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Dennis E. Showalter
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Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History) Paperback – April 1, 2004

by Dennis E. Showalter (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 49 ratings
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The battle of Tannenberg (August 27–30, 1914) opened World War I with a decisive German victory over Russia—indeed the Kaiser’s only clear-cut victory in a non-attritional battle during four years of war. In this first paperback edition of the classic work, historian Dennis Showalter analyzes this battle’s causes, effects, and implications for subsequent German military policy. The author carefully guides the reader through what actually happened on the battlefield, from its grand strategy down to the level of improvised squad actions. Examining the battle in the context of contemporary diplomatic, political, and economic affairs, Showalter also reviews both armies’ social settings and military doctrine, and shows how the battle may be understood as a case study of problems that military organizations face in the initial stages of a major war. In addition, he demolishes many myths about the battle, such as the supposed superiority of the German military, the animosity among Russian field commanders, and the assumption that the Germans viewed their opponents as a horde of uniformed illiterates.

Tannenberg’s mystique later served the Weimar Republic and Third Reich propagandists. For years its legends helped to shape German nationalist ideology and military policy. In 1941, Hitler’s Wehrmacht grossly underestimated Soviet military capability, leading to disaster in World War II.
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  1. Print length
    432 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    POTOMAC BOOKS
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    5.96 x 0.95 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1574887815
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1574887815
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“The definitive treatment. . . . [It] belongs on the shelf of any reader interested in the battle itself or the Germany which fought it.”—Journal of Military History

“A major contribution to our understanding of European military and strategic history since 1870.”—American Historical Association
 

“The most important work on that titanic clash, a ‘must’ read for all students of the First World War.”—Holger Herwig, author of Germany and Austria–Hungary in the First World War
 

From the Publisher

The first paperback edition of the classic work

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ POTOMAC BOOKS; Reprint edition (April 1, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1574887815
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1574887815
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.96 x 0.95 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 49 ratings

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Dennis E. Showalter

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
49 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Gordon P. Gailey
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book. Replacing a previous copy that I lent and never got back
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2020
Verified Purchase
The book has an interesting first part on the tangled geopolitics of the region. Good for the beginning reader.
The second part covers the campaign itself and has interesting insights on how the German Reserve units -- their "citizen soldiers" fought in the battle. The book may be light on maps but is a great read.
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Brian Wayne Wells
5.0 out of 5 stars Part of the New Blossoning of Books on the Eastern Front of the First World War
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2015
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Historians have often complained that while there has always been a plethora of writings and books on the Western Front of the First World War, there is an absolute dearth of writings on the Eastern Front. Recently, however, I have noticed that there has been a pleasant, surprising deluge of new books that have been published on the Eastern Front of that war.
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Magnitude
4.0 out of 5 stars Decent operational history of the battle
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2015
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Showalter provides an operational history of one of the most famous battles of history, and really the only battle of WWI with a clear beginning, middle, and end that was more about maneuver than attrition.

In brief, at the start of WWI in the east, the Russians invaded East Prussia. The German focus was on France and the battle in the west. The German 8th Army was meant to keep the Russians at bay until France was defeated and more forces could be brought east. Nevertheless, the German and Russian armies fought, and the Germans scored a huge victory, destroying most of the Russian 2nd Army and sending the invasion of Germany backwards. Barbara Tuchman gave a gripping (if brief) account of this battle in "The Guns of August." The battle itself is interesting because in 1914 there was an opportunity for maneuver, before the stalemate and trenches took over later.

Showalter does much to strip the battle of its halo of legend. Reconnaissance and lack of communication in this age before radio and the widespread use of radios certainly played a part. Showalter doesn't exactly make it clear, but it's hard to tell if there was any singular genius that led to the final outcome; there is no Napoleon or Montgomery here. Francois was certainly aggressive at all the right moments, but he did not oversee the entire battle like Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Too, how much Samsonov had to play in the Russian defeat isn't quite clear, either, and maybe that's the point. In the end, it often seems like these mass armies and their units were bumping into each other, or not and ending up in the right place in the right time. Showalter makes the point that the Russian soldiers were as strong and able as their German counterparts, but that Russian leadership was weaker, and perhaps more complacent in finding the enemy. The German leaders were a cut above, perhaps, but not by much. It was a stunning victory, but one that seemed to happen more by chance than design.

At the end of the book, Showalter delivers some strong chapters on the importance of the battle. In the context of WWI, the battle didn't defeat Russia; in fact, as Showalter relates, the Russians did an admirable job of saving the bulk of their army to fight later. Indeed, Showalter goes a little soft on the German failure to turn the victory into something bigger. After all, it was only after Lenin was returned to Russia that the Russians were removed; the Russians were not brought to collapse by military defeat alone. The Germans were focused on defeating France, or Great Britain, and on trying to use diplomacy to break up the Triple Entente. Tannenberg, in other words, failed to pay real dividends. Maybe that helps explains why the Germans, who in the end were defeated in WWI, needed to turn this singular victory into something larger than life. Showalter discusses the battle's importance to later German mythologizing, especially into the Third Reich era. The Germans built a totemic shrine near the battlefield. The Tannenberg motif of an army of reservists beating back the Russians from German land was used by the Germans right up to the end. Yet, it's notable that, across eras, the Germans were obsessed with these kinds of victories, but they learned only too late that stunning victories like Cannae, Sedan, Tannenberg, and even France in 1940 do not necessarily lead to a won war. In WWI and WWII, the Germans may have won themselves to defeat.

Showalter tells this story well enough. He gives a sense of what units were where, and we see the battle unfold step by step. Some colorful anecdotes from those at the front make this narrative lively at times, but not always. His diction at times is overly academic and some sentences simply ponderous. Some of the vacuous chapter headings give a sense of this; consider "Taking the Measure of Danger" or "The Province of Uncertainty," for example. The occasional foreign phrases and outre period references may indicate a desire of a young, self-conscious researcher trying to raise the subject matter of mere military history to something more scholarly and serious. In any event, the diction and overwrought prose sometimes gets in the way of clear meaning, and make the work tedious to read at times.

The maps are adequate and help follow the action, although more of them would be welcome. It seemed like a battle book like this deserved something like I'm used to seeing from Napoleonic or American Civil War battles, with troop positions at specific hours; in any event, don't expect that level of detail here. While he does an admirable historian's job of providing an even-handed account of the battle, the sources and the narrative are slightly stronger from a research standpoint for the German side. The use of German-language sources indicate a preference for sources in that language, rather than Russian. A book focused on the battle that uses more Russian-language archival sources would be interesting and provide a much-needed upgrade to this work. Who will be the David Glantz of WWI of the Eastern Front remains to be seen. Until then, Showalter's work will suffice.
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drfrompr
5.0 out of 5 stars Tannenberg Clash of Empires
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2012
Verified Purchase
This is an excellent study of a momentous battle. Excellent research and very well written. This is an all-absorbing tale of one of the great battles of World War One from (primarily) the German side. Recommended!
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Montgomery Schickelgruber Burns
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2014
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Great service. Showalter is a literary genius.
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jason m. halin
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2015
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Great
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David L
5.0 out of 5 stars Solid military history book, packed with detailed information
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2011
Although this book is a purely academic endeavor, and requires the reader to have some passing knowledge about European (and specifically, military) history in general, I have to say that out of all other academic studies of military history I've read over the years, this one was at least a bit more readable and easier to digest. I'm a little biased since I'm currently working on a personal project that is indirectly assisted by reading this book. But for anyone that wants a thorough tactical and strategic overview of the Eastern Front during the early years of WW1, this is THE book to own.

What impressed me the most in reading this book was the in-depth examination of the composition of the armies that engaged in this pivotal battle, and how command decisions that were made (or not made) greatly affected the outcome of the battle. This book also does a good job in explaining the haphazardous nature of warfare in the days before widespread communication was available...which meant that divisional/army-level commanders had to be tactically intuitive, and even imaginative, in order to carry out their orders to have a positive effect on the battle. For example, there are many points (clearly indicated by the author as well, no guessing is needed by the reader) where lack of battlefield information allowed the Russian's to spread-out their units too far apart, then allowing the more aggressive German commanders to take advantage of the situation and encircle and annihilate whole Russian units before the remaining Russian forces could react fast enough to counter-attack and maintain the momentum.

I would have liked a little more information about the Russian side of this battle...there's definitely a bit lacking there in comparison to the tremendous volumes of data available for the German angles...but a lot of that may boil down to the lack of any primary historic materials available for review on the Russian side. Since Putin came to power, access to Russian archival data (especially military information) has gotten to be a lot more difficult. So this is pet peave of mine, but a minor one given the circumstances...and certainly not enough reason to ignore this work, because it truly is comprehensive in scope and detail.
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Douaumont
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book on the Subject
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2003
This is an outstanding piece of scholarship which provides a tremendous amount of detail on not only the 1914 campaign in East Prussia, but also on the Russian and German armies, and the imperial rivalry between the two nations in eastern Europe. Amazingly well researched and superbly written, this is the best book by far on the subject.
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Top reviews from other countries

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GILBERTO RINALDI
4.0 out of 5 stars clash of empires
Reviewed in Italy on August 3, 2015
Verified Purchase
come già detto il libro è molto buono, ma non è esattamente quello che cercavo; volevo qualcosa di più per quanto riguarda lew popsizioni, le piantine, i movimenti di truppe in grafico
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Mr. Alexander R. Woodward
5.0 out of 5 stars very good
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 1, 2014
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Enjoyable and informed account of the events prior to as well as the battle itself and aftermath. A good read
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Raoul Kunz
5.0 out of 5 stars Showalter
Reviewed in Germany on October 26, 2013
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Showalter hat eine durchweg angenhm zu lesende Art zu schreiben und seine Schlüsse decken sich recht gut mit denen von Citino bezüglichd er demythologisierung der Tannenbergschlacht.
Mehr Karten wären nützlich auch wenn die vorhandenen gut und angenehm sind, so man NATO Symbole lesen kann.
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gunnerpotter246
3.0 out of 5 stars Heavy going History
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2013
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Heavy going as this is written by a serious academic, he is also an expert on Germany which means quite a lot of German quotes are not translated, I guess he presumes we are all as smart as him! If you want an easy one volume book on this fascinating campaign.... this is not it!
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