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mburnamfink 's review for:
Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia's War with Japan
by Richard Connaughton
Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear is a conventional military history of divisions and generals covering the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. This war was a fascinating transition, the last display of Napoleonic close order and the first recognizably modern war with bolt-action rifles, machine guns, and quick-firing artillery.
The two empires came to blows over competing claims in Korea and Manchuria, with leadership on both sides believing that a 'short victorious war' would be just the thing for public consumption. Both sides were wrong, as the campaign degenerated into a bloody and expensive shambles, but by that time the war had its own logic.
On the naval side, Japan had a major stroke of luck when the Russian battleship Poltava hit a mine in the early days of the war, taking with it the active Admiral Makarov. The Russian fleet did not seriously threaten Japanese supply lines for the rest of the war. The Pacific Fleet was sunk in harbor once Japanese siege line closed in on Port Arthur, and the Baltic Fleet was sunk in the Battle of Tsushima after sailing around the world.
The land campaign also saw repeated reversals for the Russians, as they were outflanked and outfought. Defense had a tactical advantage over attack in this time, but the Russians squandered their advantage by anxiously shuffling brigades across their entire front, rather than properly digging in on key terrain. Japanese attacks tended to commit everything, providing a razor thin margin of victory that prevent them from following up and smashing the Russian army, but Russia lost battles with entire divisions uncommitted, an elementary error.
Russian senior commanders were defeatist, uncooperative, and often both elderly and inexperienced. While Connaughton punctures some myths of Japanese brilliance, the Japanese held to basic Clausewitzian doctrine of identifying the key objective of the battle and fully committing their forces to taking it. While this lead to bloody assaults on the siege lines of Port Arthur, it also gave them victories. In what was a pattern, while winning all the battles the Japanese lost the peace, coming off worse in treaty negotiations. This diplomatic defeat would inspire an ideology of total victory that lead to Pearl Harbor, and the eventual destruction of Imperial Japan.
The two empires came to blows over competing claims in Korea and Manchuria, with leadership on both sides believing that a 'short victorious war' would be just the thing for public consumption. Both sides were wrong, as the campaign degenerated into a bloody and expensive shambles, but by that time the war had its own logic.
On the naval side, Japan had a major stroke of luck when the Russian battleship Poltava hit a mine in the early days of the war, taking with it the active Admiral Makarov. The Russian fleet did not seriously threaten Japanese supply lines for the rest of the war. The Pacific Fleet was sunk in harbor once Japanese siege line closed in on Port Arthur, and the Baltic Fleet was sunk in the Battle of Tsushima after sailing around the world.
The land campaign also saw repeated reversals for the Russians, as they were outflanked and outfought. Defense had a tactical advantage over attack in this time, but the Russians squandered their advantage by anxiously shuffling brigades across their entire front, rather than properly digging in on key terrain. Japanese attacks tended to commit everything, providing a razor thin margin of victory that prevent them from following up and smashing the Russian army, but Russia lost battles with entire divisions uncommitted, an elementary error.
Russian senior commanders were defeatist, uncooperative, and often both elderly and inexperienced. While Connaughton punctures some myths of Japanese brilliance, the Japanese held to basic Clausewitzian doctrine of identifying the key objective of the battle and fully committing their forces to taking it. While this lead to bloody assaults on the siege lines of Port Arthur, it also gave them victories. In what was a pattern, while winning all the battles the Japanese lost the peace, coming off worse in treaty negotiations. This diplomatic defeat would inspire an ideology of total victory that lead to Pearl Harbor, and the eventual destruction of Imperial Japan.