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The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1305-1306



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Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912-1913. By Edward J. Erickson. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. ISBN 0-275-97888-5. Maps. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 403. $49.95.

The volume under review is a military history of the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire during the First Balkan War of 1912-13 when the Ottomans lost almost all of their European Empire in the Balkans. The focus is very much on the operational-level performance of the Ottoman army. While there is some discussion of tactics, strategy and policy both before and [End Page 1305] during the First Balkan War, this serves as an adjunct to the main thrust of the book, a detailed examination of operations. Also included is some discussion of naval operations—including an ambitious attempt by the Ottomans at an amphibious assault—and a useful appendix on the nascent use of military air power by the Ottomans.

Considering the exiguous English-language historiography on the subject of the Ottoman armed forces, this volume using Turkish sources is to be welcomed. Colonel (Ret.) Erickson portrays the Ottoman armed forces as a dynamic organization which, like the Ottoman government in the same period, tried to reform in the face of pressure from the European great powers. This is a useful reorientation that gives the reader an Ottoman dimension often missing from conventional military studies that tend to focus on Western armies. In the drive to reform, the Ottomans looked to what they thought was the most vibrant military machine in Europe—Germany—and copied to the letter many German ideas on warfare. This was the undoing of the Ottoman empire when, in 1912, it was attacked by a Balkan coalition of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia, and it tried to emulate German thinking on the need for battles of encirclement and annihilation. However, instead of a Cannae-style victory for the Ottomans, coalition Balkan forces inflicted a series of nasty defeats on Ottoman armies in Thrace and Macedonia. Extended and insecure communications left the Ottoman army in Macedonia isolated; meanwhile, Bulgarian forces in Thrace outmaneuvered an Ottoman force better suited to defence than offence. The strategic nightmare of two discrete fronts dissipated overall Ottoman strength and meant that the Balkan coalition forces could deploy a decisive advantage at the critical engagements of the war. Erickson portrays an army in the throes of partially completed reforms, unable to mount successful offensive operations. Rather, the Ottoman soldier excelled on the defence and showed his mettle along the Catalca lines west of Istanbul in a defensive battle that saved the Ottoman capital. As Erickson concludes, the lessons from the First Balkan War then fed into ongoing reforms that made the Ottoman armed forces a more formidable opponent in the First World War.

Because of the difficulties in gaining access to the Turkish archives, Erickson bases his account heavily on the Turkish official histories of the war (Erickson also acknowledges his debt to Richard Hall's excellent The Balkan Wars [2000]). This reliance on the Turkish official histories makes for, in parts, a dry read in which wider issues are lost in a mass of detailed examination of corps and divisional moves and counter-moves. However, these slight criticisms should not detract from the contribution Erickson has made in opening up a neglected field of study for historians.



Matthew Hughes
University of Salford
Manchester, United Kingdom

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