This is an interesting book about a little-known campaign of World War I: Russia's attempts to cross the Carpathian Mountains in the winter of 1914–1915 and the desperate Austro-Hungarian efforts to relieve the besieged fortress Przemysl (now in Poland, near the Ukrainian border). The author is a professor of history at the University of South Florida. His book is the result of more than thirty years of research, mainly in the war records in the Staatsarchiv, Vienna.

Tunstall first gives an overview of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces and the developments of the summer and autumn of 1914. The original plan of the Central Powers—that Germany would swiftly defeat France while Austro-Hungarian forces would advance into Russia—failed in all respects. Instead of pushing Tsarist forces back, the Habsburg armies suffered tremendous losses against the numerically and tactically superior Russians. The Austro-Hungarian forces never recovered from the losses of 1914, which included a high percentage of professional officers.

Tunstall clearly conveys the incapability of the Habsburg High Command. General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, chief of staff and de facto commander, failed to “accurately assess his army's capabilities” (14) and insisted on offensive action even when all odds were against this and close aides warned that this would be “methodical mass murder” (53, Colonel Schneller's diary). This “offensive spirit” brought disaster upon the Habsburg forces already in the summer of 1914 in Serbia and in Galicia, and it would prove fatal again in the South Tirol offensive of 1916. In the Carpathian campaigns, the hope to relieve Fortress Przemysl (it eventually had to surrender on 22 March 1915) spurred Conrad to attempt three desperate offensives, all of which failed with tremendous losses: In the first Carpathian offensive of January 1915 alone, the Third Army lost almost 80 percent of its manpower (84). Tunstall also points to the political dimension: Przemysl had not only become an important symbol for the Habsburg monarchy, but its fall would also, so the government feared, induce Italy and perhaps Romania to side with the Entente Powers (which Italy did in the summer of 1915, Romania following a year later). Reluctantly, Germany had to supply troops to assist its faltering ally.

In view of the often confusing situation during the war, the text is sometimes difficult to follow. The spelling of place names in the maps differs from the text, and some maps are removed from the relevant text: Map 4 (58) supports the text on pages 83–95, while Map 8 (134) is some two weeks ahead of the text. There are also some minor flaws in Tunstall's account. For example, recent research (such as Richard Lein's soon-to-be-published dissertation) contradicts traditional accusations of treachery against Czechs and other Slav soldiers mentioned by the author. Although suffering from inadequate leadership, all soldiers of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian armed forces showed an incredible loyalty until the very end. The text also occasionally suggests that Fortress Przemysl fell to the Russians after the “first siege” in September 1914 (18f, 22, 210). In fact, the fortress held out until being relieved in October 1914.

The author is at his best when describing the terrible conditions on the ground and the suffering of the soldiers. Here, years of painstaking research in the Viennese archives bear fruit, with revealing quotes from unpublished unit diaries and memoirs. Most of us cannot imagine what these soldiers went through, in temperatures of −20°C and colder, with meters of snow, blizzards, fog, and avalanches. Men and horses died in huge numbers; supplies could not reach the front lines. Later, melted snow rendered the roads impassable and led to the outbreak of typhus and cholera. As Tunstall rightly claims, the documents “provide disturbing eyewitness accounts of the dreadful battle conditions, many of which diverge significantly from official postwar publications” (29). The Russians coped only slightly better and were unable to break through the Carpathians. Soon after thwarting the three Austro-Hungarian efforts to relieve Przemysl, the Russians themselves were pushed back in the Central Powers' Gorlice-Tarnów offensive of early May 1915, only six weeks after the fall of Przemysl (168).

Thanks to Tunstall's book, this important episode of World War I has been recorded from the Austrian side. Now, we would love to have a similar account from the Russian point of view.