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.

An Illustrated History of The First World War (John Keegan, 2001)

As can be quickly told from looking at the list of books during the past year, I don't ever get tired of reading about World War I. (I also like Keegan's stuff, including this book.)

Keegan is a British war historian who is a good writer and knows lots about WWI. I took this book off the shelf for the pictures, but the overview of the entire war, pretty much all theaters, turns out to be highly useful.

But the photos make the book. I had never seen the vast majority of these. Going from the early days of optimism, through the trenches, through end of war, up to the cemeteries and memorials erected worldwide. The photos are stunning, and bring the written materials to life in a way that easily justifies the "worth a thousand words" cliche.

This war was simply amazing. It's been summed up far better than I can hope to do. The unbelievable trench system in the West; centuries-old empires breaking down; emerging airplane and tank technology; poison gas; 19th century infantry tactics against entrenched machine guns; millions of artillery shells altering landscapes; a devastated populace left behind in most countries, and an amazingly quick trip into WWII. Etc. Wow.

Take a close look at Otto Dix's triptych for one post-war German look at things. Or read this book.

The Face of Battle (John Keegan, 1976)

Keegan tries to explore how it feels on a battlefield from the standpoint of the front-line participant. This is necessarily a difficult task, but it makes for a really interesting read. So much war writing is done from the perspective of the generals.

Much of the book is taken up with three case studies: Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815) and the Somme (focusing on the initial day, July 1, 1916). He selected these because they were pretty discrete battle situations, and quite a bit of documentary evidence exists. These also were selected to demonstrate the progression of the battlefield situation over the centuries.

Agincourt of course involved archers and knights; in addition to the battle itself, Keegan discusses pre-battle activities, treatment of prisoners, etc. He points out how the mayhem was limited - when the battle consists of guys swinging heavy swords at each other, the amount of damage that can be inflicted, the scope of the battlefield, and the duration of the battle are necessarily limited. Though the longbow archers were introducing change.

Waterloo was a longer battle, much noisier, and involved the risk of cannonballs coming from off in the distance and killing soldiers or taking off limbs. Keegan didn't seem to think the point of attack was all that different from Agincourt, though guns increased the range and the duration of the battle.

The Somme had some front-line similarities, but now the scope of battle was changing rapidly. The artillery and shelling came from far away; the size of the battlefield had enlarged dramatically. A guy hidden in a machine gun nest could hold groups at bay. Folks in the front line areas were constantly subject to getting nailed by shells. Very impersonal. While the artillery wasn't necessarily accurate, it was interesting to read how the British advance was supposed to be timed to follow closely behind a "curtain of fire."

Anyway, Keegan cites various primary sources, compares the three battles in detail and tries to draw some conclusions about where the concept of "battle" is headed. His conclusion is quite interesting, especially because it was written in the 1970s. Keegan doesn't think that armed conflict is over, but he does feel that the traditional set-piece battle setting is largely a thing of the past. He was writing before the fall of the Iron Curtain, at a time when the military was still preparing for a large European land war. Keegan felt that technological change has moved past what individuals can handle well. The theater of battle is immense; danger comes from all sorts of unseen places; noise and overall mayhem is everywhere; duration of major battles now can last for days. Keegan feels individuals really can't handle this effectively.

So he foresees limited actions - terrorists, for example. "The militant young . . . will fight for the causes which they profess not through the mechanisms of the state and its armed power but, where necessary, against them, by clandestine and guerrilla methods . . . the suspicion grows that battle has already abolished itself."

Read at the gym.