Forward, March!: Memoirs of a German Officer

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Summary: German Officer's Western & Eastern Front Diary
Review: Although the book suffers from a dull title and cover, it does, in fact, make very interesting and enlightening reading. The book is actually a German wartime diary that has been translated into English by the original writer's daughter. As a first person account written by a devoted and decorated German officer, Ernst Rosenhainer, it provides a rare glimpse for the English speaker into everyday German life during the heyday of the Second Reich. The diarist is an aristocratic gentleman who is working as a teacher at the outbreak of war. The book follows his experiences through both famous battles, e.g. Namur, Masurian Lakes, Lodz, Verdun, and Kerensky Offensive, and minor actions.

We see the world through Rosenhainer's eyes. One of the most unique aspects of the book are the descriptions of life on both the Western and Eastern Fronts. Although life on the stationary Western Front is more materially comfortable, it is much more impersonal and deadly with masses of enemy artillery, machine guns, and snipers. Although Eastern Front living is primitive by comparison, Rosenhainer and his men manage to create a congenial atmosphere. Unlike the Western Front, fighting the Russians, although occassionally brutal and bitter, is much less intense, usually brief and exciting firefights followed by days of marching/bivouacing. Indeed, from reading the book I get the impression that combat in Russian Poland was much more tolerable than anywhere on the Western Front (unlike during WWII).

The book contains numerous Eastern Front photos not found elsewhere and numerous maps obtained from German war archives. Rosenhainer's observations and somewhat prejudiced opinions also provide an insight into Germany's civilizing mission for Europe. Reading this book, I was able to visualize how combat actions actually transpired on the Eastern Front. This book is one of the very few books I have seen which recounts life on the Eastern Front, and it is well worth reading.

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Summary: An Everyman in WW I.
Review: Forward, March! is unique in that the author comes across not as a professional soldier, but instead is a warm, breathing, feeling teacher who comments upon the excitements, camaraderie, and the deep sadness of World War I. Ernst Rosenhainer also describes what he saw in the infantry movements, tactics, and confusions that ranged from the beginning of War in Belgium and France in August 1914, to the fluid, changing movements of mass armies on the Eastern Front in 1917. He relates in restrained emotional detail Christmas celebrations with his men, and the depression seeing abandoned decorations at nearby civilians' homes. He pulls no punches in this personal memoir: readers may be shocked when the author describes how difficult it was to obtain transportation for food supplies because there was a Jewish Holiday in Germany.(!) He comments often upon the deprivations of sleep, food and the basic comforts that he and his men had to endure, even while on leave within their home country. Yet, after two and a half years of the terrors of war, the author can comment upon Spring's renewal of life, and how the men under his care responded to the new buds opening upon the trees.

This is not a 'grand view' of the Great War. In fact, the author demonstrates this by his lack of descriptions of the overall plan of each battle. He was a lowly lieutenant; he was not told this. His job was to lead, preserve his men and gain their limited objective, as unclear and as fluid as these tasks were while in battle. Nor does he insult the reader's intelligence by ignoring 'the fog of war'. He does not describe in retrospection the purposes, causes and specific strategies of each action, each troop movement, each detailed objective and what it meant for the whole battle. He lets us know that he can only see a few hundred yards at a time, he is confused, desperate; improvising, and he and his men are often fighting without days of sleep or food. He writes that he often does not receive orders in time, and has to assess each and every action around him as to what to do. This is the reality of the soldier on the battlefield, then and now. As such, then, Ernest Rosenhainer's view is of the 'Everyman', which is so much more the better for us, the modern reader.

Because of this powerful and truthful memoir, we can begin to realize that the Germans of 1914 were not all war mongers, that they were not the 'Evil, Bloody Hun', and that not all WW I battles were on the Western Front. Instead, we have the day-to-day experiences of one of millions of ordinary men who found themselves in the first modern war. Ernest Rosenhainer gives us this today, so that we can begin to see one normal man's reactions within that worlds-shattering time.

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Summary: A Mole's-eye View
Review: The officer in question, Ernst Rosenhainer, spent the entire war as a lieutenant, and unfortunately his perspective never rises above that of a front-line soldier who'd better keep his head down if he wants to survive. Although the translator has provided short chapter introductions and situation maps depicting the broad lines of the engagements in which Rosenhainer was one soldier among up to a million, the author's account remains incoherent. While that may adequately reflect his experiences, it conveys little of value to the reader looking to tie the individual's experience to the bigger picture. There are plenty of eye-witness combat accounts, but they lack almost all structure beyond the chronological, and therefore quickly become monotonous. Welcome would have been a treatment of platoon, company and battalion tactics and how they changed during the war or varied between the eastern and western fronts. Instead, we find only the vaguest tactical references (e.g., advances in "skirmish line" or "extended order"). For first-hand English-language accounts of German small unit actions during the Great War we remain dependent on the experiences of two other junior officers, Erwin Rommel and Ernst Juenger, whose books ("Infantry Attacks" and "The Storm of Steel", respectively) are unlikely to be surpassed.