Geoffrey Jukes

My interest in history dates back to my years in elementary school. Back then I was hooked by the Second World War, which seemed omnipresent at the time in terms of the available books, movies, and TV shows. And among the books that often attracted my young eye were the Ballantine series of illustrated histories. Edited by Barrie Pitt, these short books offered concise histories of their subjects supplemented with a generous selection of photos, maps, and line drawings – all of which perfect for the novice reader fresh to the topic.

Evidently these books were a success for the publisher, as Ballantine subsequently expanded them to cover a range of subjects. The orange-banded “Campaign” series and the red-banded “Battle” series were supplemented by ones featuring “War Leaders” (distinguished by a purple band), “Weapons” (which was blue-banded), “Politics in Action” (black-banded), “Human Conflict” (yellow-banded) and even “Full Colour Specials” (royal blue-banded). Yet for all of their variety of coverage the predominant focus of these books was the Second World War and the events surrounding it – namely the Nazis and the Holocaust. In retrospect, it’s probably not surprising that for a while I thought that it was the only event of note in the entire 20th century.

Nevertheless, there were a handful of volumes in the various series which took the battles and the personalities of the First World War as their focus. Among them was Geoffrey Jukes’s account of the Brusilov Offensive. A former civil servant who specialized in the Soviet bloc, Jukes was a prolific contributor to the Ballantine series, producing three Battle volumes covering the Eastern Front during the Second World War before turning his attention to its predecessor.

If Jukes’s bibliography is anything to go by, researching the events of the campaign was not easy. With few works available at that time about the First World War in eastern Europe, Jukes relied heavily on memoirs and general accounts of the period. This likely explains why the campaign itself takes up such a relatively small part of what is already a short work, with the events of the offensive covered in a scant 25 photo-filled pages. Much of the rest of the book is taken up with an extended examination of its context, addressing the prewar Russian Army, the first two years of the war, and even the looming threat of revolution. Though informative and often insightful, given the amount of space devoted to it and the book’s intended focus much of it comes across primarily as padding designed to compensate for the lack of details about its ostensible subject.

As a result, what is intended as an introduction to the pivotal Russian campaign of the First World War becomes instead a potted, Brusilov-lionizing summary of the first two years of the war on the Eastern Front. While undoubtedly useful at the time given the lack of similar studies, the decades since its publication have seen the publication of numerous books that have eclipsed it in value, such as Timothy Dowling's The Brusilov Offensive and David Stone's The Russian Army in the Great War. Readers today are best advised to pass on Jukes’s book in favor of reading those works, many of which were written with the benefit of improved archival access and the increased scholarly attention given to this part of the war as a consequence.… (altro)

This is part of the Osprey “Essential History” series, by military historian Geoffrey Jukes. Osprey is known for small, illustrated paperbacks depicting various military units of history and directed at modelers and miniatures painters; they have now branched out into war and campaign histories.

I’ve read one previous work on the Russo-Japanese War (Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear); the Osprey book is much smaller and more directed toward a popular audience, with more illustrations. The illustrations are a mix of contemporary photographs and paintings; these are interesting enough for a history of wartime propaganda (the painting of an angel depositing laurels on the heads of Russian troops marching out of Port Arthur is particularly bizarre). The maps are excellent; Osprey has always used color well and it makes it easier to follow troop and ship movements. On the whole, though, this is not as good as a more formal history. There are a couple of interesting things, though. In my earlier review it was noted that the Japanese had a superior supply system and someone commented that the Russians must have had a truly awful one since many Japanese troops came down with beriberi. As it turns out, Jukes observes this as well but it seems to be more of a lack of nutritional knowledge than lack of food. Foreign observers noted that Russian troops were not provided with food or water on the railroad journey to the front, while the Japanese had set up an elaborate system of dining halls where an entire trainload would stop, be fed, and be on their way. The dining halls even had a sort of trolley system to wheel cartloads of food around. The Russians did a lot more looting for food than the Japanese, which made the Japanese more popular with Chinese civilians and therefore more likely to be provided with logistic and intelligence help (although the Japanese were not the slightest bit averse to expressing displeasure, typically by decapitation, with Chinese who were not cooperative enough).

Jukes notes that the Battle of Mukden was the largest land battle that had ever been fought up to that time. I was a little surprised by that but on reflection couldn’t think of another candidate – there were around 300K Russian troops versus 250K Japanese; the Japanese had 15892 dead and 59612 wounded versus about 40000 Russian killed, missing or POW and about 49000 wounded; the casualty lists, then, were larger than the entire active forces in (for example) Napoleonic and American Civil War campaigns.

Jukes makes another interesting observation; it’s already been noted that the Japanese were scrupulously correct in their treatment of Russian POWs and wounded. He also notes that foreign observers commented that the Russians were also correct; five field hospitals abandoned in the retreat from Mukden contained 600 Russians and 260 Japanese, who were being treated equally as far as the observers could tell. The interesting thing here is the large number of Japanese wounded in a Russian hospital; this implies that not only were the Japanese not mistreating POWs, their own soldiers must have been somewhat more likely to surrender if there were that many in Russian hands, even wounded ones.

As mentioned, lots of color illustrations of dubious value. No foot- or endnotes and the index is small and not very comprehensive. The bibliography is short but includes a recently (2000) republished 5-volume set of reports by British officers attached to the Russian and Japanese armies.… (altro)