Winfried Baumgart

Sometimes I am astonished by the overwhelming incompetence displayed by generals on both sides of the U.S. Civil War. Then I review in Baumgart's excellent history what the more “professional” generals of Europe did during the Crimean War and feel a little better about the U.S. The Crimean War is woefully overlooked, given how it presaged many of the bloody wars that hit Europe and America in the 1860s, and given — as Baumgart argues — how it very nearly became a world war rather than a limited engagement between three great powers. Had Austria, Prussia, and a host of minor powers acted differently, or had Britain been more willing to indulge France's war aims, the squabble over a Black Sea peninsula could have become a continent-wide struggle involving essentially every nation, popular revolts, and a complete redrawing of the map of Europe. Instead the war's concrete effects faded quickly, leaving merely a host of dead — mostly from disease.

Baumgart concisely but thoroughly chronicles the diplomatic moves of the war, the natures of each power's armed forces, and then a blow-by-blow account of the major developments in each theater of the war. A great one-volume introduction to this overlooked conflict that won't overwhelm a reader with a casual interest in military history.… (más)