Victory In the East: The Rise and Fall Of the Imperial German Army

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Overview of Overlooked Eastern Front in WWI
Review: I enjoyed reading "Victory in the East" which effectively covers the little-known fighting on the Eastern Front in WWI.

This book by Michael Kihntopf fills in the blanks and even goes into the fighting that took place after the Armistice ending hostilities on the Western Front. Most other accounts if they even mention the Eastern Front focus only on the Battle of Tannenburg which took place very early on in East Prussia.

Place names in Russia familier from Napoleonic or WWII battles appear in this account. We learn that the Germans advanced almost as far into Russia in WWI as they did in WWII.

Unfortunately the rather crude maps make it difficult to follow the descriptions at times which is why I am docking the book one star.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Overview of Overlooked Eastern Front in WWI
Review: I enjoyed reading "Victory in the East" which effectively covers the little-known fighting on the Eastern Front in WWI.

This book by Michael Kihntopf fills in the blanks and even goes into the fighting that took place after the Armistice ending hostilities on the Western Front. Most other accounts if they even mention the Eastern Front focus only on the Battle of Tannenburg which took place very early on in East Prussia.

Place names in Russia familier from Napoleonic or WWII battles appear in this account. We learn that the Germans advanced almost as far into Russia in WWI as they did in WWII.

Unfortunately the rather crude maps make it difficult to follow the descriptions at times which is why I am docking the book one star.

Rating:
Summary: Short, but well-researched and written
Review: In a very few pages, the author has given us a quick overview of the strategy and tactics of the Imperial German Army on the Eastern Front in World War I. There is not a lot of new ground broken, but I don't think that was the intent of the author anyway. Additionally, I was fascinated with reading about the campaigns in Rumania, the Balkans, and the Baltic republics, places where conventional histories of the First World War usually ignore what happened. Those brief chapters alone are worth the price of this book, and I highly recommend it because of them. You'll learn something new, particularly about the formation of the freikorps, which had such a devastating effect upon German history in the time period shortly after this book comes to a close.