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

by Alexander Watson

Overview

A prize-winning, magisterial history of World War I from the perspective of the defeated Central Powers

For the Central Powers, the First World War started with high hopes for an easy victory. But those hopes soon deteriorated as Germany's attack on France failed, Austria-Hungary's armies suffered catastrophic losses, and Britain's ruthless blockade brought both nations to the brink of starvation. The Central powers were trapped in the Allies' ever-tightening Ring of Steel.

In this compelling history, Alexander Watson retells the war from the perspective of its losers: not just the leaders in Berlin and Vienna, but the people of Central Europe. The war shattered their societies, destroyed their states, and imparted a poisonous legacy of bitterness and violence. A major reevaluation of the First World War, Ring of Steel is essential for anyone seeking to understand the last century of European history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465094882
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/28/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	832
Sales rank:	63,670
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 2.40(d)

About the Author

Alexander Watson is professor of history at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, which won the Wolfson History Prize and the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, and Enduring the Great War, winner of the Fraenkel Prize.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Decisions for War

2. Mobilizing for the People

3. War of Illusions

4. The War of Defense

5. Encirclement

6. Security for All Time

7. Crisis at the Front

8. Deprivation

9. Remobilization

10. U-Boats

11. Dangerous Ideas

12. The Bread Peace

13. Collapse

Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

08/18/2014
University of London historian Watson (Enduring the Great War) makes a major contribution to the ever-growing historiography of WWI with this comprehensive analysis of the war efforts of the primary Central Powers: Germany and Austria-Hungary. Watson makes a strong case that “fear, not aggression or unrestrained militarism” impelled them to war in 1914. Fear fueled the unexpected popular consent that sustained both Hohenzollern and Habsburg empires in a “war of illusions” that devolved into a “war of defense” and finally into a war for survival. From the beginning, the Central Powers were overmatched and overextended. They answered the resulting “desperation and alienation” with failed policies of “compulsion and control,” a series of disastrously bad policy decisions such as the U-boat war, and a doubling-down on autocracy and repression at the expense of peace and reform. In 1917, both empires suffered from a deep “crisis of legitimacy”: only the possibility of “quick and total victory” sustained the foundering alliance. A series of desperate offensives produced military, political, and above all social collapse. Watson concludes that the “suffering, and the jealousies, prejudices, and violence that spawned or exacerbated” in Central Europe laid the foundations of WWII far more than anything decided at Versailles. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History


Winner of the Wolfson History Prize

The Society of Military History 2015 Distinguished Book Award Recipient

British Army Military Book of the Year

"In a year crowded with histories of World War I, Alexander Watson's Ring of Steel makes a truly indispensable contribution in allowing us to see from the inside out this disastrous alliance between Austria and imperial Germany.... It is a mark of talent in a historian to take familiar narratives and open them to new interpretation. Mr. Watson's book is a brilliant demonstration of this skill."—Wall Street Journal

Ring of Steel is perhaps the most important of the current crop of [WWI] books — and certainly one of the best."—Guardian (UK)

"This book, at times gripping, at other times poignant, and always revealing, marks a valuable contribution to [the] debate on the war's place in twentieth-century history."—Financial Times

"Remarkable...the first comprehensive history of the war written from the perspective of the Central Powers."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"A fresh approach in analyzing the conflict.... Watson's main concern here is to try and figure out why the loss of the war for the central powers created the unstable states that emerged in the aftermath of the conflict. He finishes off the task he has set himself here with considerable precision and skill."—Daily Beast

"British historians have tended to view the Great War predominantly from the side of the Allies. Watson has done our understanding an inestimable service by examining these familiar events from the perspective of the Central Powers."—Telegraph (UK)

"In a year dominated by memories of the First World War, this supremely accomplished book stands out. Not only does it look at the conflict from the perspective of the losing Central Powers, imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary, but it brings together political, military, economic and cultural history in an enormously impressive narrative."—Sunday Times (UK) History Book of the Year

"Watson has contributed a definitive resource to the literature on the strategic enigma being debated during the centennial of WW I."—Choice

"Illuminating...an outstanding book that has been scrupulously researched. I highly recommend this book to students of World War I and indeed anyone who wants to see how the Central Powers dealt with the stresses of war on the homefront. They will not find a better, fairer history because it has not yet been written."—Battles and Book Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 10/01/2014
Watson (history, Univ. of London; Enduring the Great War) tells the story of World War I from the perspectives of Austria and Germany. He examines the political causes and goals of the war, popular support for the battle in Germany and Austria-Hungary, and moral culpability for atrocities committed during the war. His tone is especially sympathetic to Germany, while maintaining some criticism of Austria-Hungary. However, there is heavy criticism of Russia for turning what could have been a localized Balkan conflict into a worldwide conflagration and for brutalities carried out by the tsar's military and government. Watson's descriptions of civilian conditions during the war also bring into question the morality of Britain's blockade of the Central Powers. (France and Turkey are noticeably absent in his analysis.) The evidence is persuasively presented, especially since Watson fairly handles alternative views. VERDICT This account is an excellent contrast to recent books that have emphasized German culpability and brutality such as Max Hastings's Catastrophe 1914. In a centennial anniversary crowded with titles on World War I, Watson's book stands out and will appeal both to readers with a casual interest in the history of the Great War and to specialists seeking a balanced and nuanced view of the event.—Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL

Library Journal

2014-07-27
A British historian examines the desperate ethnic divisions roiling the Austro-Hungarian Empire that both propelled it to war in 1914 and undermined its success. From the first decision to go to war after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the peace signed in Versailles in June 1919, Watson (History/Univ. of London; Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918, 2008) sifts carefully through the thinking and actions of the main Central Powers, the Habsburgs and the Germans, in provoking a European conflagration against enemies of superior numbers and military might (the Russians, British and French). Punishing Serbia for the assassinations meant bringing in its powerful ally Russia, but Watson argues that the sprawling multiethnic Austria-Hungary had largely lost control of its nationalist pockets and feared a "domino effect" if this insurgency was not violently crushed. Indeed, the empire's dangerously paranoid statesmen promoted war out of "a profound sense of weakness, fear and even despair." Germany was also operating from a place of deep insecurity regarding France, Russia and Britain, and Watson shows how Chief of the German General Staff Helmuth von Moltke was rather more "defensive and reactive" than saber-rattling. Thus the Central Powers were able to sell the war to the people as a defensive action, surrounded as they were by hostile enemies—"a ring of steel." The "pervasive sense of threat" to the community translated initially into a patriotic spur to mobilization, but it morphed into suspicion and vigilantism as refugees from the eastern war zones of Galicia flooded into the interior and provoked ethnic hostilities and anti-Semitism. The German atrocities in Belgium and Russians' in Galicia, the Ottomans' treatment of the Armenians and the ultimate claim that "security" was the German Reich's ultimate goal—all of this paved the way for Nazi genocide. For World War I and modern European history enthusiasts, this is a comprehensive work that ably conveys the disintegration of empire.

Kirkus Reviews