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Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemyl in WWI
Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemyl in WWI
Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemyl in WWI
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Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemyl in WWI

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The Tomlinson Prize–winning, “stimulating and informative” account of one of the most significant clashes on the Eastern Front of the Great War (Journal of Military History).
 
Bloodier than Verdun, the battles for Fortress Przemyl in present-day Poland were pivotal to victory on the Eastern Front during the early years of World War I. Control of the fortress changed hands three times during the fall of 1914. In 1915, the Austro-Hungarian armies launched three major offensives to penetrate the Russian encirclement and relieve the 120,000 people trapped in the besieged fortress. Drawing on myriad sources, historian Graydon A. Tunstall tells of the impossible conditions facing the garrison: starvation, “horse-meat” diets, deplorable medical care, prostitution, alcoholism, dismal morale, and a failed breakout attempt.
 
By the time the fortress finally fell to the Russians on March 22, 1915, the Hapsburg Army had sustained 800,000 casualties; the Russians, over a million. The fortress, however, had served its purpose. Tunstall argues that the besieged garrison kept the Russian army from advancing farther and obliterating the already weakening Austro-Hungarian forces at the outset of the War to End All Wars.
 
The World War I Historical Association awarded Written in Blood the 2016 Tomlinson Prize.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 16, 2016
ISBN9780253022073
Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemyl in WWI

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While you could call Przemysl the Verdun of the Eastern Front of the Great War, what you can really say about the two main sieges of the fortified town is that it illustrates all the issues that afflicted the Austro-Hungarian military, a "shop-window" force with no reserves, bad logistics and too many enemies with the cherry on top of this special sundae being a high command that always seemed to be flirting with stupidity and incompetence and displayed an aversion to accepting reality. The other side of the coin that the author captures is the sheer misery of it all for the men who were trapped in this position and who became a sacrifice to the god of bad decisions. The only reason I don't rate this book a bit higher is that the final portion, which exists to tell the story of the reconquest of the town from the Russians in the course of the Austro-German offensive of 1915 feels very much like an afterthought.

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Written in Blood - Graydon A. Tunstall

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