This has been my bedtime reading for a couple of weeks.
It covers the period from the build-up to war to the end of 1914. The sabre-rattling of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire, the support leant to it by Germany and the Entente's response to this, through to the sclerotising of the frontline in France & Belgium by the end of the year.
It covers the initial battles, including those on the Eastern Front, a subject which I know little about, the calamatous French incursion into Alsace-Lorraine, a predictable (to the Germans) event that lead top the greatest day's "Butcher's Bill" of the entire war. The leasurely response by the BEF, under the less-than glorious leadership of Sir John French and the lack of rapid follow-up & exploitation of advatages by all sides.
The feuds between commanders and their incompetence is well covered, as is the prevalent attitude, that a determined infantry can carry the day against any fortification. Lions lead by donkeys wasn't restricted to the British Army!
He covers how the waring parties, at least in the West, had realised that they were in a war that probably couldn't be won on the battlefield, by the end of September, but the will to find a political solution wasn't there.
Covering all this in one tome, does mean that many areas are only lightly covered, if at all (The events in East Africa & the Japanese attacks on German possessions in the Far East, for example).
Hmmmm. I've had a flick through this, and from what I read and from what Adam says, it rather seems as if Mr. Hastings is peddling a pre-Terraine view of the War.
If you're in the UK, Hastings is on the Steve Wright show on Radio 2 this afternoon. Don't know for sure, but I suspect he might be plugging the book. Maybe worth a listen.
There was a piece in the Times Educational Supplement in which a teacher describes how he believes the Great War should be taught. It seems to me that the things that he's saying shouldn't be taught already aren't. Most people have long since stopped believing the "pointless-war, lions-led-by-donkeys" assessment.
"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
Yes, Hastings dumps on that idea, pointing out that except the antisemitism, the Kaiser's ideas weren't far removed from those of one of his coroporals!
Oops. M Hastings is on R2 between 5pm - 7pm. Sorry.
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"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
Hmmmm. I've had a flick through this, and from what I read and from what Adam says, it rather seems as if Mr. Hastings is peddling a pre-Terraine view of the War.
If you're in the UK, Hastings is on the Steve Wright show on Radio 2 this afternoon. Don't know for sure, but I suspect he might be plugging the book. Maybe worth a listen.
There was a piece in the Times Educational Supplement in which a teacher describes how he believes the Great War should be taught. It seems to me that the things that he's saying shouldn't be taught already aren't. Most people have long since stopped believing the "pointless-war, lions-led-by-donkeys" assessment.
I find some parts of the article rather problematic:
"In Clark's book, the traditional villains of the piece - Austria-Hungary and imperial Germany - are re-evaluated, set against not "tiny, helpless Serbia" but an aggressive, posturing, expansionist Serbia, heavily influenced by a shadow government drawn from the intelligence services. The foreign policy of all the major powers, Clark argues, was conducted by competing mishmashes of factions, with misunderstanding so built into the system that the people apparently in charge of these nations watched in horror as they accidentally went to war."
It's pretty much a definition of a pointless war.
"Stephen concluded that the Owen and Sassoon view took hold not because it represented real Tommies but because it reflected the shock of a middle class unused to war. Taking Owen as the "average" British soldier is like assuming that the Guardian letters page of 2003 provides an authentic representation of life in the armed forces in Iraq."
What does it even mean? So, this sort of depravity is a natural state of being for non-middle classes? It would explain the early XXth century obsession with eugenics.
"In fact, Stephen suggests, many young men serving on the Western Front were happy with their lot. He found records of a Norfolk farmhand, gone to Flanders from an area of England that had suffered famines before the war, who was amazed at the endless supply of hard tack - army rations of dry bread. More days were spent behind the line than in the trenches; days spent in French villages where young, brave men in uniforms were feted, well-fed and popular with the ladies."
It's fascinating that a country that couldn't deal with a famine suddenly could produce massive amounts of food and arms and ammunitions during the war. Apparently starving ones citizens is a great way of making them happy to go to war.
"What Haig and the other commanders lacked was experience with the new weapons of war. These increased the killing power of an individual soldier to such an extent that offensive tactics that had previously been relatively safe became lethal: jogging in a pack across an open field in the face of machine gun fire is quite a different proposition from doing it against single-cartridge Martini-Henry rifles."
Nice try. Because the battle of Omduran has never happened (oh wait, apparently Kitchner was commanding during that battle. I guess he just forgot about little details like what quick-firing artillery and Maxim machine guns do to massed infantry), right? Franco-Prussian war never happened either? Also, there wasn't Russo-Japanese war and world powers didn't have any observers there?
I'd like to remind that the necessity of tanks/assault guns was predicted before the war by many thinking individuals. It just happened that the generals who were in change weren't one of them. These individuals were proven to have a correct vision of future warfare and the commanders were proven to be incompetent and unable to learn from the lessons of the past, ergo stupid, ergo donkeys.
So, to sum things up:
The war was started accidentally, so it wasn't pointless. Spoiled middle-class didn't like the war because it was "unaccustomed" to it but hungry proles did so it's ok and the war wasn't a horror, especially there wasn't anything wrong about 20000 soldiers dying in one day. Generals who forgot lessons from previous wars and rejected proposed solutions to problems from these previous wars were great and competent.
This article is like something straight from Stalinist propaganda about WWII.
-- Edited by Morgoth on Friday 29th of November 2013 01:01:02 AM
