The First World War (John Keegan, 1998)

I've recently been going into some specific facets of WWI (such as this very good work); I very much liked the pictorial version of this book as described here; so I decided to take up the narrative version as a bit of a review and recap.  Much worthwhile.  Keegan writes really well.  And he is charmingly supportive of his native country (England).

Something good about this book:  more focus on the Eastern front (and Italy).  Typically not emphasized in WWI stuff I've read so far.  Russia laboring away for three long years before communists cut out - I had the impression Russia had pretty much checked out after Tannenbaum - not so.

Then there's just the overall amazing-ness- that a war like his could happen in a prosperous Europe with so much in common across all of these countries - culture, religion, business ties, travel (including tourism now involving, for the first time, the middle and lower classes).  Not sure how to measure but the connectedness across Europe might have been stronger than even today, given interposition of the Iron Curtain and separate (and dramatically different) development paths for decades.  100 years later - these folks have been EU partners in one form or the other, admittedly with varying degrees of success, for decades already!  Why were they killing one another so vigorously, so recently?

The German naval build-up was a very, very real factor in reducing England's choices.

Have read elsewhere about Sarajevo, the interlocking alliances, the inevitability of mobilization; that Germany believed it needed to act quickly.

That WWII is not a separate war at all!  The more one reads, the clearer it is that WWII was merely a continuation of WWI.

Have read elsewhere of the futility of frontal assaults in the trenches.  Of Verdun, the Somme, Ypres, etc.  The breathtaking, shocking casualties - simply unbelievable - yet they kept at it for years.  How, how did this happen??

Kitchener's groups - units from single towns in England, inexperienced, predictable (at least in hindsight) devastation for particular towns.

How easy it is to criticize the commanders - and they probably deserve most of it - Keegan does note the paramount importance of real time communications in a complex, fluid situation, and how the persistent failure of that factor - placed alongside the industrial killing apparatus - limited commanders and contributed to the slaughter.  Commanders could not obtain information, communicate decisions, accomplish anything once battle was joined.

The courage, the sacrifice, the slaughter.  Today's cynicism - much stemming from WWI - hadn't yet set in.  It has now, with a deserved vengeance.

America's entry - the mass of numbers - men and equipment - Germany spent, Austria worthless per usual.

"But then the First World War is a mystery.  Its origins are mysterious.  So is its course.  Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict?  Why, when the hope of bringing the conflict to a quick and decisive conclusion was everywhere dashed to the ground within months of its outbreak, did the combatants decide nevertheless to persist in their military effort, to mobilize for total war and eventually to commit the totality of their young manhood to mutual and existentially pointless slaughter?"

Why, indeed?

Everything about this is simply fascinating, and so disheartening.  I will keep reading about it.