by A.J.P. Taylor
ISBN: 978-0-140-02481-4
First published 1963
287 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books
Cover photograph: British soldier at Ypres (Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
5 / 5 Stars
Very interesting book, and a very useful book if you are to visit the battlefields, cemeteries and graveyards of World War in Northern France or Türkiye.
And there are so many graves and so many cemeteries, of the allies. From provinces, from British Empire states or departments of the French empire. However, did you know there are no German graves? The Germans preferred to take their war dead home and bury them in their locality rather than where they fell like the allies did.
And the behaviour of the Generals was despicable. Generals would lie, compete with each other, anything to get their offensive underway. At one point Haig is reported to have said that not enough men had died in an offensive to make it successful! Up until 1916 the French and British operated as two separate armies with no coherent strategy and no army to army communications!
Often Politicians had no choice but to appease the generals. Below is a photo of Haig berating Lloyd George, with French General Joffre looking on.
French General Joffre, according to Taylor’s analysis, was incompetent and did not deserve the credit he was later given. He was credited with stopping the Germans at the First Battle of the Marne.
However history has forgotten that at the first stage of the war Joffre launched an invasion of Germany, to recapture Alsace-Lorraine. This failed utterly. It was only by withdrawing these troops that he was able to redeploy whole divisions to counter the German forces on their way to Paris.
Taylor reveals issues that seems inconceivable to us nowadays. The generals directing the war, and directing politicians. War running according to train timetables. The failure to learn from mistakes in 1914, and 1915 and 1916 and 1917. It seemed to some that the war would never end.
Finally, the war did end, and four leaders came together to establish a peace. Clemenceau from France, Wilson from the US, Lloyd George from the UK and Orlando from Italy.
But the treaty came undone within the year, there were manor issues with Fiume, Greece and Türkiye, Hungary, and others. New treaties were required all over the world.
The world still wasn’t safe … this was truly the end of a civilisation.
The Eclectic Book Review 