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The World Wars #1
The First World War
The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation.
Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent.
But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable."
By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.
With 24 pages of photographs, 2 endpaper maps, and 15 maps in text
Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent.
But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable."
By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.
With 24 pages of photographs, 2 endpaper maps, and 15 maps in text
475 pages, Paperback
First published June 5, 1999
1414 people are currently reading
25516 people want to read
About the author
John Keegan
134 books758 followersSir John Desmond Patrick Keegan, OBE, FRSL was a British military historian, lecturer and journalist. He published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime and intelligence warfare as well as the psychology of battle.
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April 26, 2016
As I’ve often proclaimed my deep and abiding love of history, it is somewhat difficult for me to admit that my knowledge of the great upheaval of World War I is about the size of a teacup pig. Now, before I get any further into the terrors of trench warfare, machine guns, and unrestricted submarine warfare, let’s take a moment to reflect on teacup pigs: (soundtrack provided by the Beach Boys) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2FUsP...
Back to the horrors of the Great War.
Any student of anything knows that you have to start with the basics. When learning about historical events, the fundamental building block is a “one volume history” by a “popular historian.” In other words, it’s a book that’s not too long, written by someone for whom language itself is not a second language.
For the purposes of World War I, my choice of John Keegan’s The First World War was a no-brainer. Keegan is a prolific and well respected author, highly-educated and learned yet fairly accessible. His take on World War I is moderately recent (published in 1998) and, at just over 400 pages, is relatively short, especially for such an expansive subject.
As might well be expected for a book titled The First World War, Keegan’s history spans from the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the Hapsburg dynasty, not the Scottish post-punk revival band) to the Armistice of 1918.
Of course, with any one-volume history of a titanic event, there are bound to be tradeoffs. What to leave in, what to leave out. Where to go into detail, and where to skim. Because of the shortness of Keegan’s work, there are more tradeoffs here than most. Many aspects of the Great War are dealt with at the epidermal layer.
The most depth and insight comes right at the beginning, in Keegan’s retelling of how the war began. This also happens to be the best part of the book. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with World War I knows that its origins are as complicated as Inception and as mysterious as Justin Bieber’s fame.
In school, you probably learned – as I did – about the infamous “entangling alliances,” which constituted a half dozen or more treaties, each with a dead man’s switch that tripped. Following the Archduke’s assassination in Sarajevo, Bosnia, then an outpost of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. The A-H’s blamed Serbia, and threatened to attack; Russia threatened to join the war to help Serbia; Germany threatened to join the war to support A-H; France then threatened to join the war in support of Russia; and Germany decided to attack France, through Belgium, which brought Great Britain in on the fun.
If this all sounds desperately suicidal, well, it was (with good reason did JFK turn to Tuchman’s The Guns of August during the Cuban Missile Crisis). However, Keegan does a good explaining the logic – if that’s the right word – behind Europe’s decision to hand the 20th century to the United States (thanks, by the way, we sure enjoyed a good run; and best of luck to China).
In Keegan’s telling, the magic word is “mobilization.” Back in the good old days (of monarchies and mustard gas), it took armies a great deal of time to gather, equip, and set out for war. The speed of this mobilization was determined, mainly, by railroad timetables: how many carloads of men, equipment, and so forth, could be moved in an hour, a day, a week. The French even had an algorithm for how much territory they’d lose during each day of delay in mobilization. (And this is why we should not trust math).
The most important “military precaution” was the German’s so-called Schlieffen Plan. It was predicated on the German belief that they could not hope to fight and win a war against both France and Russia at the same time. Thus, at the outset of any war, the Germans planned a lightning strike into France, hoping to topple her within 40 days or so, and then turn their attention to the East. In order for this plan to work, and to avoid France’s string of frontier forts, the German Army would have to cross through neutral Belgium.
The Schlieffen Plan very nearly worked; however, it was stopped short of its goal following the horrendously complicated (and violent) battle of the Marne. By the time Keegan gets finished telling the woeful story of the Marne, and the battles of the Frontier that preceded it, he is tapped out on battlefield detail. From this point on, his telling becomes more cursory, and The First World War begins to feel like more of a survey. As Keegan starts to skip from event to event, the acute judgments and thought-out analyses of the first few chapters lessen.
World War I is as complex on its battlefields as it is in its politics. The masses of men and horses involved really boggle the mind. It’s like the Pelennor Fields in Return of the Kings, except the scale is even bigger and Legolas is covered in lice and choking on chlorine gas. The movement of troops on this scale are exceedingly difficult to follow. When Keegan starts to name the army groups – Army X, Corps IXV, etc. – the page starts to look like the copyright to a movie. And when he starts to explain where those various armies are going, it turns out they’re going to places you haven’t heard of, and which might not exist anymore.
The problem, I think, is that at certain parts of his book (the Marne especially), Keegan couldn’t decide whether to go all-in on his descriptions, or whether to keep it simple. The result is a cursory description of the order of battle, without any context whatsoever. Too often, the words on the page had no real meaning. For instance, at one point, Keegan writes:
Okay, I made that all up. The point remains, however.
And there needs to be maps! Many maps. There should be a law about this. In books about World War I, there should almost be maps everywhere. Here, there are 17 maps, ranging from relatively helpful (a conceptualization of the Schlieffen Plan) to absolutely needless (a map of the battle of Jutland, which shows the North Sea and has an X where the battle of Jutland took place). This isn’t nearly enough to help me figure anything out. Besides, the maps were apparently made in color, and then put into black & white. Have fun figuring out which shade of black represents the British Expeditionary Force!
Throughout the book, I felt like Keegan was losing steam, or maybe I was losing interest. Certain theaters of the war, especially the battles in Africa, are relayed so half-heartedly, that I wondered why they were included at all. The great climax of the war – the last German offensive and the entry of America – becomes an anticlimax in Keegan’s hands. Despite offhandedly mentioning the tipping power of America’s entry onto the Allies’ side, the contribution of the Yanks is given extremely short shrift.
My main problem with The First World War is in its textual presentation. Despite being a short book, it felt like a long read. This is due to Keegan’s style, which can best be described as dense (also, thorny, or tangled). His sentences are often long, studded with commas, set off with dashes, and packed with so much information that the sentence’s point is lost. To wit:
Diagram that!
Too often, a Keegan sentence would fail the Twice-Over Rule. This rule, which I just made up, states that if I have to read a sentence twice-over too often, I will soon start skimming the pages. If, after skimming for some time, I realize I can’t recall anything that happened in the last twenty pages, I will throw the book out the window and play video games. Keegan also has the annoying habit of proving how smart he is. We get it, John! You know about every battle that was ever fought. You don’t need to compare everything in World War I to Agincourt, Waterloo, or Antietam.
Another thing I disliked about The First World War was its lack of intimacy. World War I gave us some of the most beautiful and personal accounts of any war in history, yet Keegan is apparently unmoved. There is a disheartening paucity of grunt-level recollections, which might have added some life to the narrative. Instead, for the most part, we are left with Keegan’s dry, stuffy, Oxbridge-ian sentences.
This remove, I posit, is intentional on Keegan’s part. I don’t know anything about the guy, aside from his Wikipedia page, but his writing reeks of the aristocracy. Throughout these pages, he takes little to no time to develop any characters or to connect various names to anything resembling a human person. What little time he does spend, though, is in the company of the generals, the “great men,” such as French, and Joffre, and Haig.
There is even a section – proportionately long, too – in which Keegan vigorously defends these men. He takes umbrage at the brilliant German tactician Max Hoffman’s conception of the British army as “lions led by donkeys.” Not true, Keegan insists. And in support of this argument, he lists the difficulties inherent in command, and makes increasingly facile and strident comparisons to the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War.
Not only does Keegan’s argument miss the point – of human suffering beyond imagination – but it’s wrong. His own book proves this point. Time and again, generals on all sides – but especially Haig at the Somme – failed to achieve breakthroughs because of a lack of preparation, foresight, and nimbleness. Moreover, Keegan’s heroes – Haig and Joffre – are pretty awful men, or at least unfeeling. Joffre never let the war disturb his sleep or cause him to miss a meal. And Haig made petulant diary entries in which he blamed his men for not trying hard enough. This doesn’t exactly make them the second comings of the Duke of Wellington. Certainly, all these generals did the best they could; just as certain, they aren’t worth Keegan tearing the elbow patches off his tweed jacket in a full-throated defense.
Now, I’m just grumbling. I’m apt to do that, sometimes, when a book annoys me. And truly, this book annoyed me; however, it also proved to be an astute primer on one of history’s bloodiest fulcrums. Whatever else you can say about him, John Keegan is a brand you can (mostly) trust. If you’ve got to start somewhere, it might as well be here.
Back to the horrors of the Great War.
Any student of anything knows that you have to start with the basics. When learning about historical events, the fundamental building block is a “one volume history” by a “popular historian.” In other words, it’s a book that’s not too long, written by someone for whom language itself is not a second language.
For the purposes of World War I, my choice of John Keegan’s The First World War was a no-brainer. Keegan is a prolific and well respected author, highly-educated and learned yet fairly accessible. His take on World War I is moderately recent (published in 1998) and, at just over 400 pages, is relatively short, especially for such an expansive subject.
As might well be expected for a book titled The First World War, Keegan’s history spans from the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the Hapsburg dynasty, not the Scottish post-punk revival band) to the Armistice of 1918.
Of course, with any one-volume history of a titanic event, there are bound to be tradeoffs. What to leave in, what to leave out. Where to go into detail, and where to skim. Because of the shortness of Keegan’s work, there are more tradeoffs here than most. Many aspects of the Great War are dealt with at the epidermal layer.
The most depth and insight comes right at the beginning, in Keegan’s retelling of how the war began. This also happens to be the best part of the book. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with World War I knows that its origins are as complicated as Inception and as mysterious as Justin Bieber’s fame.
In school, you probably learned – as I did – about the infamous “entangling alliances,” which constituted a half dozen or more treaties, each with a dead man’s switch that tripped. Following the Archduke’s assassination in Sarajevo, Bosnia, then an outpost of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. The A-H’s blamed Serbia, and threatened to attack; Russia threatened to join the war to help Serbia; Germany threatened to join the war to support A-H; France then threatened to join the war in support of Russia; and Germany decided to attack France, through Belgium, which brought Great Britain in on the fun.
If this all sounds desperately suicidal, well, it was (with good reason did JFK turn to Tuchman’s The Guns of August during the Cuban Missile Crisis). However, Keegan does a good explaining the logic – if that’s the right word – behind Europe’s decision to hand the 20th century to the United States (thanks, by the way, we sure enjoyed a good run; and best of luck to China).
In Keegan’s telling, the magic word is “mobilization.” Back in the good old days (of monarchies and mustard gas), it took armies a great deal of time to gather, equip, and set out for war. The speed of this mobilization was determined, mainly, by railroad timetables: how many carloads of men, equipment, and so forth, could be moved in an hour, a day, a week. The French even had an algorithm for how much territory they’d lose during each day of delay in mobilization. (And this is why we should not trust math).
The net of interlocking and opposed understandings and mutual assistance treaties…is commonly held to have been the mechanism which brought the “Allies”…into conflict in 1914 with the “Central Powers”…Legalistically that cannot be denied. It was no treaty, however, that caused Austria to go running to Berlin for guidance and support in the aftermath of the Sarajevo assassination – no treaty in any case applied – but anticipation of the military consequences that might ensue should she act alone…[I]t was the calculation of a presumed military response, of how it was guessed one military precaution would follow from another, that drove Austria to seek comfort in the Triple Alliance from the outset, not the triple Alliance that set military events in train.
The most important “military precaution” was the German’s so-called Schlieffen Plan. It was predicated on the German belief that they could not hope to fight and win a war against both France and Russia at the same time. Thus, at the outset of any war, the Germans planned a lightning strike into France, hoping to topple her within 40 days or so, and then turn their attention to the East. In order for this plan to work, and to avoid France’s string of frontier forts, the German Army would have to cross through neutral Belgium.
The Schlieffen Plan very nearly worked; however, it was stopped short of its goal following the horrendously complicated (and violent) battle of the Marne. By the time Keegan gets finished telling the woeful story of the Marne, and the battles of the Frontier that preceded it, he is tapped out on battlefield detail. From this point on, his telling becomes more cursory, and The First World War begins to feel like more of a survey. As Keegan starts to skip from event to event, the acute judgments and thought-out analyses of the first few chapters lessen.
World War I is as complex on its battlefields as it is in its politics. The masses of men and horses involved really boggle the mind. It’s like the Pelennor Fields in Return of the Kings, except the scale is even bigger and Legolas is covered in lice and choking on chlorine gas. The movement of troops on this scale are exceedingly difficult to follow. When Keegan starts to name the army groups – Army X, Corps IXV, etc. – the page starts to look like the copyright to a movie. And when he starts to explain where those various armies are going, it turns out they’re going to places you haven’t heard of, and which might not exist anymore.
The problem, I think, is that at certain parts of his book (the Marne especially), Keegan couldn’t decide whether to go all-in on his descriptions, or whether to keep it simple. The result is a cursory description of the order of battle, without any context whatsoever. Too often, the words on the page had no real meaning. For instance, at one point, Keegan writes:
Army IX, consisting of Corps VI and Corps III, made up of Divisions XI, XV, and XVX, marched twenty kilometers toward the village of Ferret Tongue, crossed the Smelly Frenchman Creek, and launched an attack en echelon against the IVth Corps of the German Army, located in the province of Waffle (somewhere in present-day Belgium).
Okay, I made that all up. The point remains, however.
And there needs to be maps! Many maps. There should be a law about this. In books about World War I, there should almost be maps everywhere. Here, there are 17 maps, ranging from relatively helpful (a conceptualization of the Schlieffen Plan) to absolutely needless (a map of the battle of Jutland, which shows the North Sea and has an X where the battle of Jutland took place). This isn’t nearly enough to help me figure anything out. Besides, the maps were apparently made in color, and then put into black & white. Have fun figuring out which shade of black represents the British Expeditionary Force!
Throughout the book, I felt like Keegan was losing steam, or maybe I was losing interest. Certain theaters of the war, especially the battles in Africa, are relayed so half-heartedly, that I wondered why they were included at all. The great climax of the war – the last German offensive and the entry of America – becomes an anticlimax in Keegan’s hands. Despite offhandedly mentioning the tipping power of America’s entry onto the Allies’ side, the contribution of the Yanks is given extremely short shrift.
My main problem with The First World War is in its textual presentation. Despite being a short book, it felt like a long read. This is due to Keegan’s style, which can best be described as dense (also, thorny, or tangled). His sentences are often long, studded with commas, set off with dashes, and packed with so much information that the sentence’s point is lost. To wit:
The French could not delay German reinforcements more than four weeks – the Schlieffen Plan, to the details of which Austria was not privy, reckoned six weeks – so that it was perfectly safe, as well as essential, for Austria to attack Russia in Poland; and, even if Austria found itself committed to a Serbian war, it would not be let down by Germany; as to Serbia, the problem “will solve itself for Austria as a matter of course.”
Diagram that!
Too often, a Keegan sentence would fail the Twice-Over Rule. This rule, which I just made up, states that if I have to read a sentence twice-over too often, I will soon start skimming the pages. If, after skimming for some time, I realize I can’t recall anything that happened in the last twenty pages, I will throw the book out the window and play video games. Keegan also has the annoying habit of proving how smart he is. We get it, John! You know about every battle that was ever fought. You don’t need to compare everything in World War I to Agincourt, Waterloo, or Antietam.
Another thing I disliked about The First World War was its lack of intimacy. World War I gave us some of the most beautiful and personal accounts of any war in history, yet Keegan is apparently unmoved. There is a disheartening paucity of grunt-level recollections, which might have added some life to the narrative. Instead, for the most part, we are left with Keegan’s dry, stuffy, Oxbridge-ian sentences.
This remove, I posit, is intentional on Keegan’s part. I don’t know anything about the guy, aside from his Wikipedia page, but his writing reeks of the aristocracy. Throughout these pages, he takes little to no time to develop any characters or to connect various names to anything resembling a human person. What little time he does spend, though, is in the company of the generals, the “great men,” such as French, and Joffre, and Haig.
There is even a section – proportionately long, too – in which Keegan vigorously defends these men. He takes umbrage at the brilliant German tactician Max Hoffman’s conception of the British army as “lions led by donkeys.” Not true, Keegan insists. And in support of this argument, he lists the difficulties inherent in command, and makes increasingly facile and strident comparisons to the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War.
Not only does Keegan’s argument miss the point – of human suffering beyond imagination – but it’s wrong. His own book proves this point. Time and again, generals on all sides – but especially Haig at the Somme – failed to achieve breakthroughs because of a lack of preparation, foresight, and nimbleness. Moreover, Keegan’s heroes – Haig and Joffre – are pretty awful men, or at least unfeeling. Joffre never let the war disturb his sleep or cause him to miss a meal. And Haig made petulant diary entries in which he blamed his men for not trying hard enough. This doesn’t exactly make them the second comings of the Duke of Wellington. Certainly, all these generals did the best they could; just as certain, they aren’t worth Keegan tearing the elbow patches off his tweed jacket in a full-throated defense.
Now, I’m just grumbling. I’m apt to do that, sometimes, when a book annoys me. And truly, this book annoyed me; however, it also proved to be an astute primer on one of history’s bloodiest fulcrums. Whatever else you can say about him, John Keegan is a brand you can (mostly) trust. If you’ve got to start somewhere, it might as well be here.
November 26, 2023
Only a historian as talented as Keegan could tell the whole story of WWI in 400+ pages....an amazing feat. But he does it with style and readability, even though the first several chapters are dry as dust! He hits his stride with the latter part of 1915 and holds the reader's interest from that point forward.
Anyone who reads the history of the Great War is horrified by the unbelievable and unnecessary slaughter of a generation of British, French, and German young men who marched upright into a barrage of machine gun fire time and time again.....and all for a few yards of ground that would be lost the next day. For what?.....that is the question that haunts the reader throughout the book and has puzzled historians for decades. The author attempts to solve that puzzle but even he admits that there is no "correct' answer. He agrees that WWII was just an extension of the Great War due to the fact that Germany felt that their military was never beaten and that they were sold out by the politicians. This is a must read for the WWI buff and highly recommended.
Anyone who reads the history of the Great War is horrified by the unbelievable and unnecessary slaughter of a generation of British, French, and German young men who marched upright into a barrage of machine gun fire time and time again.....and all for a few yards of ground that would be lost the next day. For what?.....that is the question that haunts the reader throughout the book and has puzzled historians for decades. The author attempts to solve that puzzle but even he admits that there is no "correct' answer. He agrees that WWII was just an extension of the Great War due to the fact that Germany felt that their military was never beaten and that they were sold out by the politicians. This is a must read for the WWI buff and highly recommended.
March 12, 2014
An agricultural labourer, who has
A wife and four children, receives 20s a week.
3/4 buys food, and the members of the family
Have three meals a day.
How much is that per person per meal?
***
. . . The table printed below gives the number
Of paupers in the United Kingdom, and
The total cost of poor relief.
Find the average number
Of paupers per ten thousand people.
***
...Out of an army of 28,000 men,
15% were
Killed, 25% were
Wounded. Calculate
How many men were there left to fight?
~ From Pitman’s Common Sense Arithmetic, 1917
THE TEMPTATIONS OF HISTORY
What are some of the toughest temptations for the historian to resist?
1. Looking for Concrete Causes
2. Looking for Dramatic Turning-points
3. Looking for Direct Consequences
Keegan’s history is dry and that is precisely why it is so good.
Keegan tries hard to fall into these traps. He knows that he cannot afford to keep his history dry. He knows that these traps are exactly the ones which can juice it up. But luckily, he does not (or could not) juice it up.
Keegan’s strength is his military analysis and command of the tactical decisions that punctuated the war the war. He tries to dress up the book beyond this by talking about ‘the mystery of why a continent at the high of its powers went to war’ & ‘the Second world war was a continuation of the First’ & ‘the race for naval supremacy perhaps started the process’ occasionally, but except for lip service at the beginning and the end of the book, these are left as mysteries.
Looking for Concrete Causes
Keegan does not easily take sides. He does not show one side as good and one side as bad. There is No Demonizing involved. He does not blame any one country for precipitating the war (well, at least not in his actual account - as you will see, I discount certain parts of the book). He does not even condemn specific war practices or instances (except book burning — he does hate the Germans in those few pages. Well who wouldn’t? Book burning is just BAD), instead he shows us how desperate all sides were and how willing to push any sort of limits to escape from this war that had become a hell beyond what they could have imagined.
Keegan’s war is not a grand Good vs Evil, or a Defense of Democracy/Civilization, or whatever else.
It is a bunch of misguided leaders bringing destruction upon millions. At the same time, the leaders are not crucified either.
In the end, Keegan maintains a very balanced approach that never tries to apportion blame for causing the war.
Instead he leaves it as a Mystery #1. Good.
Looking for Dramatic Turning-points
A good story teller cannot lack for ‘turning points’ in war, as evidenced by many titles that talks of the battle that changed the war (insert Somme, Marne, etc. here).
But the most common temptation is to cite the American entry as turning point. And conversely to show the U-boat mishap as the big-stupid-decision. But was it really?
Without Germany’s precipitous surrender and without Austria and Ottoman’s ethnic dissolution that followed this, it might not have mattered as much. I am not denying that it did not affect the mood of the army, but Keegan’a account shows clearly that it is not just the Army’s mood that matters. The atmosphere back home matters as much.
The long British blockade of trade into Germany, which forced them to resort to U-Boats again which in turn brought Americans to turn the screw even more... You see where we are going? The ‘turning point’ was a screw that was truing and tightening all along.
Technology: Keegan does slip a bit at times and tries to show the influence of communication technology (esp radio) and military technology (esp tanks) but again, hedges it by showing us how contingent that too is. The British were ahead of the Germans in tank-tech, but it was purely fortuitous. Neither were using radio tech on the ground. Again, this was not rally a technological limitation. Consider how within two years radio was everywhere, so were tanks.
This teaches us an important lesson: Modern wars are not about strategy, technology or leadership anymore. It is about how long a country manages to keep its people in illusion. The longer they can, the better their shot at winning.
This leads us to another trope to push: to say that ‘Democracy was the secret weapon.’
After all, if popular sentiment was so crucial and if the non-democracies were the ones who couldn’t handle a long war, that is the logical conclusion? We can take for example the Russian revolution, the German civil unrest and the Austrian ethnic strife - samples from both Allied and Central forces - what unites them? Lack of Democracy! Bingo.
But we do this only by conveniently ignoring that it could easily have been France that fell prey to civil unrest, or Italy. Or even Britain for that matter. They did all revolt at some point after all — both their armies and their peoples. So it couldn’t have been democracy alone then?
The overall sense Keegan’s narrative conveys is one of a Precarious Balance of Power discovered by powers who thought war all too easy, perhaps deluded by the easy victories they were accustomed to in their colonial possessions.
None of the countries involved were prepared for a long war (or even for a short one). And accordingly, hardly any army had made real progress in 4 years. The war was conducted mostly in stalemate. Where progress was made it (what little of it) was more due to one army folding up from exhaustion, moral or material.
These tended to be reversed almost immediately. Any ‘turning points’ were just the winds of war, of morale - just as in The Iliad when war seems to turn at the urging of the gods giving morale to the men. What seemed decisive at the moment soon turned out to be just another exercise in stalemate. Nothing on the field seemed to decide how this stalemate could be broken. The really major shifts in fortune were usually due to events far from the battle-filed.
The lack of clear turning points in the narrative means that until the last few pages, the reader can hardly believe that the war was headed towards any specific conclusion. And when it is over, there is a sense of disbelief. After all that, it was just over? Just like that?
We can well believe what the world too must have felt… it must have felt incomplete.
We can well understand why Hitler found it so hard to believe that it was conclusive and resorted to conspiracy theories soon.
Mystery #2. Good.
Looking for Direct Consequences
That thought, along with the details of the harsh treaty forced on the vanquished, leads us to the final thread Keegan tries to explore in his unfulfilled quest to spring one of the historiographic traps — The unity of the two wars & thus the origins of World War II.
Luckily, he does it in what must now be recognized as his standard modus operandi — by setting it out in the introduction, leaving off during the actual narrative and picking it up again in the conclusion. Deft move, eh? After all, if this is his thesis, this too is not supported by the actual account of the war.
Mystery #3. Great!
So why did I feel the book was so great?
In fact, the five stars you see above are a direct consequence of the modus operandi I described above. The five stars are for the entire book minus the introduction and the conclusion, which are the only places where Keegan tries to alleviate the dryness of his narrative with juicy historiography. Yes, the dryness gets him full marks.
May 22, 2025
The First World War produced carnage of such scope and magnitude that it remains difficult to contemplate. As an American who has lived most of a 63-year life in the zone of Eastern U.S. states between Pennsylvania and North Carolina, I'm used to reading about Civil War battles -- 23,000 casualties at Antietam, 51,000 at Gettysburg. But with World War I, I find myself reading about battles that inflicted 300,000 casualties, or 500,000, and resulted in nothing more than a slight change in the battle lines.
In The First World War, John Keegan does a superb job of capturing the complexity and the tragedy of the 1914-18 war that decimated a generation of young Britons and Frenchmen and Germans. Among Keegan's conclusions: World War I effectively killed the Enlightenment in Europe -- blighting the continent's optimism and its faith in liberal democracy, establishing ideal conditions for the totalitarian dictatorships that would start World War II. Indeed, Keegan holds that "The Second World War, when it came in 1939, was unquestionably the outcome of the First, and in large measure its continuation" (p. 9). A war that killed 40 million people and did nothing more than to lay the groundwork for a new and more terrible war twenty years later -- it is a grim thing to contemplate. So is the idea that there may have been, in effect, just one World War, with a twenty-year "halftime."
Some of the things that Keegan reveals about World War I may surprise you. He acknowledges the aerial excellence of Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron" whose eighty combat victories make him "the highest ranking pilot ace in any of the war's air forces"; but then reminds the reader that "Air operations were...marginal to the issue of defeat or victory even in 1918" (p. 406). And the program of unrestricted submarine warfare carried out by the dreaded German U-boats belied a stubborn reality: "The geography of the German-speaking lands, however configured into states, denies the Germans maritime power" (p. 265).
Amid the vastness of the larger picture, Keegan makes sure to provide the telling details that bring the war to life. I was struck by Keegan's account of the disastrous Russian defeat at Tannenberg -- a German "encirclement" victory in which the Russians lost 50,000 killed and wounded, plus 92,000 taken prisoner. The defeated Russian commander Samsonov "repeatedly expressed despair: 'The Emperor trusted me. How can I face him again?' Finding a means to be alone for a few minutes, he shot himself" (p. 150).
Australian and New Zealand readers will find particularly compelling Keegan's account of the campaign and battle of Gallipoli. As Keegan makes clear, British commanding general Sir Ian Hamilton's plan for success on that sandy Turkish peninsula "could not work, nor could any other have done with the size of the force made available to him" (p. 241). Yet the ANZAC troops immortalized themselves by the depth of their sacrifice against impossible odds, and to this day the ANZACs' "grandchildren and great-grandchildren often bring [their] medals back with them to Gallipoli on...pilgrimage, as if to reconsecrate the symbols of the ANZAC spirit, a metaphor for that of the nation itself, on sacred soil" (p. 249).
Fans of Ernest Hemingway will be reminded of A Farewell to Arms when they read about the battle of Caporetto -- a disaster for Allied Italy, in response to which, during the long and agonizing Italian retreat, the Italian commander Cadorna "did his best to increase the number [of dead] by a ruthless and characteristic...execution of stragglers", a brutal episode of "judicial savagery [that] could not halt the rout nor did it save [Cadorna's] neck" (p. 349).
And because I had the good fortune to watch the United States Marine Corps' Silent Drill Platoon perform at Belleau Wood, the site where the Marines saved Paris from capture during the last major German offensive of the war, I was particularly moved by Keegan's recounting of Belleau Wood. The Germans' "Big Bertha," a gun with a 75-mile range, was in position to fire upon Paris; and as Keegan tells it, "At an early stage of the battle in their sector it was suggested to a Marine officer by French troops retreating through their positions that he and his men should retreat also. 'Retreat?' answered Captain Lloyd Williams, in words which were to enter the mythology of the Corps, 'Hell, we just got here'" (p. 407).
These were the stories that stood out for me; perhaps other stories will stand out for you. Keegan writes well and makes the war understandable, and he consistently remembers the importance of emphasizing the human dimension of war. With helpful photographs and maps, this is truly a magisterial history of World War I.
In The First World War, John Keegan does a superb job of capturing the complexity and the tragedy of the 1914-18 war that decimated a generation of young Britons and Frenchmen and Germans. Among Keegan's conclusions: World War I effectively killed the Enlightenment in Europe -- blighting the continent's optimism and its faith in liberal democracy, establishing ideal conditions for the totalitarian dictatorships that would start World War II. Indeed, Keegan holds that "The Second World War, when it came in 1939, was unquestionably the outcome of the First, and in large measure its continuation" (p. 9). A war that killed 40 million people and did nothing more than to lay the groundwork for a new and more terrible war twenty years later -- it is a grim thing to contemplate. So is the idea that there may have been, in effect, just one World War, with a twenty-year "halftime."
Some of the things that Keegan reveals about World War I may surprise you. He acknowledges the aerial excellence of Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron" whose eighty combat victories make him "the highest ranking pilot ace in any of the war's air forces"; but then reminds the reader that "Air operations were...marginal to the issue of defeat or victory even in 1918" (p. 406). And the program of unrestricted submarine warfare carried out by the dreaded German U-boats belied a stubborn reality: "The geography of the German-speaking lands, however configured into states, denies the Germans maritime power" (p. 265).
Amid the vastness of the larger picture, Keegan makes sure to provide the telling details that bring the war to life. I was struck by Keegan's account of the disastrous Russian defeat at Tannenberg -- a German "encirclement" victory in which the Russians lost 50,000 killed and wounded, plus 92,000 taken prisoner. The defeated Russian commander Samsonov "repeatedly expressed despair: 'The Emperor trusted me. How can I face him again?' Finding a means to be alone for a few minutes, he shot himself" (p. 150).
Australian and New Zealand readers will find particularly compelling Keegan's account of the campaign and battle of Gallipoli. As Keegan makes clear, British commanding general Sir Ian Hamilton's plan for success on that sandy Turkish peninsula "could not work, nor could any other have done with the size of the force made available to him" (p. 241). Yet the ANZAC troops immortalized themselves by the depth of their sacrifice against impossible odds, and to this day the ANZACs' "grandchildren and great-grandchildren often bring [their] medals back with them to Gallipoli on...pilgrimage, as if to reconsecrate the symbols of the ANZAC spirit, a metaphor for that of the nation itself, on sacred soil" (p. 249).
Fans of Ernest Hemingway will be reminded of A Farewell to Arms when they read about the battle of Caporetto -- a disaster for Allied Italy, in response to which, during the long and agonizing Italian retreat, the Italian commander Cadorna "did his best to increase the number [of dead] by a ruthless and characteristic...execution of stragglers", a brutal episode of "judicial savagery [that] could not halt the rout nor did it save [Cadorna's] neck" (p. 349).
And because I had the good fortune to watch the United States Marine Corps' Silent Drill Platoon perform at Belleau Wood, the site where the Marines saved Paris from capture during the last major German offensive of the war, I was particularly moved by Keegan's recounting of Belleau Wood. The Germans' "Big Bertha," a gun with a 75-mile range, was in position to fire upon Paris; and as Keegan tells it, "At an early stage of the battle in their sector it was suggested to a Marine officer by French troops retreating through their positions that he and his men should retreat also. 'Retreat?' answered Captain Lloyd Williams, in words which were to enter the mythology of the Corps, 'Hell, we just got here'" (p. 407).
These were the stories that stood out for me; perhaps other stories will stand out for you. Keegan writes well and makes the war understandable, and he consistently remembers the importance of emphasizing the human dimension of war. With helpful photographs and maps, this is truly a magisterial history of World War I.
May 17, 2014
Keegan's history of the First World War opens, unexpectedly, by talking about Adolf Hitler, and what I liked about this book was the way it presented 1914–18 as just the opening convulsions in a longer twentieth-century cataclysm to which it remains intimately connected.
A child's shoe in the Polish dust, a scrap of rusting barbed wire, a residue of pulverized bone near the spot where the gas chambers worked, these are as much relics of the First as of the Second World War.
This is the kind of ruminative, slightly vague history writing that I really enjoy. Unfortunately there is rather little of it in the rest of the book, which too often becomes fixated on unnecessary military detail:
By 5 September the Sixth Army consisted, besides Sordet's Cavalry Corps and the 45th (Algerian) Division, of the VII Corps, brought from Alsace, and the 55th and 56th Reserve Divisions from Lorraine; the IV Corps was en route from Fourth Army. The Ninth Army, originally constituted as the Foch Detachment, comprised the IX and XI Corps transferred from Fourth Army, together with the 52nd and 60th Reserve Divisions and 9th Cavalry Division, the 42nd from Third Army and the 18th Division from Third Army.
…So?
Although Keegan does try to balance strategic explanations of the war with journals and other first-hand accounts, there is not nearly enough – for my tastes anyway – about the conditions soldiers served in, what they talked about, how they lived, what kind of social effects obtained in these countries during the war, how women and families coped while all the men in Europe were off shooting each other. It is quite a narrowly military approach.
There are also moments where you sense Keegan's own biases behind the facts; he seems a little too willing to get excited about the heroic Brits and it made me cautious of accepting some of his conclusions (‘Jutland was not a German victory’). Lazy comments about the ‘naturally warlike’ Serbs also eroded confidence.
Still, as a one-volume summary of things it does provide a pretty useful overview and it did help me contextualise the other reading I've done this year. The way the failure of the Shlieffen Plan created the trench lines of the Western Front, which barely moved in four years, is explained well. There is a decent look at the Eastern and Italian Fronts, as well as a lightning summary of Africa, although the situation in Turkey and the Middle East still feels a little underdeveloped. I though he was quite strong on the dovetailing of the First World War into civil war in Russia as well.
Keegan tries to be fair-minded to the generals, pointing out that contemporary strategy gave them very limited options. Douglas Haig still comes across as a borderline psychopath though, devoted to fundamentalist religious belief and utterly unmoved by human suffering, who ‘compensated for his aloofness with nothing whatsoever of the human touch’.
In no way – appearances, attitude, spoken pronouncement, written legacy – do [the generals] commend themselves to modern opinion or emotion. The impassive expressions that stare back at us from contemporary photographs do not speak of consciences or feelings troubled by the slaughter over which these men presided, nor do the circumstances in which they chose to live: the distant chateau, the well-polished entourage, the glittering motor cars, the cavalry escorts, the regular routine, the heavy dinners, the uninterrupted hours of sleep.
Again, when Keegan pulls back a little and reflects in this way, he is very good. He doesn't do it very often though. But despite the very military focus, most chapters here, and many single paragraphs, leave you wanting more and the bibliography has some good ideas for further exploration. For a broad account like this, that is crucial.
July 20, 2018
Author John Keegan gives the impression late in this very good book that he held the Kaiser partially responsible for the Great War as he embarked on a pointless attempt to match Britain’s maritime strength that “….in all possibility, might have been the (cause of the) neurotic climate of suspicion and insecurity from which the First World War was born.” Based on this book being very much written from a British point of view it is easy to understand why Keegan is of this opinion. In the end though I have still no idea and will read further into this subject in the coming years.
As to the book it strangely gave depictions of battles in that the author’s coverage was written with a sense of tedium. Thousands died in pointless campaigns that all seemed the same from east to west to north to south. Events such as the African theatre and Gallipoli were so rare as to be almost startlingly different. Keegan says as much, one point calling “The chronicles of its battles..” the “… dreariest literature in military history”
If I can think of one thing that this book lacked was coverage of US involvement. Late as it was the fresh troops made a considerable difference to the final outcome I would suggest. But with that there is not much new I can add to an already saturated subject other than say that this is a very good one volume history and is to be recommended to anyone looking for an Anglocentric point of view.
As to the book it strangely gave depictions of battles in that the author’s coverage was written with a sense of tedium. Thousands died in pointless campaigns that all seemed the same from east to west to north to south. Events such as the African theatre and Gallipoli were so rare as to be almost startlingly different. Keegan says as much, one point calling “The chronicles of its battles..” the “… dreariest literature in military history”
If I can think of one thing that this book lacked was coverage of US involvement. Late as it was the fresh troops made a considerable difference to the final outcome I would suggest. But with that there is not much new I can add to an already saturated subject other than say that this is a very good one volume history and is to be recommended to anyone looking for an Anglocentric point of view.
Read
April 7, 2023DNF
Read up to page 200.
Sorry to say this book was dry as a desert. Monotonous, full of facts and information, dates and numbers, without being engaging and capturing the imagination.
If anyone knows of a non-boring book about the World War I, recommendations will be appreciated.
Read up to page 200.
Sorry to say this book was dry as a desert. Monotonous, full of facts and information, dates and numbers, without being engaging and capturing the imagination.
If anyone knows of a non-boring book about the World War I, recommendations will be appreciated.
October 5, 2014
1) One shouldn't read compact one volume surveys of epic events. It is safe to assume that The First World War meets the criteria of epic event. Any single volume will only distort and compact events. This was no exception
2) John Keegan is vastly overrated as a writer and scholar. I think the latter was accidental. People projected authority, with his sober demeanor, who can blame them? Keegan routinely employs clumsy metaphors and speaks of terrifying events in terms of inefficiency. He also resorts to unflattering stereotypes which detract. Keegan uses little primary sources, instead he mines Alistair Horne's book on Verdun and similar secondary texts.
3)Daniel Haig is lambasted as the autistic author of the slaughter at the Somme. Keegan may be guilty of similar callousness though he is constantly reminding the reader of late 20th Century outcomes of nations and regions.
3.1) This is an interesting adaptation of the former. Keegan does point out the Great War activities of WWII leaders and innovators.
This is not a terrible book, nor one of questionable erudition. It is a survey and if one wants the barest of narratives arcs, one could possibly do far worse.
2) John Keegan is vastly overrated as a writer and scholar. I think the latter was accidental. People projected authority, with his sober demeanor, who can blame them? Keegan routinely employs clumsy metaphors and speaks of terrifying events in terms of inefficiency. He also resorts to unflattering stereotypes which detract. Keegan uses little primary sources, instead he mines Alistair Horne's book on Verdun and similar secondary texts.
3)Daniel Haig is lambasted as the autistic author of the slaughter at the Somme. Keegan may be guilty of similar callousness though he is constantly reminding the reader of late 20th Century outcomes of nations and regions.
3.1) This is an interesting adaptation of the former. Keegan does point out the Great War activities of WWII leaders and innovators.
This is not a terrible book, nor one of questionable erudition. It is a survey and if one wants the barest of narratives arcs, one could possibly do far worse.
October 30, 2021
After many times of picking this book up and then putting it down and not finishing it, I finally read it all the way through and was glad I did. While reading this, I debated on what rating I would give it, but after finally finishing it, I realized it was 5-star worthy for me. I guess one lesson I learned from this was to never debate on rating the book until after you've read it.
John Keegan truly wrote a masterpiece here, and it is no doubt a great work today. I think in todays world, we are so focused on the Second World War, and not many people realize how much of an impact the First World War had on our society. It is astonishing and sad how millions of young men died in such a short amount of time, and how many communities perished. Behind each and every soldier was a mother who was praying for his safe return, but many would find out he had died on the battlefield.
There's a lot I could summarize, but I'd rather the reader of this review pick up the book and read the book, because it is worth spending time on.
To add, I think the last paragraph of this book is worth quoting as it was what made me give it a five-star rating:
"Consequences, of course, cannot be foreseen. Experience can, by
contrast, all too easily be projected into the future. The experience of
the early warriors of 1914-18-the probability of wounds or death, in
circumstances of squalor and misery-swiftly acquired inevitability.
There is mystery in that also. How did the anonymous millions, indistinguishably
drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories
that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable, find the
resolution to sustain the struggle and to believe in its purpose? That
they did is one of the undeniabilities of the Great War. Comradeship
flourished in the earthwork cities of the Western and Eastern Fronts,
bound strangers into the closest brotherhood, elevated the loyalties created
within the ethos of temporary regimentality to the status of life and-
death blood ties. Men whom the trenches cast into intimacy
entered into bonds of mutual dependency and sacrifice of self stronger
than any of the friendships made in peace and better times. That is the
ultimate mystery of the First World War. If we could understand its
loves, as well as its hates, we would be nearer understanding the mystery
of human life." (pg.426-427 The First World War By John Keegan)
I have a story that ties into this: Each year, I like to pay tribute to the 36th Ulster Volunteers, a division that played a big role in the battle of the Somme. I am half-Irish (also many other European nationalities), and one of the things in Ireland that is such a hot button issue is religion. I have ancestors from the Protestant North and the Catholic south, however, most of my family immigrated to the US around the 1700s. I have no family that served in this unit, but there's a song I listen to, that explains the 36th Ulster's deeds, and to me I feel that because we share the same ancestry, that I feel like I have some reason to pay tribute to them. (link to the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuuYW... *note, I know this song is considered a pro-loyalist song, and I am not supporting any side in the Irish conflict, but this song to me is about the 36th volunteers not about the Irish conflict.)
I think one of the reasons that books like these are interesting to me in a deeper sense is that in it, I see people who were in my age bracket who were shown war and despair. I also see in some way, a sense of camaraderie that they displayed that I don't see today.
This book was overall phenomenal, and I was glad to have read it.
John Keegan truly wrote a masterpiece here, and it is no doubt a great work today. I think in todays world, we are so focused on the Second World War, and not many people realize how much of an impact the First World War had on our society. It is astonishing and sad how millions of young men died in such a short amount of time, and how many communities perished. Behind each and every soldier was a mother who was praying for his safe return, but many would find out he had died on the battlefield.
There's a lot I could summarize, but I'd rather the reader of this review pick up the book and read the book, because it is worth spending time on.
To add, I think the last paragraph of this book is worth quoting as it was what made me give it a five-star rating:
"Consequences, of course, cannot be foreseen. Experience can, by
contrast, all too easily be projected into the future. The experience of
the early warriors of 1914-18-the probability of wounds or death, in
circumstances of squalor and misery-swiftly acquired inevitability.
There is mystery in that also. How did the anonymous millions, indistinguishably
drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories
that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable, find the
resolution to sustain the struggle and to believe in its purpose? That
they did is one of the undeniabilities of the Great War. Comradeship
flourished in the earthwork cities of the Western and Eastern Fronts,
bound strangers into the closest brotherhood, elevated the loyalties created
within the ethos of temporary regimentality to the status of life and-
death blood ties. Men whom the trenches cast into intimacy
entered into bonds of mutual dependency and sacrifice of self stronger
than any of the friendships made in peace and better times. That is the
ultimate mystery of the First World War. If we could understand its
loves, as well as its hates, we would be nearer understanding the mystery
of human life." (pg.426-427 The First World War By John Keegan)
I have a story that ties into this: Each year, I like to pay tribute to the 36th Ulster Volunteers, a division that played a big role in the battle of the Somme. I am half-Irish (also many other European nationalities), and one of the things in Ireland that is such a hot button issue is religion. I have ancestors from the Protestant North and the Catholic south, however, most of my family immigrated to the US around the 1700s. I have no family that served in this unit, but there's a song I listen to, that explains the 36th Ulster's deeds, and to me I feel that because we share the same ancestry, that I feel like I have some reason to pay tribute to them. (link to the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuuYW... *note, I know this song is considered a pro-loyalist song, and I am not supporting any side in the Irish conflict, but this song to me is about the 36th volunteers not about the Irish conflict.)
I think one of the reasons that books like these are interesting to me in a deeper sense is that in it, I see people who were in my age bracket who were shown war and despair. I also see in some way, a sense of camaraderie that they displayed that I don't see today.
This book was overall phenomenal, and I was glad to have read it.
June 29, 2016
John Keegan’s The First World War couldn't be better as an introduction to the theme. Yes, it was my first book about World War I. I have to confess that I was practically ignorant beforehand.
Only now, two years after reading Keegan's book, I got to write its review. My interest on the theme was revived after I read the excellent The Last Lion 1: Visions of Glory 1874-1932, and since I joined the World War Two Group.
My knowledge was limited to dates and broad circuntances, not the intricacies of the alliances that helped push for the conflict and set in a motion a destruction machine that was virtually unstoppable and lasted four years killing roughly 20 million people! Its repercussions extended to WWII and the present.
5-stars and highly recommended.
Only now, two years after reading Keegan's book, I got to write its review. My interest on the theme was revived after I read the excellent The Last Lion 1: Visions of Glory 1874-1932, and since I joined the World War Two Group.
My knowledge was limited to dates and broad circuntances, not the intricacies of the alliances that helped push for the conflict and set in a motion a destruction machine that was virtually unstoppable and lasted four years killing roughly 20 million people! Its repercussions extended to WWII and the present.
5-stars and highly recommended.
November 29, 2009
Once again John Keegan has produced another well written and researched book to add to his growing number of titles. This is an excellent one volume account of the Great War which the novice or experienced reader will enjoy. I found the first few chapters a bit dry but once the author moved into the sections covering the fighting the book moved along smartly.
The author covers all theatres of the war and covered those naval and aviation aspects that had bearing on the war as a whole. There were a number of excellent general maps and numerous black & white photographs to assist the reader to follow the narrative.
Overall a great book to read and well worth the time to sit down and enjoy.
February 3, 2019
The First World War by John Keegan is an excellent one-volume treatment of the Great War. I read this book because I felt my knowledge of World War I left much to be desired. I wanted to get a good understanding of the entire conflict before diving in to more specific battles, campaigns, and other events. That's exactly what this book offered.
The opening chapters describe the background to the hostilities and the buildup of the tragic chain of events which launched Europe, and shortly thereafter the entire world, into catastrophe. I noticed some reviewers thought this section dry and hard to read, but I found it readable enough. In particular, I found Keegan's analysis of the power of mobilization, a power entirely unknown to politicians and governments, to be extremely interesting and necessary for understanding the conflict's sudden eruption.
Once he gets to the military affairs, Keegan is in his element. Occasionally, he gets bogged down in the movement of army corps and divisions, but these lapses don't seriously detract from the books readability. Indeed, covering such a vast amount of material in a little over 400 pages prevents Keegan from diving too in-depth. There are times, when making observations or remarks, that Keegan displays beautiful language and insight. There were many eloquent and poignant sentences and paragraphs sprinkled throughout to contrast the mundane "corps XX rendezvoused with the third division..." text.
The book is split into ten chapters, the last seven of which cover the battles. Generally, these chapters focus on a certain front or theme, which means there is some chronological overlap. I liked this strategy though, because instead of constantly jumping around, you're able to become familiar with the characters and events of a certain region. I also appreciated Keegan's coverage of events outside of the Western and Eastern Fronts. He provides valuable summaries of the colonial wars in Africa, the campaigns in the Middle East and Caucasus, and the buildup to the Russian Civil War. Of course, most of the time is spent in Europe, naturally, but these sections were important because I for one had never known about the colonial conflicts and the battles in the Caucasus.
As far as the 15 maps go, they are adequate. Most of them focus on specific battles or campaigns, though the overleaf of the western front was invaluable as a reference. Their main drawback is their lack of color, which makes it difficult to distinguish sides occasionally.
It is with confidence that I can recommend this book as an excellent, balanced overview of World War I. The general reader may find the book too focused on military aspects of the war, but those looking for a military history of the war should find this book a great read.
The opening chapters describe the background to the hostilities and the buildup of the tragic chain of events which launched Europe, and shortly thereafter the entire world, into catastrophe. I noticed some reviewers thought this section dry and hard to read, but I found it readable enough. In particular, I found Keegan's analysis of the power of mobilization, a power entirely unknown to politicians and governments, to be extremely interesting and necessary for understanding the conflict's sudden eruption.
Once he gets to the military affairs, Keegan is in his element. Occasionally, he gets bogged down in the movement of army corps and divisions, but these lapses don't seriously detract from the books readability. Indeed, covering such a vast amount of material in a little over 400 pages prevents Keegan from diving too in-depth. There are times, when making observations or remarks, that Keegan displays beautiful language and insight. There were many eloquent and poignant sentences and paragraphs sprinkled throughout to contrast the mundane "corps XX rendezvoused with the third division..." text.
The book is split into ten chapters, the last seven of which cover the battles. Generally, these chapters focus on a certain front or theme, which means there is some chronological overlap. I liked this strategy though, because instead of constantly jumping around, you're able to become familiar with the characters and events of a certain region. I also appreciated Keegan's coverage of events outside of the Western and Eastern Fronts. He provides valuable summaries of the colonial wars in Africa, the campaigns in the Middle East and Caucasus, and the buildup to the Russian Civil War. Of course, most of the time is spent in Europe, naturally, but these sections were important because I for one had never known about the colonial conflicts and the battles in the Caucasus.
As far as the 15 maps go, they are adequate. Most of them focus on specific battles or campaigns, though the overleaf of the western front was invaluable as a reference. Their main drawback is their lack of color, which makes it difficult to distinguish sides occasionally.
It is with confidence that I can recommend this book as an excellent, balanced overview of World War I. The general reader may find the book too focused on military aspects of the war, but those looking for a military history of the war should find this book a great read.
July 21, 2019
Widely considered one of the finest analyses on WW1. You won’t find many quotes or first hand accounts of the soldiers here. But what you will find are excellent summaries and insights on the panoply of events that unfolded over the five years of the Great War.
Here are some of my favorite topics and insights.
1. Battle of Jutland. Discussion around how the battle was actually a victory for the Allies even though their casualties and sunken ships were larger in number than Germany. Germany though had far more damaged ships and weren’t left with enough operational dreadnoughts after the battle and resorted to increased u-boat production.
2. The Czech corps and their effect on Russia during the Russian Revolution. I have yet to find a great book on this topic. There were about fifteen riveting pages of this war within a war. Less of an effect on the war’s outcome but certainly played a role in the Russian revolution.
3. America’s entry into the war. Superb analyses the arrival of 100,000 fresh troops a month in the summer of 1918 along the Western front. The German high command knew by the end of summer that they had lost the war. They were losing nearly every single battle/skirmish on the Western front and lost all their gains made in the Spring offensives and had little ability to replenish losses. Although Germany’s strategic retreats could inflict heavy losses on the advancing Allies it no longer mattered with such large troop mismatches.
4. War Plans. Excellent section on how military academies in Germany and to a lesser degree in the Allied nations forever changed warfare. War became more abstract as militaries become well versed in the use of train transport and advanced logistics (food, armaments). This allowed the movement of millions of troops in the matter of days at speeds 10x more rapidly than in past wars. This knowledge contributed to millions of troops and advanced armaments thrown together in close proximity and led to the advent of trench warfare and stalemates as vulnerable spots along the front could be reinforced more rapidly.
4.5 stars. Highly recommended.
Here are some of my favorite topics and insights.
1. Battle of Jutland. Discussion around how the battle was actually a victory for the Allies even though their casualties and sunken ships were larger in number than Germany. Germany though had far more damaged ships and weren’t left with enough operational dreadnoughts after the battle and resorted to increased u-boat production.
2. The Czech corps and their effect on Russia during the Russian Revolution. I have yet to find a great book on this topic. There were about fifteen riveting pages of this war within a war. Less of an effect on the war’s outcome but certainly played a role in the Russian revolution.
3. America’s entry into the war. Superb analyses the arrival of 100,000 fresh troops a month in the summer of 1918 along the Western front. The German high command knew by the end of summer that they had lost the war. They were losing nearly every single battle/skirmish on the Western front and lost all their gains made in the Spring offensives and had little ability to replenish losses. Although Germany’s strategic retreats could inflict heavy losses on the advancing Allies it no longer mattered with such large troop mismatches.
4. War Plans. Excellent section on how military academies in Germany and to a lesser degree in the Allied nations forever changed warfare. War became more abstract as militaries become well versed in the use of train transport and advanced logistics (food, armaments). This allowed the movement of millions of troops in the matter of days at speeds 10x more rapidly than in past wars. This knowledge contributed to millions of troops and advanced armaments thrown together in close proximity and led to the advent of trench warfare and stalemates as vulnerable spots along the front could be reinforced more rapidly.
4.5 stars. Highly recommended.
February 12, 2021
The first section of this book is damned awesome. Keegan lays out the social, industrial, economic, military, political, colonial, diplomatic, cultural, and even aesthetic, forces that led to the cataclysmic conflict: a war that everyone rushed toward inevitably with heedless glee; a six-week walk in the park -- so they thought -- that soon turned out to be anything but. Seeing monarchs trade their usual finery for photo ops in military uniforms, and even something as simple as a cool button on one's own military attire was enough to make an impressionable kid want to join in the romantic fun. Militarism was a growing part of daily civilian life, and the slow inculcation of the glories of battle into the mass mind was no sillier than people raiding the US Capitol today because they chose to believe a con man's big lies or because some idiotic fan fiction from 4chan, eg. Q-anon, told them so.
The dashing cavalry charge, the decisive encirclement, the elegant certainty of the Schlieffen Plan -- all these naive dreams of quick victory died in the muddy trenches and poison-soaked lungs of suffocating, blinded and miserable soldiers.
After that, the book compresses -- by necessity, admittedly -- a litany of events with the rapidity of someone trying to churn out a college blue book essay because there's only ten minutes left on the clock. I'm reminded of an old anecdote that the conductor George Szell once told of seeing Richard Strauss conducting a symphony in a leisurely manner until he looked at his watch and realized he was going to miss a card game, causing him to maniacally wave his baton tempo molto allegro to get it all over with.
The fact is, this is my first full-fledged WWI overview read. The question is, therefore: Is this a good first book for the neophyte? Yes, it is, because at the very least it gave me a clear rundown and a baseline for further exploration, and for that I found it valuable. Places and names like Ypres and the Marne and the Somme now mean something to me, in their context, and I have some idea who the combatants were and why the battles were significant. That said, Keegan, for all his expertise and occasional thoughtful insight and brilliance at cross-referencing, is not the most scintillating of storytellers. He's not an "on-the-ground" guy; rather more like a guy watching it all go down from the heights of Mt. Olympus. He falls somewhere between the dry academic and the more novelistic war writers, which is not a bad place to be, but the result is not the stuff that overwhelms the imagination, as one might yearn for with events this epic and terrifying. I do tend to want a more novelistic sweep in books covering titanic events like this. Nevertheless, I can see why Keegan is respected as a military expert but can also see why he's come in for some criticism.
Keegan appears to be in the camp that believes World War II is the second part of World War I, or, that World War I is the first part of World War II. The historical argument is well taken and credible. Considering that Hitler was there in the trenches, wounded, and loving every minute of it, and eager to get everybody in on the fun for another round two decades later makes perfect, absurd sense.
The upshot is that this is a good book. I enjoyed it, even if I wasn't bowled over by it. I respect those who've given it five stars, and equally understand why some have rated it less highly. As a "dive-in" book, I think it's just about as good as any to delve into this subject.
In any case, there's already a very fine and detailed review of this book here on Goodreads, penned with care, insight and detail by my GR friend, Matt, whose review I agree with almost entirely, and here it is to behold. No need for me to reinvent his wheel:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
KR@KY 2021
The dashing cavalry charge, the decisive encirclement, the elegant certainty of the Schlieffen Plan -- all these naive dreams of quick victory died in the muddy trenches and poison-soaked lungs of suffocating, blinded and miserable soldiers.
After that, the book compresses -- by necessity, admittedly -- a litany of events with the rapidity of someone trying to churn out a college blue book essay because there's only ten minutes left on the clock. I'm reminded of an old anecdote that the conductor George Szell once told of seeing Richard Strauss conducting a symphony in a leisurely manner until he looked at his watch and realized he was going to miss a card game, causing him to maniacally wave his baton tempo molto allegro to get it all over with.
The fact is, this is my first full-fledged WWI overview read. The question is, therefore: Is this a good first book for the neophyte? Yes, it is, because at the very least it gave me a clear rundown and a baseline for further exploration, and for that I found it valuable. Places and names like Ypres and the Marne and the Somme now mean something to me, in their context, and I have some idea who the combatants were and why the battles were significant. That said, Keegan, for all his expertise and occasional thoughtful insight and brilliance at cross-referencing, is not the most scintillating of storytellers. He's not an "on-the-ground" guy; rather more like a guy watching it all go down from the heights of Mt. Olympus. He falls somewhere between the dry academic and the more novelistic war writers, which is not a bad place to be, but the result is not the stuff that overwhelms the imagination, as one might yearn for with events this epic and terrifying. I do tend to want a more novelistic sweep in books covering titanic events like this. Nevertheless, I can see why Keegan is respected as a military expert but can also see why he's come in for some criticism.
Keegan appears to be in the camp that believes World War II is the second part of World War I, or, that World War I is the first part of World War II. The historical argument is well taken and credible. Considering that Hitler was there in the trenches, wounded, and loving every minute of it, and eager to get everybody in on the fun for another round two decades later makes perfect, absurd sense.
The upshot is that this is a good book. I enjoyed it, even if I wasn't bowled over by it. I respect those who've given it five stars, and equally understand why some have rated it less highly. As a "dive-in" book, I think it's just about as good as any to delve into this subject.
In any case, there's already a very fine and detailed review of this book here on Goodreads, penned with care, insight and detail by my GR friend, Matt, whose review I agree with almost entirely, and here it is to behold. No need for me to reinvent his wheel:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
KR@KY 2021
February 8, 2010
I am not a big fan of military histories. They tend to be much too detailed for my taste. They require a familiarity with the geography they cover and often do not provide good maps of the area being written about. They often do not provide the author's opinion of the events being covered.
This book meets none of the above criteria. While it is detailed, nevertheless the details are usually necessary to understand the nature of the battle being described. The details also help the reader understand, fully, the horrors this conflict visited upon the average soldier.
The geography covered in this account is immense. It was after all a World War. However, the maps provided managed to keep me connected to the events I was reading about.
Keegan interjects his opinion whenever he thinks it's called for. Usually at an appropriate point in the narrative. He also ends the book with a well stated soliloquy that does a good job of summarizing why this war was unnecessary, why WW II was just an extension of WW I and shares his perplexity with why these nations went war in the first place while also questioning the concept of "National Pride" by equating it with "National Arrogance".
I think for the first time in my life, I have a picture of the entire War as well as its major battles and its geopolitical underpinnings.
Keegan is a renowned Author and after reading this book, I understand why.
This book meets none of the above criteria. While it is detailed, nevertheless the details are usually necessary to understand the nature of the battle being described. The details also help the reader understand, fully, the horrors this conflict visited upon the average soldier.
The geography covered in this account is immense. It was after all a World War. However, the maps provided managed to keep me connected to the events I was reading about.
Keegan interjects his opinion whenever he thinks it's called for. Usually at an appropriate point in the narrative. He also ends the book with a well stated soliloquy that does a good job of summarizing why this war was unnecessary, why WW II was just an extension of WW I and shares his perplexity with why these nations went war in the first place while also questioning the concept of "National Pride" by equating it with "National Arrogance".
I think for the first time in my life, I have a picture of the entire War as well as its major battles and its geopolitical underpinnings.
Keegan is a renowned Author and after reading this book, I understand why.
March 19, 2021
I have read several monographs about world war one and some one book overviews. This is probably the best one book history of the Great War. Not an easy subject to tackle in depth within 500 pages but Keegan has done it brilliantly. I have noticed that teachers of various regional universities (Ottawa, Montréal, du Québec, McGill) are using this book as their main reference for their courses covering the war , using the original version or a french translation. A few weeks ago I read the book by Lawrence Sondhaus focusing on the consequences of the 14-18 conflict; I would suggest to read this one first and then follow up with the Sondhaus book. This last author has also written a very good book about sea warfare during the first world war. Of course both Margareth MacMillan books (the road to 1914 and Paris 1919) are now reference works for the period. The Sleepwalkers by Clark has also become indispensable for understanding how we stumbled into a world conflict focusing on the balkan wars as a prelude to general war.
September 18, 2015
A thorough, readable and well-researched history of the First World War. Keegan fully captures the sweep of this conflict, covering all the important topics in enough detail. His coverage of the July Crisis is good, though he admits that it’s basically just a summary of previous works on that particular subject. He thoroughly covers all of the theaters of the war in a smooth chronological fashion. Keegan’s analysis of military strategy and tactics is great, and he tells it all in a manner that anybody can understand. He shows how the advent of new technology affected the way the war was fought, and how it transformed the conflict into a murderous stalemate.He describes how commanders were unable to adapt tactics to the new technology that existed. He does not, however, describe the development of this technology in much detail. Unlike other histories, Keegan also devotes a good amount of space to the more obscure “side-show” theaters like Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and the 1918 North Russia intervention.
Keegan’s treatment of the the various commanders, notably Douglas Haig, is mostly favorable. In their own time, all of the Allied generals were seen as great men, but following the war, which exposed the horrors of modern warfare to the world, they were widely seen as foolish, uncaring, and unfeeling to the miseries endured by the common soldier. Since enlisted men tended to dominate the new literature of war memoirs, novels, and poetry, this image has become a lasting one. The generals’ upper-class background, impassive photographic expressions, and habit of living in relatively luxurious conditions as their own men lived in ones much worse make the generals unsympathetic to modern readers familiar with the horrors of modern war. But as Keegan points out, these things can be misleading, since many of the war’s generals often exposed themselves to the same dangers, communications in those days were less than ideal, and the distance of headquarters was necessary due to the vast expanse of the fronts.
Keegan shows how Europe’s statesmen viewed the continent as a giant chessboard, but were flummoxed when they found themselves locked in a most ungentlemanly modern war without precedent and without any rules. Keegan does cover the naval war, but not in enough detail to satisfy this particular reader. Still, he does mostly cover all the important and relevant parts of this story. Keegan reveals how Germany lost the war despite the superior quality of its commanders. One disappointment was Keegan’s coverage of the end of the war, another the insufficient quantity of maps (which are next to useless anyway). The final, decisive campaigns and even the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles are given disappointingly short shrift; they come off as afterthoughts.
Still, a clear, vivid, and well-written history of the war. Keegan easily describes the experiences of the politicians, generals, and soldiers, how the war began, the war’s course, and its end and legacy.
Keegan’s treatment of the the various commanders, notably Douglas Haig, is mostly favorable. In their own time, all of the Allied generals were seen as great men, but following the war, which exposed the horrors of modern warfare to the world, they were widely seen as foolish, uncaring, and unfeeling to the miseries endured by the common soldier. Since enlisted men tended to dominate the new literature of war memoirs, novels, and poetry, this image has become a lasting one. The generals’ upper-class background, impassive photographic expressions, and habit of living in relatively luxurious conditions as their own men lived in ones much worse make the generals unsympathetic to modern readers familiar with the horrors of modern war. But as Keegan points out, these things can be misleading, since many of the war’s generals often exposed themselves to the same dangers, communications in those days were less than ideal, and the distance of headquarters was necessary due to the vast expanse of the fronts.
Keegan shows how Europe’s statesmen viewed the continent as a giant chessboard, but were flummoxed when they found themselves locked in a most ungentlemanly modern war without precedent and without any rules. Keegan does cover the naval war, but not in enough detail to satisfy this particular reader. Still, he does mostly cover all the important and relevant parts of this story. Keegan reveals how Germany lost the war despite the superior quality of its commanders. One disappointment was Keegan’s coverage of the end of the war, another the insufficient quantity of maps (which are next to useless anyway). The final, decisive campaigns and even the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles are given disappointingly short shrift; they come off as afterthoughts.
Still, a clear, vivid, and well-written history of the war. Keegan easily describes the experiences of the politicians, generals, and soldiers, how the war began, the war’s course, and its end and legacy.
February 18, 2023
Keegan opens with a personal connection but quickly moves into a straightforward military overview. The running theme could not help but be the absolutely senseless slaughter of human bodies, all to simply gain a few miles, in practically every battle. The more I read about it, the more difficult it is to wrap my mind around the gluttonous sacrifice made on the altar of the pride of powerful men.
July 27, 2017
A great, very well written and researched book that gives you a clear and concise overview of world war 1. My u derstanding of the war was hugely enriched by this book.
February 11, 2022
A bit of a long, dry slog, but still worth reading. This was my first book about the entire war.
Pros:
The beginning focused on the lead-up to the war. At the end of the book, the post-war wrap-up was brief but informative and explained how the Ottoman Empire shrunk and the Austria-Hungary Empire broke up, redrawing maps that were closer to today's.
Cons:
The ebook had a handful of maps but, unlike my enlarged text, they stayed small, required a magnifying glass, and could not be referenced later. I love maps. So a large, hardback book with clear maps would have been better for this story.
Some of the sentences were so long and convoluted I had to back up and read them again.
The descriptions were dry and unemotional. Battles are important to me if their outcome changes the war, and can also be engaging with maps. But I didn't care for the lists of divisions, etc., during the battles, which were meaningless as I didn't understand what the numbers meant, and didn't care, and often didn't know which side the divisions were on. And it was hard to remember the leaders' names and countries and I had to guess by the names, e.g., French names, Russian, British, German? (The leader named French was British.) It would have helped to add, for example, the word "British" to a Division instead of a bunch of numbers that meant nothing to this reader.
The author mentioned the 1918 influenza once, noting only that the Germans were dying from the flu at the end of the war, and that it originated in South Africa. According to "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry, which I just finished, all the soldiers were dying of the flu, not just German, plus civilians worldwide. And the evidence points to the origin as Haskell County, Kansas, U.S.A. That book also explains that President Wilson got influenza and it affected his brain, which was not an uncommon symptom. And that's why he abandoned his strict refusal to impose severe reparations on Germany, a plan that France and England were insisting on. In his illness, Wilson suddenly changed course and agreed with the reparations, thus leading to WWII. It could be argued that WWII was caused, in part, by the influenza in Wilson's brain.
Next, I'll read some WWI novels to put flesh on the bare bones of this book.
Pros:
The beginning focused on the lead-up to the war. At the end of the book, the post-war wrap-up was brief but informative and explained how the Ottoman Empire shrunk and the Austria-Hungary Empire broke up, redrawing maps that were closer to today's.
Cons:
The ebook had a handful of maps but, unlike my enlarged text, they stayed small, required a magnifying glass, and could not be referenced later. I love maps. So a large, hardback book with clear maps would have been better for this story.
Some of the sentences were so long and convoluted I had to back up and read them again.
The descriptions were dry and unemotional. Battles are important to me if their outcome changes the war, and can also be engaging with maps. But I didn't care for the lists of divisions, etc., during the battles, which were meaningless as I didn't understand what the numbers meant, and didn't care, and often didn't know which side the divisions were on. And it was hard to remember the leaders' names and countries and I had to guess by the names, e.g., French names, Russian, British, German? (The leader named French was British.) It would have helped to add, for example, the word "British" to a Division instead of a bunch of numbers that meant nothing to this reader.
The author mentioned the 1918 influenza once, noting only that the Germans were dying from the flu at the end of the war, and that it originated in South Africa. According to "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry, which I just finished, all the soldiers were dying of the flu, not just German, plus civilians worldwide. And the evidence points to the origin as Haskell County, Kansas, U.S.A. That book also explains that President Wilson got influenza and it affected his brain, which was not an uncommon symptom. And that's why he abandoned his strict refusal to impose severe reparations on Germany, a plan that France and England were insisting on. In his illness, Wilson suddenly changed course and agreed with the reparations, thus leading to WWII. It could be argued that WWII was caused, in part, by the influenza in Wilson's brain.
Next, I'll read some WWI novels to put flesh on the bare bones of this book.
February 18, 2013
The book offers a good general overview of the Great War with much detail of the buildups and numerous engagements on the opposing sides. However, discussion of events in 1918, the final year of the war, was presented with much less depth than prior years. There was really no mention of accounts on the final day of the war, November 11, 1918 Armistice Day, a day so historical that author Joseph Persico wrote an entire book about it.
Keegan does tend to concentrate a bit more on the British Expeditionary Forces, but they were certainly in the thick of much of the fighting. I do take exception to his comment regarding the American Expeditionary Forces “It is immaterial whether the doughboys fought well or not. Though the professional opinion of the French and British officers that they were enthusiastic rather than efficient was correct…” is well off the mark. The German opposition opinion of the AEF ought to carry the most weight. The German’s were within a three day march of taking Paris and in no mood for retreat until they came in contact with Pershing’s AEF. It did not take long for the German Forces to fear the well trained AEF divisions including the 1st Division known as the “Big Red One” and particularly the elite 2nd Division led by General John A. Lejeune USMC towards the end of the war that was comprised of a brigade of Marines. The Marines were so tenacious moving forward that the German’s called them “Devil Dogs”. Not only were they fearless, but classified as Marksman, Sharpshooter and Expert, they were the most proficient individuals at firing a rifle killing German’s at up to 800 yards away. These talents and skills of the AEF members were further recorded during the Occupation of Germany events with the Pershing Games.
It is not an easy task to compile the First World War into one binding and this book chronicles an important piece of history.
Keegan does tend to concentrate a bit more on the British Expeditionary Forces, but they were certainly in the thick of much of the fighting. I do take exception to his comment regarding the American Expeditionary Forces “It is immaterial whether the doughboys fought well or not. Though the professional opinion of the French and British officers that they were enthusiastic rather than efficient was correct…” is well off the mark. The German opposition opinion of the AEF ought to carry the most weight. The German’s were within a three day march of taking Paris and in no mood for retreat until they came in contact with Pershing’s AEF. It did not take long for the German Forces to fear the well trained AEF divisions including the 1st Division known as the “Big Red One” and particularly the elite 2nd Division led by General John A. Lejeune USMC towards the end of the war that was comprised of a brigade of Marines. The Marines were so tenacious moving forward that the German’s called them “Devil Dogs”. Not only were they fearless, but classified as Marksman, Sharpshooter and Expert, they were the most proficient individuals at firing a rifle killing German’s at up to 800 yards away. These talents and skills of the AEF members were further recorded during the Occupation of Germany events with the Pershing Games.
It is not an easy task to compile the First World War into one binding and this book chronicles an important piece of history.
August 16, 2018
An engagingly written top-down history of the First World War, crammed (somewhat incredibly) into slightly less than 460 pages of text. Very definitely of the grand strategy position, but it does give a good sense of the movement of the armies and their activities, providing scope for further reading and shining a light into some of the less well known aspects of the war, such as the Serbian front, the African campaigns and the German "activities" in Belgium (not quite the propaganda excuse for British intervention I'd been led to believe in my youth). It's a nice overview of the war, leaving out little and providing enough food for thought for a lot of further reading.
July 29, 2022
Keegan manages a reasonable, if uninspired account of the First World War.
The First World War is the third John Keegan history I have read, and I am definitely getting the sense that there's a bit of smoke and mirrors behind this gentleman's reputation as a great popular historian. In my opinion, a popular history need not contribute any novel scholarship to a subject, but should be informative, clear, and personally engaging. When writing about a subject as broad and profound as a war, I expect the writer to break down information into overarching strategy and politics, and to explore the personal experiences of common soldiers and civilians, while also touching on cultural themes, technology, etc. to paint a reasonably comprehensive overview sketch of the conflict. Keegan doesn't entirely succeed on any of these levels in The First World War, instead offering up an unevenly paced, inconsistent, and at times, confusing overview, which gets across the main ideas reasonably, but offers little to engage the reader.
In the introductory section of the book (the lead-in to the war) Keegan shows off his odd penchant for emphasizing micro detail in some places while leaving out and dashing through overview discussion in others. The lead-up to the declarations of war, he paints in great detail, including anecdotes about various political leaders having been on holiday, and Tsar Nicholas II's fears about his son's health, etc. However, the discussion of underlying causes and the nature of globalized economics, the tension between empires and representative governments, the naval issues between the UK and Germany, the conflict over colonies and the slow shift away from autarky—all of these issues are given fluffy treatment. He discusses the celebratory tone of many of the soldiers on the eve of war, but gives very little context. Now, I know he's primarily a military historian, but the personal political details he provides lie somewhat outside the scope of his professed expertise, while the big-picture political and cultural dimensions are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the war...
During the 1914 offensives, Keegan sometimes gets lost in the weeds, describing specific engagements in terms of units designations (for which the book provides no clarifying maps), without offering sufficient explanation or description for the reader to fully follow the text. I would have expected more personal details from a popular history as well—primary source accounts from soldiers, civilians in Belgium and Paris—the rich, narrative stuff that stands out in memory and engages the transporting imagination. We get precious little of this. Moreover, by the conclusion of 1914, Keegan has used up about 40 percent of his page allotment, obliging a lot of hurried writing and condensing for subsequent events.
The same weaknesses permeate the rest of the book—odd super focus on specific events, such as the Gallipoli campaign and the experience of the Australians, and fluffing of other significant events, such as the German and Austrian home front famine, or the experience of Italian soldiers on the Isonzo.
I think Keegan does a reasonable job laying in the military events of the First World War—I don't think he gets many important details wrong, as he did later in his history of the American Civil War (although, admittedly, I know that war better and am therefore more able to judge), but his overall lack of focus and organization consistently leaves events confusing and choppy. This clears up a bit near the end of the book, where I found Keegan's description of the 1918 Ludendorf offensives to be lucid and insightful, but it remains a problem through much of the book.
The real issue with this history, though, is the lack of engaging personal voices from combatants, officers, and politicians, and the virtual total lack of description of anything on the home fronts. Keegan offers up absolutely no information on medicine, nursing, and medical science. I know there must have been significant advances during the war, and I am very curious to learn about women doctors, the safety of nurses, how automobiles may have impacted stretcher teams... There is very little description of the hunger on home front (as mentioned above) or how rations impacted health and everyday life. There's no discussion of how Britain and France held elections during the war, and whether peace protests were ever an issue. There's only passing mention of the Spanish Influenza...
Reading The First World War, therefore, I was left with the impression that Keegan was offering up a reasonably readable, but essentially bland, "great white man" history of the war. Moreover, Keegan seems to take a very narrow, pessimistic perspective of the outcome of the war, essentially viewing it as a lead up to the Second World War. This seems intuitively wrong to me. The First World War destroyed the Guilded Age world order, leaving a lot of chaos in its wake. Subsequent events and the decisions of major players and states led to the Second World War, but the outbreak of that conflict was far from inevitable, and the geopolitics of the interwar years were extremely complex and interesting. So... it feels like Keegan doesn't really draw thoughtful or thought-provoking conclusions from the history he relates either.
In sum, Keegan's First World War is a disappointing read. It is a competent military account of the conflict, but little more. I can't immediately recommend a better survey of World War One, but there are so many out there, I'm sure there must be one that is more comprehensive and engaging than this one. This is the second subpar Keegan history I have read, and though it is not nearly as bad as his American Civil War book, I have the sense that he is not the strong, must-read popular historian that his reputation suggests and that readers would do well to look elsewhere.
The First World War is the third John Keegan history I have read, and I am definitely getting the sense that there's a bit of smoke and mirrors behind this gentleman's reputation as a great popular historian. In my opinion, a popular history need not contribute any novel scholarship to a subject, but should be informative, clear, and personally engaging. When writing about a subject as broad and profound as a war, I expect the writer to break down information into overarching strategy and politics, and to explore the personal experiences of common soldiers and civilians, while also touching on cultural themes, technology, etc. to paint a reasonably comprehensive overview sketch of the conflict. Keegan doesn't entirely succeed on any of these levels in The First World War, instead offering up an unevenly paced, inconsistent, and at times, confusing overview, which gets across the main ideas reasonably, but offers little to engage the reader.
In the introductory section of the book (the lead-in to the war) Keegan shows off his odd penchant for emphasizing micro detail in some places while leaving out and dashing through overview discussion in others. The lead-up to the declarations of war, he paints in great detail, including anecdotes about various political leaders having been on holiday, and Tsar Nicholas II's fears about his son's health, etc. However, the discussion of underlying causes and the nature of globalized economics, the tension between empires and representative governments, the naval issues between the UK and Germany, the conflict over colonies and the slow shift away from autarky—all of these issues are given fluffy treatment. He discusses the celebratory tone of many of the soldiers on the eve of war, but gives very little context. Now, I know he's primarily a military historian, but the personal political details he provides lie somewhat outside the scope of his professed expertise, while the big-picture political and cultural dimensions are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the war...
During the 1914 offensives, Keegan sometimes gets lost in the weeds, describing specific engagements in terms of units designations (for which the book provides no clarifying maps), without offering sufficient explanation or description for the reader to fully follow the text. I would have expected more personal details from a popular history as well—primary source accounts from soldiers, civilians in Belgium and Paris—the rich, narrative stuff that stands out in memory and engages the transporting imagination. We get precious little of this. Moreover, by the conclusion of 1914, Keegan has used up about 40 percent of his page allotment, obliging a lot of hurried writing and condensing for subsequent events.
The same weaknesses permeate the rest of the book—odd super focus on specific events, such as the Gallipoli campaign and the experience of the Australians, and fluffing of other significant events, such as the German and Austrian home front famine, or the experience of Italian soldiers on the Isonzo.
I think Keegan does a reasonable job laying in the military events of the First World War—I don't think he gets many important details wrong, as he did later in his history of the American Civil War (although, admittedly, I know that war better and am therefore more able to judge), but his overall lack of focus and organization consistently leaves events confusing and choppy. This clears up a bit near the end of the book, where I found Keegan's description of the 1918 Ludendorf offensives to be lucid and insightful, but it remains a problem through much of the book.
The real issue with this history, though, is the lack of engaging personal voices from combatants, officers, and politicians, and the virtual total lack of description of anything on the home fronts. Keegan offers up absolutely no information on medicine, nursing, and medical science. I know there must have been significant advances during the war, and I am very curious to learn about women doctors, the safety of nurses, how automobiles may have impacted stretcher teams... There is very little description of the hunger on home front (as mentioned above) or how rations impacted health and everyday life. There's no discussion of how Britain and France held elections during the war, and whether peace protests were ever an issue. There's only passing mention of the Spanish Influenza...
Reading The First World War, therefore, I was left with the impression that Keegan was offering up a reasonably readable, but essentially bland, "great white man" history of the war. Moreover, Keegan seems to take a very narrow, pessimistic perspective of the outcome of the war, essentially viewing it as a lead up to the Second World War. This seems intuitively wrong to me. The First World War destroyed the Guilded Age world order, leaving a lot of chaos in its wake. Subsequent events and the decisions of major players and states led to the Second World War, but the outbreak of that conflict was far from inevitable, and the geopolitics of the interwar years were extremely complex and interesting. So... it feels like Keegan doesn't really draw thoughtful or thought-provoking conclusions from the history he relates either.
In sum, Keegan's First World War is a disappointing read. It is a competent military account of the conflict, but little more. I can't immediately recommend a better survey of World War One, but there are so many out there, I'm sure there must be one that is more comprehensive and engaging than this one. This is the second subpar Keegan history I have read, and though it is not nearly as bad as his American Civil War book, I have the sense that he is not the strong, must-read popular historian that his reputation suggests and that readers would do well to look elsewhere.
January 28, 2014
A friend reminded me that this year was the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of WWI and suggested I do some reading about The Great War.
So I started with this overview. For those of you who did as well as I did in Geography, I would suggest that you print out a map of Europe. It really helped in understand what Keegan was describing in terms of troop movements, battles, and war plans.
I was staggered by numbers. Large numbers like 300,000 and 700,000 dead, wounded, prisoners, needed to replace the dead, wounded, and prisoners. I knew that WWI involved trench warfare with both sides fighting to control 5 football fields of land. I remembered reading before about the gas used (tear gas, chlorine, mustard).
What came as a shock was the attitude that life was cheap. A commitment to offensives where the commander knew there would be a substantial loss of his men. At the end of the book, I had the sense that WWI would never have ended if Germany could have conscripted the Chinese to fill their withered ranks. If Americans had not joined the Allies, the result could have been much different.
I learned how important tanks were. The Germans did not invest much time, ingenuity, or resources to develop tanks. But the British and French did. The better built British Mark IV and Mark V really helped the Allies in some of the battles.
Communication. At the beginning of the book, I got a sense that perhaps this war could have been prevented if the major players (Germans, Austrians, Serbs, French, British, and Russian) could have just gotten on a conference call a worked something out. But communications in 1914 were not at all what we have today. When the Tsar is on his yacht in the Black Sea, it is very difficult to converse with him.
Also Battlefield communications were mostly nil. Radio batteries were so big it took several men to carry a radio. Telephone lines cut, blown, up or broken. Hours to get orders from commanders to troops. The artillery firing by guesswork.
At the end of the book, Keegan discusses the large numbers of soldiers who were killed but whose bodies were never found. He describes the burial grounds built in the style of the Allies to remember their dead. He uses two moving quotes from Kipling. He describes the contrast on the German side. He describes their anger at the sanctions imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.
Finally, having seen Lawrence of Arabia, I thought there would be a large section in the book on his work with the Arab tribes. He gets a one page mention near the end. The book does spend quite a few pages on the disaster of Gallipoli. It made me glad I had never seen the film.
I am not sure where my WWI reading will take me next. Probably, I will read more about the beginning of the war.
So I started with this overview. For those of you who did as well as I did in Geography, I would suggest that you print out a map of Europe. It really helped in understand what Keegan was describing in terms of troop movements, battles, and war plans.
I was staggered by numbers. Large numbers like 300,000 and 700,000 dead, wounded, prisoners, needed to replace the dead, wounded, and prisoners. I knew that WWI involved trench warfare with both sides fighting to control 5 football fields of land. I remembered reading before about the gas used (tear gas, chlorine, mustard).
What came as a shock was the attitude that life was cheap. A commitment to offensives where the commander knew there would be a substantial loss of his men. At the end of the book, I had the sense that WWI would never have ended if Germany could have conscripted the Chinese to fill their withered ranks. If Americans had not joined the Allies, the result could have been much different.
I learned how important tanks were. The Germans did not invest much time, ingenuity, or resources to develop tanks. But the British and French did. The better built British Mark IV and Mark V really helped the Allies in some of the battles.
Communication. At the beginning of the book, I got a sense that perhaps this war could have been prevented if the major players (Germans, Austrians, Serbs, French, British, and Russian) could have just gotten on a conference call a worked something out. But communications in 1914 were not at all what we have today. When the Tsar is on his yacht in the Black Sea, it is very difficult to converse with him.
Also Battlefield communications were mostly nil. Radio batteries were so big it took several men to carry a radio. Telephone lines cut, blown, up or broken. Hours to get orders from commanders to troops. The artillery firing by guesswork.
At the end of the book, Keegan discusses the large numbers of soldiers who were killed but whose bodies were never found. He describes the burial grounds built in the style of the Allies to remember their dead. He uses two moving quotes from Kipling. He describes the contrast on the German side. He describes their anger at the sanctions imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.
Finally, having seen Lawrence of Arabia, I thought there would be a large section in the book on his work with the Arab tribes. He gets a one page mention near the end. The book does spend quite a few pages on the disaster of Gallipoli. It made me glad I had never seen the film.
I am not sure where my WWI reading will take me next. Probably, I will read more about the beginning of the war.
February 14, 2023
I enjoyed this. For a one-volume history of a massive event, Keegan did a good job. He balanced the big picture with actual events quite nicely. He included all aspects of the war, military tech, diplomacy, economics, politics, strategy, tactics, personality conflicts, etc. While at times I struggled to keep my attention, that was more rare than not. I do not feel like he over-simplified or over-complicated any aspect of it. He did not have a particular hobby-horse he rode; he just wrote the history of the war. At the end, he tied it all quite nicely into WWII, as is necessary.
Not a great book, but a good one, surely. Nicely done.
Not a great book, but a good one, surely. Nicely done.
October 7, 2023
Certainly good overview, but lacks synthesis. In addition, unequal attention to political and diplomatic background (the peace overtures), very military-oriented. Rating 2.5 stars
December 2, 2022
Excellent history
June 14, 2008
A solid effort. Keegan does a pretty good job of covering an immense subject. He proceeds smoothly from the background to the causes to the war years themselves, structuring his narrative for the most part chronologically but diverging when it makes sense (such as in his examination of the naval dimension of the war). If you are looking for a single volume history of the First World War, this would be a good choice.
That said, the book is not perfect. Individual offensives and counter-offensives are at times described in more detail than appropriate for an overview book. The maps are inadequate -- failing to show many of the important places referred to in the text and almost completely lacking in terrain indications (it is frustrating to continually read about how an army was constrained by mountains on one side and water on the other... and not to be able to recognize either on the map). Perhaps most worrying are errors in the statistics quoted... because if you get such simple things wrong as the percentage of Germans of military age who were killed (he says 3.5% when in reality it was closer to 10%), then what else have you gotten wrong? Lastly, the analysis of the aftermath is too short, IMHO.
Nevertheless on balance the book's strengths well outweigh its weaknesses, and, given the crucial importance of the Great War for an understanding of the subsequent events of the 20th Century, I would not hesitate to recommend it.
That said, the book is not perfect. Individual offensives and counter-offensives are at times described in more detail than appropriate for an overview book. The maps are inadequate -- failing to show many of the important places referred to in the text and almost completely lacking in terrain indications (it is frustrating to continually read about how an army was constrained by mountains on one side and water on the other... and not to be able to recognize either on the map). Perhaps most worrying are errors in the statistics quoted... because if you get such simple things wrong as the percentage of Germans of military age who were killed (he says 3.5% when in reality it was closer to 10%), then what else have you gotten wrong? Lastly, the analysis of the aftermath is too short, IMHO.
Nevertheless on balance the book's strengths well outweigh its weaknesses, and, given the crucial importance of the Great War for an understanding of the subsequent events of the 20th Century, I would not hesitate to recommend it.
February 6, 2015
There are not many books out there about the First World War, and there are even fewer good one-volume popularizations. This might be because the Great War lacks the pathos and the apparent aspects of heroism of its sequel European tragedy. There are no big names that stand out, neither are there many spectacular and critical battles. Nor are there retrospectively clear “good guys” and “bad guys”. The whole thing has the feeling of a mistake, a muddy, avoidable, immense waste of life in which millions of men were sacrificed along fronts that hardly budged, a pointless conflict which saw the dismemberment of three empires: the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian.
I’ve mentioned before that the Great War seemed to be prowling in the background of several books I had read recently: The Remains of the Day, Wittgenstein’s biography, and Logicomix. The truth was that I had plenty of general knowledge about the War but very little specific information. It knew it as an event that set the groundwork for the Second World War, but the actual waging of the war, its antecedents and its outcomes, were pretty vague in my mind. If that’s the case for you as well, Keegan’s book is the antidote.
Keegan’s The Great War is a straightforward narrative of the conflict, beginning with a brief cultural and political survey of Europe at the outbreak of war and ending with an explanation of how the outcome and terms imposed on Germany as well as the way national boundaries were re-drawn in its wake from the ruins of empires set the stage for the Second World War, which Keegan understands as a natural progression of the First. Both these topics-- the causes and the results of the war-- merit books of their own (which have likely been written), but they show the comprehensive ease that Keegan brings to his topic: treating cultural, political, economic, and technological aspects with enough depth as to be meaningful but never moving beyond the scope of a single-volume treatment.
Between these two chronological bookends, the narrative is that of the progress of the Great War itself, as divided and shifting as the scope of the conflict itself. Most chapters deal with progress (or lack thereof) on the Western Front and the details of the trench warfare involved. Keegan puts in a bit of biography, so that the many commanders involved become at least a bit multidimensional, as well as frequent quotes from letters and accounts of troops on the front. This is one of his great accomplishments of the work: humanizing those who fought, on both sides.
The work is slightly Eurocentric because those are the conflicts for which we have the most detailed sources and accounts, and Keegan draws on them to paint each pointless back and forth with specific details. He is careful to show, however, that the conflict was indeed worldwide. There is plenty of discussion of what was happening on the Eastern front as well, including the ultimate collapse of the Russian armies, and around the world. For example, the conflict in the Middle East, the assault on Germany’s African colonial holdings, and the naval battles of the North Sea are all chronicled. One of the interesting points that Keegan makes and that shapes subsequent narratives of the war is the contrast between the education and background of soldiers on the Eastern versus the Western front: the Eastern front soldiers were often illiterate peasants, so besides a very few surviving accounts such as those by Wittgenstein, our knowledge of the conflicts in the East is much more tenuous, acerbated by the fact that the antagonists in those regions-- Russia and the Hapsburg Empire-- disintegrated by the war’s end. The conflict there did not “set” in the cultural and literary imagination like the war in the West.
There is history of technology in this treatment as well, though not in detail and not in abundance (which is just about right for a general treatment). Specifically, Keegan discusses the construction of the dreadnought class of warship and their role in the conflict, as well as the coming of tanks used alongside infantry. In his discussion of tactics on the battlefield, he highlights the dawning strategy of armies being considered moveable fortresses and the difficulty in the essential coordination of artillary assault with ground attack. Artillary and massed armies-- these were the primary format of the conflict.
The entire treatment is accessible, and the narrative momentum does not bog even when the conflict itself does. Keegan captures both the drama and tragedy of the entire war without simplifying or villainizing either side. Indeed, it is the courtesy and camaraderie often showed across lines even in the face of unmitigated slaughter that seems to strike Keegan most about life in the trenches. Empires died in the Great War, and millions of soldiers, for no clear reason. Yet to treat the whole thing as senseless mistake and therefore ignore it would also be a tragedy. Keegan accomplishes the very difficult by telling the story of the Great War without glorifying or dismissing it.
I’ve mentioned before that the Great War seemed to be prowling in the background of several books I had read recently: The Remains of the Day, Wittgenstein’s biography, and Logicomix. The truth was that I had plenty of general knowledge about the War but very little specific information. It knew it as an event that set the groundwork for the Second World War, but the actual waging of the war, its antecedents and its outcomes, were pretty vague in my mind. If that’s the case for you as well, Keegan’s book is the antidote.
Keegan’s The Great War is a straightforward narrative of the conflict, beginning with a brief cultural and political survey of Europe at the outbreak of war and ending with an explanation of how the outcome and terms imposed on Germany as well as the way national boundaries were re-drawn in its wake from the ruins of empires set the stage for the Second World War, which Keegan understands as a natural progression of the First. Both these topics-- the causes and the results of the war-- merit books of their own (which have likely been written), but they show the comprehensive ease that Keegan brings to his topic: treating cultural, political, economic, and technological aspects with enough depth as to be meaningful but never moving beyond the scope of a single-volume treatment.
Between these two chronological bookends, the narrative is that of the progress of the Great War itself, as divided and shifting as the scope of the conflict itself. Most chapters deal with progress (or lack thereof) on the Western Front and the details of the trench warfare involved. Keegan puts in a bit of biography, so that the many commanders involved become at least a bit multidimensional, as well as frequent quotes from letters and accounts of troops on the front. This is one of his great accomplishments of the work: humanizing those who fought, on both sides.
The work is slightly Eurocentric because those are the conflicts for which we have the most detailed sources and accounts, and Keegan draws on them to paint each pointless back and forth with specific details. He is careful to show, however, that the conflict was indeed worldwide. There is plenty of discussion of what was happening on the Eastern front as well, including the ultimate collapse of the Russian armies, and around the world. For example, the conflict in the Middle East, the assault on Germany’s African colonial holdings, and the naval battles of the North Sea are all chronicled. One of the interesting points that Keegan makes and that shapes subsequent narratives of the war is the contrast between the education and background of soldiers on the Eastern versus the Western front: the Eastern front soldiers were often illiterate peasants, so besides a very few surviving accounts such as those by Wittgenstein, our knowledge of the conflicts in the East is much more tenuous, acerbated by the fact that the antagonists in those regions-- Russia and the Hapsburg Empire-- disintegrated by the war’s end. The conflict there did not “set” in the cultural and literary imagination like the war in the West.
There is history of technology in this treatment as well, though not in detail and not in abundance (which is just about right for a general treatment). Specifically, Keegan discusses the construction of the dreadnought class of warship and their role in the conflict, as well as the coming of tanks used alongside infantry. In his discussion of tactics on the battlefield, he highlights the dawning strategy of armies being considered moveable fortresses and the difficulty in the essential coordination of artillary assault with ground attack. Artillary and massed armies-- these were the primary format of the conflict.
The entire treatment is accessible, and the narrative momentum does not bog even when the conflict itself does. Keegan captures both the drama and tragedy of the entire war without simplifying or villainizing either side. Indeed, it is the courtesy and camaraderie often showed across lines even in the face of unmitigated slaughter that seems to strike Keegan most about life in the trenches. Empires died in the Great War, and millions of soldiers, for no clear reason. Yet to treat the whole thing as senseless mistake and therefore ignore it would also be a tragedy. Keegan accomplishes the very difficult by telling the story of the Great War without glorifying or dismissing it.
January 10, 2009
Pretty good one valume of the first world war but beware:
1. He refers to many towns and areas in Europe that do not appear on the maps he put int he book. So, I would say he should have used more maps and put some relevant towns on them.
2. He had some pretty weird sentence structure with verbs comeing at the end of certain sentences. Maybe becasue he is British it just did not flow well to me, and seemed to bog down because of that. I swear, there were some sentences that totally would have sounded perfect if Yoda had read them.
3. Do not try to get any sense of what the US did in WWI from this book. They truly are merely a foot note in the book.
1. He refers to many towns and areas in Europe that do not appear on the maps he put int he book. So, I would say he should have used more maps and put some relevant towns on them.
2. He had some pretty weird sentence structure with verbs comeing at the end of certain sentences. Maybe becasue he is British it just did not flow well to me, and seemed to bog down because of that. I swear, there were some sentences that totally would have sounded perfect if Yoda had read them.
3. Do not try to get any sense of what the US did in WWI from this book. They truly are merely a foot note in the book.
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