Prelude to Blitzkrieg

The 1916 Austro-German Campaign in Romania

By: Michael B. Barrett

Narrated by: David de Vries

Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

An authoritative study of World War I's often-overlooked Romanian front.

In contrast to the trench-war deadlock on the Western Front, combat in Romania and Transylvania in 1916 foreshadowed the lightning warfare of World War II. When Romania joined the Allies and invaded Transylvania without warning, the Germans responded by unleashing a campaign of bold, rapid infantry movements, with cavalry providing cover or pursuing the crushed foe.

Hitting where least expected and advancing before the Romanians could react - even bombing their capital from a Zeppelin soon after war was declared - the Germans and Austrians poured over the formidable Transylvanian Alps onto the plains of Walachia, rolling up the Romanian army from west to east, and driving the shattered remnants into Russia.

Prelude to Blitzkrieg tells the story of this largely ignored campaign to determine why it did not devolve into the mud and misery of trench warfare, so ubiquitous elsewhere.

©2013 Michael B. Barrett (P)2020 Tantor

Useful Addendum to WW1 History

Barrett's study represents a useful addition to the history of WW1 in a neglected theater. While he does a fair job presenting this campaign as solid example of combined arms warfare and does much to bring focus to a truly interesting and complex theater, Barrett doesn't do much work to connect the 1916 campaign to the developing concept of Blitzkrieg used in WW2. While Blitzkrieg itself is debated as a term (historians disagree over its meaning--true combined arms warfare, a flexible system allowing significant power to lower officers, or an economic-based approach relying on rapid, often risky victories), Barrett does little to define it or draw comparisons until the very end of the work. You won't find this analysis integrated throughout the work or an extended and detailed comparative analysis. How is what happened here similar to what happened in Russia, or for that matter, in earlier wars like the Franco-Prussian conflict, a continuation of past trends (broken by WW1 trench warfare) rather than the precursor to Blitzkrieg? We don't get an answer to that and related questions. Perhaps meant to draw eyes to the work (it does deserve to be read by historians of WW1 and southern and eastern Europe), it doesn't quite deliver what its title seems to promise. Even so, it is well written, detailed, and well-narrated.