The Enemy At the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Im Zentrum des Buches steht die zweite Belagerung von Wien 1683, diese wird in allen Details geschildert.
Weiterhin geht es um den Konflikt zwischen Christenheit und Islam auf dem Balkan, stellvertretend durch das Reich Habsburg und das Osmanische Reich als Hauptakteure dieses Konflikts.

Kurz wird angeschnitten, in welchen Schritten die Expansion der Osmanen bis zur 1. und 2. Belagerung erfolgt ist. Speziell die Situation Ungarns (heute wären das noch Teile Rumänien, Serbien und Kroatien, Slowenien und der Slowakei) als Schauplatz der Jahrhundertelangen Kämpfe wird im Detail beleuchtet. Spannend auch, wie der Autor persönliche Schicksale, Propaganda/Ideologie und den Alltag in diesen Gebieten beschreibt, es wird dadurch oft zum Roman und weniger zum Sachbuch.

Die Belagerung selber wird basierend auf Schriften von Augenzeugen und Entscheidungsträgern "live" erzählt und ist sehr spannend, oft auch dramatisch (Das Ergebnis war ja im Übrigen auch knapper als man denkt). Kurz vor dem Kollaps der Stadt rücken die Allierten an, die Polen und die Verbündeten der deutschen Vasallen, in einer finalen Schlacht werden die Türken schließlich zur Flucht gedrängt. Der Mythos Wiens befeuerte die nächsten hundert Jahre die Kampagnen der Habsburger auf dem Balkan. Hier wird den nächsten 50 Jahren viel Platz eingeräumt, mit großen Belagerungen und einem Hin- und Her- mit zunehmenden Vorteilen bei den Österreichern.

Ich kann das Buch sehr empfehlen. Es ist nicht allzu umfangreich, aber ob es noch viel länger sein sollte sei mal dahingestellt. Die Sprache ist sehr anspruchsvolles Englisch, ich kann mir vorstellen dass es auf Deutsch auch nicht schlecht ist.

Excellent book, well researched, highly readable even for amateur historians like myself, author does not commit the usual Anglo Saxon mistakes when quoting German language. Only mistake I found is the translation of the French word foutue

There are some books about the great Siege of Vienna of 1683, but this one I do recommend to read. First of all, Andrew Wheatcroft has an in-depth knowledge of Habsburg and Ottoman history and the book is well written. Second, it does broaden the readers view on the political and military background including events before and after the siege. It tells the fascinating story of what happened and the why and how give a great deal of political and military context. We meet Sultan Mehmed IV, leaving the dirty work to his general Kara Mustafa, his adversary Starhemberg the great defender and the Emperor Leopold I and his general Duke of Lorraine who won the Kahlenberg battle with more than the assistance of the Polish King John III Sobieski's heavy cavalry and Prince Georg Friedrich of Waldeck with Franconian, Swabian and Bavarian infantry. As the book shows the heart of Europe was exclusively defended from the Catholic side, which would have suffered most and first.

At Vienna the Ottomans came very close to victory in the siege, but were defeated on the battlefield. Andrew Wheatcroft draws interesting conclusions of military history, for instance that in a way, the Thirty Years' War shaped strategy and hardened battlefield skills of the relief army and benefits from new Ottoman studies. The book asserts that Europe was saved by the bravery of Polish heavy cavalry and better drilled infantry but also by arrogance and carelessness, if not incompetence of the Ottoman commander. General Kara Mustafa lost despite of his experienced army which had the needed superior logistics, numbers (138,000 men) and all engineering skills for a siege -and- also excellent battlefield capabilities e.g. Tartar auxiliaries and Janissaries. He was strangled by a silk rope for his grave mistakes.

Well, I still remember during an business trip an Austrian cab driver casually (and unsolicited) pointed out to the place, "where we were saved by your people" meaning Kahlenberg. The mere fact that a modern European citizen talks like this about a 17th-century event does tell us something about its cultural-historical significance. 1683 was and still is one of the defining moments in an 1400 year old history of a complex cultural clash arguably the beginning of the stagnation and decline of the Ottoman Empire. More than ever it seems the West need to read about it in order to formulate present-day policies. Andrew Wheatcroft notes Bolkestein's comment who declared that 'the entry of Turkey into the EU would be anti-historical'. Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, used the same term, "anti-historical" and added "with all due respect, it would be a grave error". I can relate to Andrew Wheatcroft comments on this, but only based on fond memories of Turkey closely connected to Kemal Atatürk, Istanbul's urbanity and is Byzanz roots.

The centerpiece of the book is the siege of Vienna but it is set within the rise of the Ottoman Empire and its long struggle with Habsburg. It gives a very detailled account of the siege itself. At the end the book describes the subsequent siege and capture of Buda by the Habsburgs, which led to the expulsion of the Ottomans from central Hungary. I got somewhat lost in the eleventh chapter, but was rewarded by the last chapter "Myth displacing History": "So the Turkish Wars ended ...In reality things went on, but not the same way as before". As a layman I do like English (and French) history books, not saying they are not distorted but unlike the German ones, their consistency makes them predictable and they are not not constructing different "pasts" every 2o years.

The bibliography in this book is extensive and it contains very good prints.
Andrew Wheatcroft is historian and has written also other works about the Habsburgs and the Ottomans and "History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam".