Tannenberg 1914

by John Sweetman

Book Overview

Did Russia's sacrifice save Britain and France from defeat in 1914? Step back into the combat zone of World War One to watch a crucial moment in the struggle. Amazing visuals--color illustrations;... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0304356352
• ISBN13: 9780304356355
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Cassell
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.6" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good narrative history

"Tannenberg 1914" is a clear, concise narrative of this famous battle. In reality, it was not the complete catastrophe the Germans symbolically made of it, but it was close enough. One should be grateful for everything of substance written about the eastern front during the first world war, and this book is a nice supplement to Shovalter's classic on Tannenberg. These books are very different. Shovalter draws the large canvas and goes much more in depth on the political background etc. Sweetman is much more concise, with a narrower focus on the campaign/battle itself. The story unfolds day-by-day and is very easy to follow, although not all place-names are shown on the maps. A lot of care has obviously gone into the layout and design of the book itself, which is very inviting and reader-friendly. I longed for a bit more coverage of the battle of the Masurian Lakes, which closed the East Prussian campaign. But otherwise this is a very good read, supplemented with useful orders of battle, colourful maps and many fascinating, rarely seen and at times poignant photographs.

Well Written Book about Key Battle

Tannenberg 1914 by John Sweetman is a well written book describing one of the key battles of the First World War. In 1914 Russia and France had entered into an alliance which compelled Russia to launch offensive military operations soon after Germany began the war in the West. The purpose of Russia's offensive was to take pressure off the Western Front, give France some breathing room and force the Axis to fight a two front war. While Sweetman questions the military significance of Tannenberg, he does a marvelous job describing the battle and how a German force, half the size of its Russian counterpart, could have destroyed one Russian army and severely crippled another. Sweetman writes well and gives the reader a good sense of hows, whys and wherefores. This is a book that is well worth reading especially since there has been a dearth of writings about the Eastern Front.

A Good Book on a little-known battle

I read this book in three days last August and it is a good account of a battle that hasn't been covered very well in the English-speaking world. What makes this book even more interesting is how the author connects it with the 1410 battle when the Teutonic Knights were decimated by the Poles. If there were only more books in print on this little-known front of the First World War

Simply the Best Account Available on Tannenberg

The critical battle of Tannenberg in 1914 that set the tone for the rest of Imperial Russia's involvement in the First World War has long been a neglected subject in English language histories. This deficiency was rectified in 1991 when Dennis E. Showalter wrote Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, and for eleven years that book has stood as the best on the subject. No longer. John Sweetman's Tannenberg 1914 totally outclasses Showalter's book and is now the best available account of this campaign. Tannenberg 1914 consists of a historical prologue on the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410, five chapters on the campaign itself, an epilogue, a campaign chronology, an order of battle, a section on organization and weaponry, bibliography and notes. Unlike Showalter's book, which boasted only five crude sketch maps and no photographs, Sweetman's book has twelve splendid full-color maps of the campaign that cover the phases in great detail, as well as numerous excellent photographs. Graphically, Tannenberg 1914 is of very high quality and one would hope that the next books in this series will hold to that standard. Furthermore, most accounts of the campaign only cover the mauling of Samsonov's 2nd Russian Army during 25-30 August 1914 and neglect to say much about the fate of Rennenkampf's 1st Army. Sweetman covers both phases of this campaign in great detail, including the Battle of the Masurian Lakes on 8-13 September 1914. Sweetman is no novice historian and he quickly moves to demolish the many myths and distortions associated with the Tannenberg campaign, such as the alleged Samsonov-Rennenkampf feud and Russian communications sloppiness (they simply lacked the necessary equipment and operators at this stage to encode messages). Why did the Russians suffer defeat in this campaign? Sweetman concludes that it was a number of factors, beginning with the ineptitude of the Northwest Front Commander Zhilinski who failed to properly coordinate the operation (interestingly, Sweetman is not so harsh on Rennenkampf or Samsonov). Other major factors were luck (what if the German commander von Prittwitz had not been replaced; he was more cautious than Hindenberg-Ludendoff), totally inadequate Russian logistics, inadequate communications, and of Russian mechanized transport. On the operational side, Russian commanders continuously neglected to conduct proper reconnaissance and screening operations with their available cavalry units, which permitted the Germans to gain tactical surprise time and again (the Germans benefited from air reconnaissance and signal intercepts). Many of these Russian problems were due to the premature nature of the entire offensive; Russia had pledged to France that it would invade East Prussia by M+15 and the Tsar and General Staff stuck to that schedule. The result was that Russian troops - without much food, ammunition or medical support - did invade East Prussia close to the schedule, but that the hasty preparations had almost