Every great war has its share of forgotten moments, events that seemed stirring at the time and then fell into the collective memory hole. So it has been with World War I's Operation Albion, a German amphibious landing on the Baltic islands of Ösel, Moon, and Dagö at the mouth of the Gulf of Riga. It was a well-planned operation, carried out by an army and navy that had no tradition of amphibious warfare, but it has remained practically unknown since the October 1917 days in which it took place. Timing is everything, they say, and Albion will forever stand in the shadow of far more portentous events: the collapse of the Russian army, the twin revolutions of 1917, the successful offensive by the Central Powers at Caporetto, and the growing dissatisfaction within German society that would eventually explode into a revolution of its own.

Michael B. Barrett makes a good case for Albion's importance. Relegated to the status of strategic backwater early in the war, the Baltic islands had by 1917 become increasingly important to both sides. From the German point of view, taking the islands would be a logical next step after their seizure of Riga in September, opening up naval communications to this key port and turning the northern flank of the entire Russian defensive position. To the Russians, then teetering on the abyss, the loss of the Baltic islands might well be the final blow, laying open the capital city of Petrograd to a German advance by land and sea.

Barrett largely succeeds in reconstructing this forgotten episode. For the Germans, Albion was a colossal improvisation. Doctrine, command relationships, inter-service cooperation between army and navy, even equipment—all had to come more or less from the whole cloth. Barrett gives us a fascinating snapshot of an amphibious operation that might have been post-Gallipoli, but was definitely still pre-Overlord. There were no specialized landing craft; the invasion flotilla was a motley assortment of launches, converted tramp steamers, mothballed cargo ships—just about anything that could float. Add in the naval escorts (minesweepers, torpedo boats, and even ten modern battleships) and the Germans assembled no fewer than 363 vessels for this relatively minor operation. As this huge force concentrated in the tiny harbor of Libau, the chaos was total, and the approach voyage was no thing of beauty in terms of its cohesion. The army had to do its share of quick thinking, as well. Once elements of the XXIII Reserve Corps landed at Tagga Bay on the first and central island, Ösel, they had to move fast to smash Russian defenses and prevent the defenders from evacuating over the causeway to Moon island and thence to the mainland. The solution here was a brigade of bicycle troops, racing along the northern coast of the island to beat the Russians to the tiny port of Orrisar that commanded the causeway. The Russians fought about as well as one could expect by this point in the war, which is to say pretty badly. The 12th Army, entrusted with the defense of the islands, was riddled with revolutionary dissension; the defense of the key Sworbe peninsula was under the command of a fractious soviet; and the course of the fighting would see mutinies and cases of Russian troops firing on each other.

The author narrates the operation competently enough, but this is not a book without flaws. Much of the text is a by-the-numbers recapitulation of German and recently uncovered Russian planning and operational documents. The approach gets the job done, but is hardly conducive to smooth prose. The tendency is to load on the detail, and there are moments, particularly in the long chapter devoted to Russian defenses on the islands, when readers may simply feel overwhelmed. Anyone without a deep and abiding interest in the intricacies of minefields and coastal batteries should probably steer clear; those seeking a more concise analysis might well consult Richard L. DiNardo's article “Huns with Web-Feet: Operation Albion, 1917,” in War in History 12, no. 4 (2005).

The relentless focus on operational detail obscures two basic points. First, the Prussian-German military tradition has always valued improvisation and flexibility. Such qualities were essential components of Bewegungskrieg—the war of movement on the operational level—which the Germans had used to great effect at least since the days of Frederick the Great. A quick offensive strike has almost always been the first German option, using mobility, surprise, and risk-taking to compensate for smaller forces and a weak geographical position. Seen in that light, Albion is perhaps more a typical product of the “German way of war” than Barrett lets on.

Second, there is a celebratory tone to much of this book, as Barrett narrates his tale of German operational skill in seizing three fortified islands and capturing 20,000 Russians while suffering only minimal losses. But if ever there was a campaign that demonstrated how strategically empty even the most impressive operational victory can be, Albion was it. Barrett argues that the operation might have helped to hasten the Russian collapse, and he makes a pretty good case. But even that turned out to be a moot point. No less than the defeated Russians, those intrepid German cyclists pedaling madly toward victory at Orrisar belonged to a doomed army.