Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands (review)

On October 12, 1917, the Germans launched one of their most ambitious operations of the First World War, one that has largely been forgotten by historians. It was known as Operation Albion and its objective was to deal such a hard blow to the reeling Russian armed forces that the Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky would have no choice but to seek peace. The operation itself involved the seizure, by amphibious assault, of the major islands in the Gulf of Riga, most importantly Ösel and Moon islands. Control of the islands would give the Germans control of the Gulf of Riga which would in turn allow them to use the city and port of Riga as a base for an assault on the Russian capital of Petrograd. The campaign faced serious problems, not the least of which was the simple fact that it was Germany’s first (and only) amphibious operation of the war. Though they had learned some lessons from the British failure at Gallipoli, the Germans were not, by any stretch of the imagination, assured of success. Yet in the end they did succeed and though their victory did not lead directly to a Russian surrender it did demonstrate that, even when conditions strongly favored them, the Russian military could no longer effectively oppose the German war machine. Despite the success of the operation it has rarely been discussed by historians, especially in English language studies of the war. In this very useful work Michael Barrett corrects this oversight by providing a fully detailed and very insightful narrative and analysis of the operation.

After relating the story of a German submarine that was sent to reconnoiter the Russian defenses in the Gulf of Riga, Barrett really begins his work by examining the geography of the eastern Baltic Sea, concentrating most heavily on the Gulfs of Riga and Finland, which became the hinge of the Russian defensive system for the capital, Petrograd (the former St. Petersburg). Barrett then discusses, in great detail, the Russian plans to defend the islands and the German plans to capture them. In the process, he illuminates the clashes between the services in each country, the major personalities that were involved in the battle, and the extent to which the revolutionary rot had set into the Russian forces. The heart of the book, however, is Barrett’s compelling narrative of the invasion itself. He writes with great skill and verve as he describes the German landings on Ösel Island and the Russian reactions to those landings; in particular the key struggle to take and hold the single causeway that connected Moon and Ösel islands. What becomes particularly clear from his narrative is the degree to which the Russian forces were affected by the March Revolution. The Russian units on the islands suffered from extremely poor morale and crises in leadership that made the German task much easier. These forces broke quickly and within ten days the Germans had succeeded in overrunning Ösel, Moon, and DagÖ islands while also clearing the Russian navy out of the Gulf of Riga. The operation proved to be a brilliant success for German combined arms. Barrett concludes that “Albion had not caused the collapse of the Russian military forces, but it had illustrated that the Russian armed forces were through” (p. 231).

In the end, what we have in Operation Albion is a thoroughly researched, well organized, and very well written history of an operation that deserves to be more widely studied. One of the great strengths of the book is the fact that Barrett was able to make extensive use of the previously closed Russian archives and therefore was able to provide a well balanced look at the campaign. The book is also well illustrated with a number of rare pictures from the archives. I have only one criticism: the book would have benefitted from an...