russia and elsewhere. A century on, it's a detailed, readable, worthwhile and sometimes revelatory look at this calamity, from a side of the war that has been sometimes neglected, sometimes misrepresented. Strong recommendation for those interested in the period.
• 
  T. Fowler

  I agree with the Daily Telegram’s review that describes Ring of Steel as “Outstanding.” Alexander Watson leads the reader through all the significant political and socio-economic events in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War, revealing a picture that I found fascinating. He shows that support for the war was not universal and it deteriorated as the war dragged on, particularly as the populations began to suffer from famine. What struck me most was the description of the brutal treatment of civilians by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies as they conquered territory in Belgium, Galicia and the Baltic states – forcible evacuations, pillage, rape and murder of all minority racial groups but always against Jews living in these areas. These atrocities were all possible, Watson shows, because the military were able to maintain their control over the direction of the war despite the realization that the Central Powers could not win after their failure to defeat France in 1914. The most amazing example of the military’s control was how Ludendorff created a personal fiefdom, called Ober Ost, over the Baltic states where he had absolute authority. Well-researched and well-written, Watson clearly explains the complex events that led to the war in 1914, as well as the breakdown of society in Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1918. My view of the First World War was entirely changed after reading this book.
• 
  Stuart Fleet

  I am a latecomer to this acclaimed German and Austria-Hungary centric account of the catastrophe that was the first world war. As you would expect, Ring of Steel includes a thorough analysis of all the key military campaigns, however I found the book particularly illuminating when our attention is drawn to the anxieties and hardships experienced by the citizens away from the front. Watson spells out clearly how political instability, fear, racism, mass deportation/migration, administrative incompetence, and creeping starvation back home all play an important role in the decision making processes that maintained this senseless conflict over such a long period of time. (Unusually, he even takes time to highlight the influence that “love" had on the rhetoric of war.) The traumas experienced through these years by ordinary people living in the patchwork of nations that makes up Central Europe undoubtedly laid a terrible foundation for the further horrors to come throughout Europe (and the wider world) later in the century. Ring of Steel is an original, extremely well researched and accessible presentation of a highly complex subject. In my opinion it deserves all the awards it achieved.
  
• 
  Peter Fox

  At just shy of 800 pages, if you include endnotes, etc, this is a substantial book. I daresay the hardback could be weighed, rather than have the pages counted. It's also a very readable book. It took me a good 12 days to read it, but I did move house in that time, so it's not a book that will take you months of work to get through.
  
  This book looks at Germany and Austria-Hungary's experience of the First World War. This in itself is refreshing. It's nice to read something on this topic that isn't centred on England. Whilst The Somme does feature, it isn't the mainstay of the book and that's a welcome change.
  
  Instead, the domestic fronts of both empires is where the action is. The various battles, advances and retreats all feature, but mostly to provide context to what was occurring at home. Watson really brings out the central importance of the deteriorating domestic situation, making a strong argument that this helped push both empires into the abyss.
• 
  David C Ward

  WWI: the cause of all our problems? Possibly! A really excellent survey/interpretation of the Central Powers in WWI from the aggressive defensiveness that spawned the drive for war to the final breakdown of the army, government and civil society. It’s especially good on coverage of the east where horrendous fighting was coupled with ferocious nationalist and ethnic conflict. You have to shake your head at just how bad the political and military leadership of the Austrian Hungarian empire was. And Germany was not well served in the end by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
  Watson points to food supply as a key element in the Powers’ collapse as well as military mistakes like unrestricted submarine warfare. Even given the book’s focus on Central Europe, I thought there needed to be some mention of the Ottoman Empire as well as colonial warfare in Africa.
• 
  Aaron

  Finally finished this tome on the German and Austro-Hungarian experience during WWI.
  
  Western civilization shot itself in the head with the first World War. That's just about all I've got to say about that.
• 
  Karyssa

  I just can't help but to want to see and understand things from every side.
  Never before explored, I thought that this book was amazing in its endeavour to try and understand what the war would have been like for Austria-Hungary and the German Empire.
  I did feel like the author was still pushing their own bias slightly (i.e. Austria-Hungary) but still an insightful read.
• 
  KB

  I was really looking forward to reading this book and it did not disappoint. It's also, I think, quite an accessible history of the First World War from Germany and Austria-Hungary's perspective.
  
  The book impressed me immediately. I feel like whenever you read any histories about the start of the war, you're always told about ethnic tensions and problems within Austria-Hungary, but it never goes much deeper than a surface-level, very general overview, and then all of a sudden the Archduke has been assassinated. Watson goes much further than this and repeatedly looks at the Empire's various ethnicities throughout the book.
  
  I was expecting this to be much more battle-heavy than it is. The actual fighting is definitely not the focus of the book. This means that much more time can be devoted to other topics (interesting or, perhaps, slightly less interesting), which is great, but I was a little disappointed, I'll admit. I'm somebody who loves reading about combat and was sort of looking forward to getting a more detailed account from the other side with great first-hand accounts thrown in. Unfortunately this wasn't really the case. To be sure, the major battles are in there and Watson does cover them in an engaging way, but it tends to be quite brief.
  
  We spend a lot of time on the home front and there's even a chapter devoted to the war at sea, particularly focusing on unrestricted submarine warfare. There's also lots of politics. And over the course of the book, it provides a very interesting examination at the two armies. I found that it didn't matter what Watson was writing about, he made it very easy to understand. It doesn't mean it was all interesting, but that's personal preference, really.
  
  Being from the German and Austro-Hungarian perspective does not mean Watson continually lauds the two empires with praise and digs as hard as he can to pull up incidents to damn the Allies. Not at all. He spends a great deal of criticizing Germany and Austria-Hungary for the many ways they poorly managed the war at home, at the front and politically. For example, he calls the unrestricted U-boat campaign "the worst decision of the war" and asks, "how could Germany's leaders have been so extraordinarily stupid?" And even when German and Austro-Hungarian citizens were starving during the British naval blockade (which I loved that he included), Watson makes it clear that this partly was because neither country managed their food supply well.
  
  This is a great history examining the war from the other side. Even though it's been a century, the way we look at the First World War seems to still be quite biased and we need accounts such as this to help balance this view. I think we've (mostly) moved away from the thought that the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were barbarous Huns raping, pillaging and committing war crimes throughout Europe, or that the Germans were essentially Nazis just in a different decade. However, misconceptions still exist and these can't always be corrected in works that largely focus on the Western armies.
  
  Does this book attempt to do a complete 180 from what we know and cast the two empires in a different, positive light? Absolutely not. Does it perhaps provide convenient examples and maybe stretch or stress them to fit with what the author wants to show? At times, yes. However, it does is offer a more balanced look, recognizing the wrongs they committed while challenging some misconceptions, and providing good coverage of the two empire's war experiences for both their citizens and armies. While not perfect, Ring of Steel is nonetheless a great read and, in my opinion, a very welcome addition to the study of the First World War.
• 
  Emmanuel Gustin

  This is, as histories of wars go, a somewhat unusual book. It focuses on the Central Powers of World War I, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, telling the story from the side of the losers. It is not a military history, in the sense that it devotes relatively few of its 566 pages (not including notes and bibliography) to fighting and battles, although it does some. Instead, this is mostly a political history, a social history, and economic history: The history of people's and states under the enormous strain of the Great War.
  
  Most accounts of the Great War focus on the Western Front, and perhaps Gallipoli in addition. This book gives ample space to Eastern Front, Central Europe, and the fate of the Habsburg empire, in to failing struggle to keep German-speaking Austrians, Magyars, Ruthenes, Poles, Slovenes, Croats, Jews, Italians, and numerous other ethnic groups together in the state in which they used to live, as Watson quotes one of their politicians, in well-tempered discontent. The war ripped apart the unstable edifice, creating tensions that are still with us today. It is an almost unknown history, obscure and forgotten at least by Western Europe, but important.
  
  Alexander Watson is sympathetic to the people but unsparing in his criticism of the political and military leadership, which was often short-sighted and at odds with the aspirations and ideals of the people they ruled. The Great War ended with the defeat on the battlefield of the armies of the Central Powers, but with that defeat also the last support holding up the contested legitimacy of the regimes fell away. If Watson is sharply critical about the mismanagement of the German leadership, he is scathing about the startling incompetence of the Austrians and Hungarians, who embraced the war in the hope that it would unify their country, but then proceeded to take steps that could only antagonise national groups and worsen tensions. Some of them were literally willing to let members of other ethnic groups starve, to protect their own economic interests.
  
  As an analysis of the course the Great War took, why it was fought and why it ended as it did, this makes a powerful impression.
• 
  Ton

  Very strong account of the First World War from the perspective of the Central Powers. Emphasis is on what the effects of the war were on the population, and how decisions by leadership affected those populations. The decisionmaking process is also examined, with powerful argumentation about intent and reasons given why intentions did not pan out (or did not pan out as wished).
  Most impressive parts, for me, are the tragedy that the different nations goaded themselves and eachother into going to war (pre-emptive or not) and when Watson details the precursors of the Nazi horrors which were to follow. Arbitrary and callous deportation of peoples and ruthless extraction of resources (including human) from conquered territories stand out most of all.
  Assignation of guilt is kept reasonable, with Watson clearly pointing out the kind of actions which were against the law of the time (international law was still in its infancy), and comparing the relative “righteousness” of the Allies’ and Central Powers’ actions. Watson holds to a line of morality, but does not overdo it, nor does he become preachy, which are strong points in his favour. Another point in his favour is the way he keeps bringing the central themes to the fore, be it starvation and attrition or focal points of the leadership’s strategies.
• 
  Steve

  This is a hugely important book about an all too misunderstood or even worse, ignored area of history which was incredibly decisive for the course of the twentieth century as a whole. I am wholly convinced by Watson’s basic thesis that the ways in which the Austro-Hungarian and German home fronts experienced the trauma of World War One was critical for how the flawed peace of 1918-1919 transformed into the fiery cataclysm of World War Two. Specifically, Watson joins a rising chorus of voices (see also Timothy Snyder “Bloodlands”, the forthcoming book “The Vanquished” by Robert Gerwarth, as well as the conclusion of Mark Thompson’s book about the Italian Front “The White War”) that argues that for the Central and Eastern Europeans, both the experience of WWI and its flubbed aftermath (failure of international institutions, Western states, and cycles of Red and White terror in the aftermath of the Russian revolution of 1917) set Europe on a course that made the WWII much more likely than it would have otherwise.
  
  While the centenary of the First World War has produced a flood of books on the subject, it is notable that most histories in English focus on the experiences of the Entente powers (Russia, Britain, France, Italy, and later the USA). Germany, and to an even greater extent her benighted ally Austria Hungary tend to be relatively ignored. Watson addresses this lacuna and moreover does so by focusing primarily on the home front rather than on battles and campaigns. In so doing, he shows the ways in which Germany and Austria-Hungary went into a modern total war at least partially shackled by the political and social compromises that were themselves the product of the aftermath of the Wars of Napoleon and the 1848 revolutions (to be fair, Watson does not do as good a job as he could have in grounding his discussion in these events, however, as I have recently read in these areas – including Mike Rapport’s excellent “1848 – Year of Revolutions” – I easily identified these connections. A less versed reader might be advised to review these historical episodes in order to understand how they shaped the monarchical and imperial states of the 19th century.
  
  Watson, in incredibly fine grained detail, demonstrates how the combination of British total blockade plus truly incompetent political management of national economies by multiple parties, led to a state of hunger that modern readers would tend to associate with the political and terror famines of either Communist regimes or Sub-Saharan Africa (in fact, I would have wished for Watson to draw this comparison and perhaps set the nutritional deficits of, say, 1990’s Somalia and Germany/Austria-Hungary side by side.) In any case, whereas before reading this book I knew only generally how the naval blockade caused intense suffering for the citizens of the Central Powers, now I know in much greater detail the specifics of this suffering and how dreadful it was. There are lessons here for those who advocate sanctions as a “peaceful” method of applying international pressure, or for “total war” advocates.
  
  This intense suffering, Watson argues, along with what he considers to be Woodrow Wilson’s wrongheaded formulation of “self-determination of peoples” put severe stresses on what had been a highly mixed ethnic society. This society, as Watson is at pains to show – far from a harmonious and peaceful utopia – but for all its flaws, it did work. Under the pressure of war, however, the war produced a “retreat” as Watson calls it, to reliance on ethic communities as a source of social and material support. This tremendously enflamed existing anti-Semitic sentiments, but further, radically transformed anti-Semitism from a communal problem into a national problem – that is from one that was handled by local actors (see also anti-Black lynchings in the US South before the Civil Rights Era) into a problem which many sought to address using state violence. It is not that WWI “produced” the Nazis in any deterministic sense, but it did, according to Watson, substantially clear the path.
  
  The failure of the governments of the Central Powers to reconcile wildly different goals: maintaining a residuum of monarchical government, placating the increasingly powerful bourgeoisie and laboring classes, providing state support for a public that was committed to great sacrifice, and winning a war against huge adverse odds, in this account, set up a Habermasian “legitimation crisis” avant la lettre. The turning point seems to have been the infamous “Turnip Winter” of 1916-1917 in Germany, when food supplies ran so low that citizens were issued turnips instead of meat or bread. While this winter by itself did not destroy regime legitimacy or immediately spur calls for reform, it did “start the clock ticking” on both the Wilhelmian and Imperial Austrian regimes – but they were too tone deaf to hear it until far too late. The criminal decision of both political and military elites (the vile Ludendorff in particular) to “double down” the bet rather than seek another solution exacerbated what was by 1917 was destined to be a wretched end of the war. But Watson points out that the Entente was little better, being both unwilling to curb the mercenary Italian government or to relent in their own vengeful course.
  
  The upshot was an outcome where the “war to end wars” produced the exact opposite, Central and Eastern Europe were launched into “decades of crisis” (to invoke the title of Ivan T. Berend’s book on pre-WWII Eastern European history). While the denouement of the Second World War was even more terrible in some ways than the end of the First, as Tony Judt argues in his magisterial work “Postwar”, the leaders of the Allied powers did succeed in a much more durable, if very “Roman” sort of peace. Watson is particularly scathing of Woodrow Wilson, whose high-minded approach to world politics was far too ethereal to be of much practical use for engineering an end to what had been a truly terrible conflict. (But neither is Watson a “realist” in the political science sense of the term, seeing Ludendorff and Hindenburg’s relentless Social Darwinian worldview as major contributors to the cataclysm at the end of the war). Rather than producing a just peace, Wilson’s proposals worsened an already critical governance problem and directly led to vicious communal violence in the hugely mixed ethnic map of Central and Eastern Europe. (Few now remember that the Carpathians and other areas were suffused with German towns, the rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth was a Transylvanian German from what is now Romania, Galicia was suffused with Jewish, Ruthene (Ukranian), and Polish communities, and so forth). Nationalism had created problems in this region in 1848, after 1918, with modern communications, it created a bloodbath that in some ways did not end until after 1945.
  
  This book is in many ways, particularly in its sedulous use of evidence, a tour de force and an absolutely essential addition to the library of any person interested, as I am, in questions of governance, nationalism, local and state violence, and the brutal course of twentieth century history.
  
  That said, this book is far from perfect. Having heard the author interviewed on the BBC History Magazine, I understand that this is his first major book and that he is a fairly young professor. As is normal in such cases, his writing style remains somewhat unpolished from my point of view, the details of which I will describe below. (Admittedly, as an advanced graduate student, ABD in the parlance, I myself am far from polished in some of my works and I have committed many of Watson’s sins as well. Nevertheless, when I compare Ring of Steel to works by TCW Blanning or Diarmaid MacCulloch, the level of coherence and polish is not the same).
  
  One problem, and not entirely a bad one at that, is that the book raises more questions than it answers. Namely, it whets my appetite for finding out more about this era (surely a good thing). Having open questions is in many ways a good mark because it shows that the topic of the book is important and relevant. However, I dislike the way in which Watson handles these open questions. To use a metaphor, it is like taking a tour of a house with a real estate agent and passing open rooms about which the agent says little or nothing but rushes on by. Specifically, I wish that Watson had spent more time discussing the connections of the post-French Revolution era and the 1848 revolutions to the actions of the Central Powers. In particular, the political structures of the Central Powers, including the unwieldy Austro-Hungarian polity, were defined by these events, much more so, I would argue, than for the Entente powers other than Russia.
  
  Further, I really wish that Watson had not rushed so fast through the German and Austro-Hungarian revolutions of 1918, which in many ways were the culmination of the events of the war. Practically speaking, this curtailment is understandable given just how much Watson went through in the prior 400+ pages. I can comprehend why Watson, having said so much about the war proper, would not be able to spend much time on revolutionary Germany proper. After all, the book as is represents a weighty tome.
  
  I would argue, however, that given Watson’s overall thesis, his abbreviated account of the German revolution represents a major missed opportunity. Given the *extreme* dearth of works in English on this period (aside from a scattering of Marxist works, inevitable because of – to Marxists anyway – the martyrdom of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg during the Spartacist phase of the revolution). Hence a new account of this important and overlooked period is welcome.
  Now, given what I previously said about Ring of Steel already being a long work, I think Watson could have worked in a discussion of the German revolution had he trimmed and condensed much of the book. If anything, I felt the book to be at times too “fine-grained”. He went into great detail about the home front, but on the whole did not do enough to provide an authorial overview of particular periods. There was a lot of detail but it did not always cohere well. I found myself relying heavily on my preexisting knowledge of the period in ways that less well-versed readers could not.
  
  For instance, this is not a book of military history, unlike many accounts of the war, he barely discusses battles, and in the end discusses just ones that provide key transition points for the home front, such as Austria-Hungary’s failures to subdue Serbia in 1914, the Somme and Verdun offensives of 1916, Brusilov’s offensive in 1916, and (very abstractly), the German summer offensives of 1918. On the whole, I support this effort as Watson’s focus is the home front proper. However, he glossed over important events such as Romania’s disastrous entry into the war on the Entente side with little discussion, not even just a paragraph or two for formatting discussion. In short, I would have wished for a bit less detail and considerably more of Watson’s own judgment. As it is, I have lots of specifics, but still struggle to put them together. Ironically, whereas I am of the mind that fiction writers should “show, not tell”, historians often need to do the opposite, tell and not show (too much).
  
  Writing at a somewhat higher level of abstraction (without being wholly abstract), would also have made the book more accessible. Take it from me, with way too many years in graduate school (two masters degrees and working on a PhD) that when I say the book was a slog, I speak from reading a great many dense books. It was not poorly written, indeed on the whole the grammar and phrasing were quite good. Nor was it “leaden” like some other books. No, the problem was that the paragraphs (many of which are quite long), were so crowded with facts (the great triumph of the book) that the argument was frequently hard to follow. Key sentences that should have begun their own paragraphs were buried inside page long paragraphs, and the transitions were often not that good. At certain times, when Watson was particularly engaged, the prose picks up and becomes easy to follow, but for much of the book this reader was engaged in judicious skimming. Again, for comparison I would refer the reader to works by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tim (TCW) Blanning, Paul Cartledge, and many others.
  
  In all, a really important and hugely enlightening book for people interested in the history of this period but rather rough around the edges. I look forward to additional books from this author. Who knows, perhaps in future Alexander Watson will expand on this period and write an account of the German Revolution. I for one would welcome it.
  
• 
  Joseph Spuckler

  “We began the war, not the Germans and still less the Entente -- I know that.”
  ~ Baron Leopold von Andrian- Westberg.
  
  Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson is the history of World War I from a German and Austrian setting. Watson holds a PhD from Oxford University. He lectures on the social, economic, military and political history of the First World War, the Second World War, and the Habsburg Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He currently teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Watson has published and has done extensive research on the history of World War I.
  
  Ring of Steel holds the claim to be the first modern history of the war told from the Axis perspective. The Axis powers mobilized on an unprecedented scale. Germany mobilized almost 13.5 million men, 86% of the male population between the age of 18 and 50 passed through the armed forces between 1914-1918. Austria-Hungary mobilized 78% of its military aged men during the years of the conflict. Watson makes three main points with this work. First the call to war was not just a state command in Germany; support ran throughout the country and at all levels. Secondly, he attempts to explain the growing and escalating violence of a war that was thought to be defensive by all sides. The alliances put both sides on the defensive until the outbreak. The third theme concerns the break up of societies by the war.
  
  Germany and Austria-Hungary were very different countries. Germany became a state in 1871 and accepted a national identity rather smoothly. Austria-Hungary was a dual monarchy with two separate parliaments and a centralized foreign policy, military, and finance under the Habsburg leadership. Austria Hungary was a collection of separate nationalities and eleven spoken languages. Although under a collective empire, there was no ethnic, language, or national unity as in Germany. A modern observer looking in at Austria-Hungary would be curious as to how it held together.
  
  Watson brings a few new thoughts to light in his book. One event took me by surprise. Unrestricted submarine warfare has been debated and is usually regarded as ineffective in the long run. Despite the massive amounts of sunk cargo, it did not help Germany in the end. Watson makes another point, this is the first time I have heard it, that unrestricted submarine warfare was responsible for Germany’s defeat. His argument is that England was going broke. The war was costing England 2 million pounds a day,and England would be bankrupt by March 1917 and out of the war. The United States was at odds with England over its strict contraband definitions and not respecting the rights of neutrals. England effectively prevented trade with Germany. Unrestricted submarine warfare changed the US position and doomed Germany.
  
  Watson also concentrates on the social and economic effects of the war in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Jobs and food became scarce. People began their own gardens and even pets changed. Dogs and cats were replaced with edible pets: rabbits, ducks, and goats. Racial issues played a role in the war too. The Russians began persecution of Jews in conquered lands. The Entente propaganda created German atrocities that did not exist, and Russia’s army actively prosecuted soldiers who raped women in occupied territory. The Austrian public attacked their Croat soldiers for wearing Croat colors on their uniforms -- nationalism was an attack on the empire. Inside Austria-Hungary extreme enforcement of sedition laws were well publicized.
  
  Ring of Steel gives a detailed look inside both Germany and Austria during WWI. Military as well as civilian issues are covered in great detail. Watson goes through great lengths to document all his writing. Nearly one quarter of the book is bibliography and citations. Ring of Steel is more than a war history. It is a social history that not only describes the war, but the war's effect on the people.
• 
  Brian Manville

  "Winners write the history." We've all heard it and probably said it a time or two as amateur historians. Granted, up until the last couple of hundred years, there were no losers available to tell their side of the story as they were either dead or slaving away serving their conquerors. With warfare taking a more "civilized" turn (cough cough), we now have the ability to have the thoughts and recollections of the losing side. The most obvious of these being of the Lost Cause histories of the Civil War era.
  
  However, Alexander Watson has done something that - as far as I know - is unique in World War I history, and that is tell the story of The Great War from the German/Austro-Hungarian side. In this book, Watson tells the story not only of fighting World War I, but also the crumbling of two separate empires. This destruction is decidedly more turbulent on the Austrian side, as they struggle to manage their dualist monarchy and the multiple ethnicities over which they rule.
  
  The story begins in Sarajevo with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife. What Watson protrays are the Austrians trying to avenge their royal couple yet having almost no military means of instigating that revenge, and the Germans backing up and giving courage to their mousy allies. Outside of Germany's navy, both nations are not only not ready for war, but also outgunned and outmanned against the Entente (later Allied Powers). In modern pop culture terms, this is the equivalent of two Pee Wee Hermans talking junk and trying to fight three of your average workout bros from your local gym.
  
  A lot of these chapters could be their own books. For example, I was totally engaged in the "Turnip Winter" of 1916 and food shortages among both nations in general. The heady days of August 1914 met the hard road of civilian deprivation,. This war within the war existed between the farmers producing the food accused of gaming the market, against the shop keepers accused of inflating prices and withholding their best products for themselves, with those two pitted against the starving populace. Nothing will undercut morale like a growling stomach. In the face of riots, both nations engaged in dysfunctional attempts to maintain order.
  
  And, of course, how can you tell this story of WWI without the wacky adventures of the Third OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung) and their attempts at running both the country and the war. Paul von Hindenburg (the public, military face of the Third OHL) and his subordinate Erich Ludendorff essentially functioned as a military dictatorship, pushing aside the Kaiser and his Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. Through the total war strategy Hindenburg Program they sought to bring about a decisive victory. Lundendorff's resumption of the unrestricted U-Boat campaign was the ticket to the dance for the United States which accepted the invitation with the disclosure of the Zimmerman telegram. The proto- Martin and Lewis duo saw only authoritarian measures as a way of getting things done, such as the forcible importation of Belgians laborers to work on the German war effort. I'm sure you can imagine the shock when this did not work.
  
  Overall, one should not be dissuaded by the 800+ pages of this book. Over 100 of these pages are footnotes - and Watson footnoted the dickens out of his narrative. The book is a steady read with engaging stories and lots of information. I will say that I've never highlighted as many passages in any book as I did this one; it was that informative. The book is important because it is necessary to look at history from all possible angles to get an objective picture of the war. This book does it's job and does it well. When I read the description, I immediately gave it 5/5 in my head just for the topic alone. After reading the book, nothing in that book gave me a reason to change my mind.
  
  BOTTOM LINE: A necessary read to expand your concepts of the First World War.
• 
  Raphael

  What a book to finish reading on November 11th 2018! Well, I admit I planned my reading this way.
  
  I did not read anything about WW1 in quite some time so I decided to pick up this book for the centenary of the armistice. I knew quite a bit more from the allied side than from the central powers' side so it was very interesting to read a volume that focuses on Germany and Austria-Hungary.
  
  It is not really a military history of the war as some major battles are barely mentioned at all (Tannenberg, Jutland, Caporetto to cite a few), others are entirely omitted altogether. It all makes for an odd choice of subjects to talk about at times, but the book is very strong on other aspects.
  
  There is a great 2nd chapter on "mobilizing the people" on how the population reacted in June/July 1914. It is something that is barely ever talked about from the German or Austrian sides in other books about WW1. Some anecdotes are real nuggets like the myth of the gold cars that started around August 3rd and lasted for a week. A crazy story propagated about a supposed convoy of French cars trying to bring gold for the Tsarist Empire's war effort across Germany. Then all over the country warnings were issued and roadblocks were set up in countless villages. After a few days of fruitless search, the story went the French had changed their disguises to labourers and switched to bicycles to carry the 25+ tons of gold. After a week at least 28 people were killed by trigger-happy sentinels in Germany and some more in Austria. And that is just one among many nice stories all over the book.
  
  There is a fascinating chapter on the invasions of Germany and Austria by Russia in 1914. The author makes some strong claims, like this one p205: "The Tsarist army's invasions in the east. far more than the contemporaneous German attack and 'atrocities' in the west, offer the closest link between the campaigns of 1914 and the genocidal horrors of the mid-twentieth century. Racial ideology, anti-semitism and ambitious plans to remould and exclude populations, all hallmarks of later Nazi actions in the same region, characterized those operations". I don't think everybody will be convinced but you are definitely going to learn something.
  
  Another very good chapter pinpoints the centrality of food to the war effort and all the complications and deprivations in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the war. Watson highlights some stark contrasts in the way things were going in those two countries and also points out big differences inside of Austria-Hungary itself.
  
  The chapter on the U-boats and the unrestricted submarine campaign in 1917, which he calls "the worst decision of the war' is also very strong. It is unusually detailed and Watson managed to mine some truly astounding stories involving the campaign and its sailors.
  
  All in all, you get the feeling that Austria-Hungary's leadership and decisions were disastrous from beginning to end and that Germany somehow managed to hold out for longer than it should have against superior forces. I don't think everybody will be convinced by some of the arguments but anybody will definitely learn something reading this book.