This meticulously researched and amply illustrated book demonstrates that the Russo-Japanese War's Tsushima was one of history's great battles. It relies on Russian, Japanese, German, UK, and US archives, newspapers, and official histories. Ch. 1, “Background,” covers the preceding First Sino-Japanese War, the naval theorists informing the belligerents’ naval purchases and operational plans, a fleet comparison, and the war's course up to Tsushima.
The heart of the book is Ch. 2, “The Battle,” which periodizes the war into five phases (inception, first engagement, second engagement, night operations, and final denouement), followed by an explanation of the outcome. Detailed maps illustrate the battle's progress. The last section examines the ships (comparing their armament, armor, structure, and speed); the ability to communicate among ships and detect enemy ships; and the human factors of leadership, preparedness, motivation, tactics, and strategy. Rotem Kowner concludes that superior Japanese tactics, command, and speed produced the lopsided outcome.
Chs. 3 through 5 focus on Japanese, Russian, and global perceptions respectively. Ch. 3 highlights the post-war celebrations, Tsushima as the Japanese navy's defining moment, and the false lessons its strategists drew. The war became a powerful source of nationalism that made Japan a fearsome foe. But the assumption that morale, not materiel explained the victory, and the post-war focus on naval offence to the exclusion of defense served Japan poorly in World War II. Although the post-war US occupation forced a period on amnesia about Tsushima, afterward it became an untarnished source of national pride.
The next three chapters are much shorter. Ch. 4 turns to Russian perceptions. The 1905 Revolution that coincided with Tsushima undermined Russia from within. After the defeat, the blame game began with trials of the surviving naval officers. Russian memory of the loss evolved from shock during the tsarist period, to amnesia in the interwar period, to revenge in World War II, when Russia took southern Sakhalin plus four other islands from Japan.
Ch. 5 examines worldwide media perceptions, the U.S.-brokered Portsmouth Peace Treaty, and the two key naval theorists, Alfred T. Mahan and Julian Corbett, who commented on the war as it was fought. Tsushima impressed them all. Ch. 6 analyzes the war's impact on future naval development—which was surprisingly limited. Post-war technological changes rapidly made the ships that fought Tsushima obsolete. Moreover, the revolutionary Dreadnought-class battleships, based on pre-war operational considerations and launched immediately after the war, did not incorporate any lessons from the war. The subsequent development of submarines and naval air rapidly overtook any remaining operational lessons.
The concluding chapter applies a framework from Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch's Military Misfortunes: An Anatomy of Failure in War to explain Admiral Zinoviǐ Rozhestvenskii's failures in their three temporal categories: he failed to learn from the past, to anticipate the future, and to adapt to present circumstances. Yet before deploying, Rozhesvenskii accurately predicted disaster. He, but not the tsar, knew full well that no navy fights a major naval power on such extended lines without intervening basing to refit and replenish.
A discussion of how naval operations contribute to war termination would have been useful. While defeat at Tsushima would have cut Japan's military supply lines, costing it the war, this was not true for Russia. Other than morale, Russian naval operations had no impact on its land operations, which were supplied overland by the Trans-Siberian Railway. The railway's troop carrying capacity tripled during the war, so that after Mukden, the last major land battle, Russia's total army remained three times the size of Japan's. Unlike Russia's initial forces or Japan's surviving forces, Russia's forces in theater increasingly consisted of crack troops, while Japan was out of men. One more land battle would have shattered Japan's army.
So what happened? The 1905 Revolution was important. Japan contributed by funding Russian, Polish, and Finish revolutionaries. Russia's finances were crumbling. Even before Tsushima, it could no longer secure international loans, while Japan could and did at ever lower interest rates. There was an institutional factor also worth considering. As an autocratic state, in imperial Russia the tsar decided. This is when the “ungreat” men of history matter. Apparently, Nicholas II lost heart. His predecessor Peter the Great or successor Joseph Stalin would have persevered, resulting in Russia's victory, not loss.
