The Fortress
The Great Siege of Przemysl
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE SOCIETY FOR MILITARY HISTORY'S DISTINGUISHED BOOK AWARD 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILDER LEHRMAN PRIZE FOR MILITARY HISTORY AND THE BRITISH ARMY MILITARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
A BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019, AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
'A masterpiece. It deserves to become a classic of military history' Lawrence James, The Times
From the prize-winning author of Ring of Steel, a gripping history of the First World War's longest and most terrible siege
In the autumn of 1914 Europe was at war. The battling powers had already suffered casualties on a scale previously unimaginable. On both the Western and Eastern fronts elaborate war plans lay in ruins and had been discarded in favour of desperate improvisation. In the West this resulted in the remorseless world of the trenches; in the East all eyes were focused on the old, beleaguered Austro-Hungarian fortress of Przemysl.
The siege that unfolded at Przemysl was the longest of the whole war. In the defence of the fortress and the struggle to relieve it Austria-Hungary suffered some 800,000 casualties. Almost unknown in the West, this was one of the great turning points of the conflict. If the Russians had broken through they could have invaded Central Europe, but by the time the fortress fell their strength was so sapped they could go no further.
Alexander Watson, prize-winning author of Ring of Steel, has written one of the great epics of the First World War. Comparable to Stalingrad in 1942-3, Przemysl shaped the course of Europe's future. Neither Russians nor Austro-Hungarians ever recovered militarily from their disasters. Using a huge range of sources, Watson brilliantly recreates a world of long-gone empires, broken armies and a cut-off community sliding into chaos. The siege was central to the war itself, but also a chilling harbinger of what would engulf the entire region in the coming decades, as nationalism, anti-semitism and an exterminatory fury took hold.
'If you read one military history book this year, make it Alexander Watson's The Fortress' Tony Barber, Financial Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this well-researched chronicle, Watson (Ring of Steel), a history professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, contends that the September 1914 March 1915 siege of Przemysl, a "fortress city" in the Habsburg Empire province of Galicia (now Poland), altered the course of WWI. By holding out against the Russian imperial army for six months, Watson writes, the garrison's 130,000 ethnically diverse and mainly middle-aged defenders allowed the Habsburg army to regroup after a series of early defeats, preventing a swift conclusion to the war. But Przemysl's eventual capitulation, after some 800,000 soldiers had been lost in efforts to relieve the besieged city, "inflicted a hammer blow to the prestige of the Habsburg Empire" and "embolden neutral powers to join its enemies." Watson blames Habsburg army general staff chief Franz Conrad von H tzendorf for failing to modernize Przemysl's defenses to withstand advances in ordnance technology, and for leaving the Galician frontier "frighteningly exposed to Russian attack." Once the siege begins, Watson renders Russian and Austro-Hungarian military maneuvers in rich detail, and draws on firsthand accounts to document the terror and suffering of Przemysl's civilians and soldiers. Military history enthusiasts will relish this detailed retelling of the WWI battle.
