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The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation. Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent. But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable." By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.… (more)
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As he says (referring to the situation in July 1918), "Merely to make good loses suffered in the attacks so far, the German high command calculated, required 200.000 replacements each month but, even by drawing on the next annual class of eighteen year olds, only 300.000 recruits stood available." They just couldn't take the vast human losses involved in this new type of warfare.
Drawbacks to the book are his view that the First World War " ... destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the European continent...", which has to be a doubtful statement. The rickety Austro-Hungarian empire was benevolent but certainly not optimistic and it lay at the root of the problem. A closer look in Brigitte Hamann's book, " Hitler's Vienna, A Dictator's Apprenticeship" reveals the chaotic nationalist, communist and racial polarization that was breaking the Empire apart and generating WW1 (and WW2).
He also contradicts himself, saying that, "Most of the accusations against the generals of the Great War - incompetence and incomprehension foremost among them - may therefore be seen to be misplaced." and, "Nothing in human affairs is predestinable, least of all in an exchange of energy as fluid and dynamic as a battle." while at the same time showing that;
- They (the generals) knew that the Germans had deep bunkers. If they had tested their basic strategy of intensive bombardment they would have found that most remained undamaged.
- If they had tested the effects of shelling on barbed wire they would have found that it mostly remained impassable. Again not what they assumed.
- They had seen the tremendous loss of life in attack but didn't consider building approach trenches to the German lines reducing the width of non-man's land as Brusilov did in Russia.
- They didn't think through the effect of the 10 minute delay between the lifting their artillery bombardment and the initiation of an attack . It allowed the Germans to lift machine guns from their deep protection and have them set up and ready.
I don't see how Keegan can exempt the Allied generals from blame while at the same time illustrating failures that could have been anticipated or at least identified and quickly corrected.
American readers interested in learning about the U.S. involvement in the war will need to look to additional sources. The Americans don't appear until the last 75 pages or so, and even then the focus remains on the European nations and their armies. Keegan's writing isn't easy to read. He uses long sentences with complex structures. By the time I reached the end of some sentences, I had to go back and re-read the beginning to make sure I got the point. Readers with the patience for Keegan's style will be rewarded with a broad and thorough overview of the military history of World War I.
The one lack - and an understandable one - is due to its scope it cannot concentrate on any one unit or group for long: at best, a passing acquaintance with the generals is the most personal this reaches. However, from here it's easy to find more specific history to touch what you're interested in.
A child's shoe in the
This is the kind of ruminative, slightly vague history writing that I really enjoy. Unfortunately there is rather little of it in the rest of the book, which too often becomes fixated on unnecessary military detail:
By 5 September the Sixth Army consisted, besides Sordet's Cavalry Corps and the 45th (Algerian) Division, of the VII Corps, brought from Alsace, and the 55th and 56th Reserve Divisions from Lorraine; the IV Corps was en route from Fourth Army. The Ninth Army, originally constituted as the Foch Detachment, comprised the IX and XI Corps transferred from Fourth Army, together with the 52nd and 60th Reserve Divisions and 9th Cavalry Division, the 42nd from Third Army and the 18th Division from Third Army.
…So?
Although Keegan does try to balance strategic explanations of the war with journals and other first-hand accounts, there is not nearly enough – for my tastes anyway – about the conditions soldiers served in, what they talked about, how they lived, what kind of social effects obtained in these countries during the war, how women and families coped while all the men in Europe were off shooting each other. It is quite a narrowly military approach.
There are also moments where you sense Keegan's own biases behind the facts; he seems a little too willing to get excited about the heroic Brits and it made me cautious of accepting some of his conclusions (‘Jutland was not a German victory’). Lazy comments about the ‘naturally warlike’ Serbs also eroded confidence.
Still, as a one-volume summary of things it does provide a pretty useful overview and it did help me contextualise the other reading I've done this year. The way the failure of the Shlieffen Plan created the trench lines of the Western Front, which barely moved in four years, is explained well. There is a decent look at the Eastern and Italian Fronts, as well as a lightning summary of Africa, although the situation in Turkey and the Middle East still feels a little underdeveloped. I though he was quite strong on the dovetailing of the First World War into civil war in Russia as well.
Keegan tries to be fair-minded to the generals, pointing out that contemporary strategy gave them very limited options. Douglas Haig still comes across as a borderline psychopath though, devoted to fundamentalist religious belief and utterly unmoved by human suffering, who ‘compensated for his aloofness with nothing whatsoever of the human touch’.
In no way – appearances, attitude, spoken pronouncement, written legacy – do [the generals] commend themselves to modern opinion or emotion. The impassive expressions that stare back at us from contemporary photographs do not speak of consciences or feelings troubled by the slaughter over which these men presided, nor do the circumstances in which they chose to live: the distant chateau, the well-polished entourage, the glittering motor cars, the cavalry escorts, the regular routine, the heavy dinners, the uninterrupted hours of sleep.
Again, when Keegan pulls back a little and reflects in this way, he is very good. He doesn't do it very often though. But despite the very military focus, most chapters here, and many single paragraphs, leave you wanting more and the bibliography has some good ideas for further exploration. For a broad account like this, that is crucial.
The style is quite easy, although
Keegan makes a lot out of technological failings, in particular of communication technology; he also shows where some of the reputation of WWI commanders for heartlessness is undeserved because of the nature of the technological milieu they were working within. That said, he does not fail to hold generals up to criticism for their personal failings, Haig in particular. He also does not get over-involved in technological issues beyond communication matters: he writes quite tellingly of the introduction of tanks, but less so on military aviation, which had little strategic impact in WWI when compared to WW2.
Interestingly, he mentions key military figures who went on to have major roles in WW2, but only where they are relevant to his thesis - so Rommel at Caporetto and a couple of other German commanders get a mention, but Montgomery and (refreshingly!) Hitler (beyond a namecheck on page 1 to get him out of the way) do not.
Overall, then, a solid introduction to the key events of the First World War, with enough analysis to point the reader towards an understanding of the way the First war paved the way for the Second World War without bludgeoning the reader with that fact.
"The First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash of arms, had prudence or common
Mr. Keegan not only outlines the complex causes of the war, traces the action and events, and discusses the outcome but he also shows how the events of this war lead to so much that made up the events of the twenty century.
Most of all the author never loses sight of the task of the writer of good history. He tells a powerful story in a way that holds your attention throughout the work. This is a fine book and a huge addition to the literature of conflict.
2) John Keegan is vastly overrated as a writer and scholar. I think the
3)Daniel Haig is lambasted as the autistic author of the slaughter at the Somme. Keegan may be guilty of similar callousness though he is constantly reminding the reader of late 20th Century outcomes of nations and regions.
3.1) This is an interesting adaptation of the former. Keegan does point out the Great War activities of WWII leaders and innovators.
This is not a terrible book, nor one of questionable erudition. It is a survey and if one wants the barest of narratives arcs, one could possibly do far worse.
As he concedes, the battles were meaningless, the loss of life horrific, wiping out 10-30% of the young men of France, Britain, Russia, Germany, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary. It is hard to conceive of the stupendous stupidity of it all. An offensive gains three miles at the cost of 250,000 lives. Six months later the ground changes hands again, at a similar cost. There are no glorious, rousing tales of courage. Most of the dead were blown to bits by immense artillery barrages of millions of shells or riddled with machine gun fire as they made frontal assaults on dug-in enemy positions.
Keegan's story is not a personal one - we only rarely hear from the troops in the trenches. Instead he analyzes each major assault and assigns blame as to why it was misconceived or failed. But Keegan is a veteran military historian and he uses his deep knowledge to point out the fundamental flaws in military tactics that led to the horrendous bloodshed. Roads were poor, railroads not well-connected and most men marched on foot while their equipment was hauled by horses, hundreds of thousands of which died in the conflict. There was no opportunity for fast-moving offensives. The machine gun made frontal assaults suicidal, yet commanders on all sides believed that if their men just toughed it out a little more, the enemy could be over-run. Instead, by the end of the war, many of the troops on all sides were refusing to fight. The Russian Army had dissolved almost overnight after the Bolsheviks shoved the Tsar from power. French troops refused to march, German sailors would not leave port. By 1918, Germany, France and Britain were running out of replacement troops, but the entry ot the United States into the war promised almost limitless new blood, a final all-out German attack failed, and the Central Powers fell apart.
This is a thorough overview of a war that Keegan admits has never been understood. He does a masterful job of showing how the military tactics of the time, which emphasized the importance of mobilizing armies and rushing them to the front without delay, magnified a relatively local faceoff between the Austrians and Serbia over the assassination of a royal prince into five years of bitter slaughter. But Keegan concedes that he cannot understand how the leaders of a Europe that seemed so prosperous, cultured and at peace could so swiftly fall into a war with few goals other than national honor. Why the political leadership of the combatants failed to stop the fighting is beyond the scope of Keegan's book.
But that it did happen is a cautionary tale to anyone who would think it can never happen again.
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940.3 |