Post by Allen Wiener on Nov 14, 2011 12:23:33 GMT -5
Finally got around to reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and I have to rate it very near the top of my list. I had never read anything on WWI, or "The Great War" as it was known at the time, and this is a great introduction to the subject.
I'm guessing many of you will have read it long ago, but it's probably worth a re-read every now and then. I can't think of another historic event that was so stupidly handled, bungled into, or more avoidable, but the primary players simply didn't see that or chose not to see it. The event seemed to mark the close of an older historical order, which still included hereditary monarchies, and the opening of our own era. An awful lot of the wrong people were placed in positions of responsibility and showed little real leadership or imagination. Petty resentments and egos a-plenty were much too prominent. As the crisis evolved, each country seemed resigned to the inevitability of the war.
Worst of all were the plans that had been made many years earlier in preparation for what had seemed an inevitable war after 1870. Regardless of information that came in regarding enemy troop movements, France in particular stuck like glue to its long-established plan and refused to even consider any changes to that. Each of the major parties behaved pretty much the same.
It is very difficult not to blame the war on Germany, or to not see German military behavior toward civilians in Belgium and France as barbaric and a harbinger of even worse to come from Germany in the next war.
There is also a clear disconnect between elements of modern warfare, including air recon and unprecedented power of long range weapons, and archaic elements, including poor communications, transport by taxis that were comandeered, and delays in communications within each command.
Although this book only covers the first month of the war, it is clear that the most regretable thing about WWI is that it achieved nothing, despite a staggering cost in lives and treasure, and actually contributed to an even worse war only 20 years later. The Versailles Treaty, which blamed Germany for the war, stripped Germany of its colonies, and forced Germany to pay the costs of the war. While this may actually seem justified, given German aggression, the book also portrays this as a very different period fraught with nationalism, resentment of past actions, mutual distrust, and a resigned acceptance that war would come, that it was inevitable, that it would be over quickly (where have we heard that before?), and each country's belief that it was destined to prevail. In other words, Germany may have been well suited to the role of villain, but all of the countries involved bore some responsibility.
Allen
I'm guessing many of you will have read it long ago, but it's probably worth a re-read every now and then. I can't think of another historic event that was so stupidly handled, bungled into, or more avoidable, but the primary players simply didn't see that or chose not to see it. The event seemed to mark the close of an older historical order, which still included hereditary monarchies, and the opening of our own era. An awful lot of the wrong people were placed in positions of responsibility and showed little real leadership or imagination. Petty resentments and egos a-plenty were much too prominent. As the crisis evolved, each country seemed resigned to the inevitability of the war.
Worst of all were the plans that had been made many years earlier in preparation for what had seemed an inevitable war after 1870. Regardless of information that came in regarding enemy troop movements, France in particular stuck like glue to its long-established plan and refused to even consider any changes to that. Each of the major parties behaved pretty much the same.
It is very difficult not to blame the war on Germany, or to not see German military behavior toward civilians in Belgium and France as barbaric and a harbinger of even worse to come from Germany in the next war.
There is also a clear disconnect between elements of modern warfare, including air recon and unprecedented power of long range weapons, and archaic elements, including poor communications, transport by taxis that were comandeered, and delays in communications within each command.
Although this book only covers the first month of the war, it is clear that the most regretable thing about WWI is that it achieved nothing, despite a staggering cost in lives and treasure, and actually contributed to an even worse war only 20 years later. The Versailles Treaty, which blamed Germany for the war, stripped Germany of its colonies, and forced Germany to pay the costs of the war. While this may actually seem justified, given German aggression, the book also portrays this as a very different period fraught with nationalism, resentment of past actions, mutual distrust, and a resigned acceptance that war would come, that it was inevitable, that it would be over quickly (where have we heard that before?), and each country's belief that it was destined to prevail. In other words, Germany may have been well suited to the role of villain, but all of the countries involved bore some responsibility.
Allen