Most books on the opening of the Great War tend to focus on either the political-diplomatic aspects, or the military aspects of that time; Hastings tries to do both, and largely succeeds. However, he does admit that there will likely never be a "definitive" account of the opening of the war, nor does he try to claim such for himself. His scope is fairly clear - 1914 from start to finish, with only limited mentions of a few events just before, and a few after, but covering as much of that as is manageable. Although he proceeds generally chronologically, he divides his chapters up between both the Western Front, which he acknowledges as key to the war's course, and spends several chapters covering Eastern Fronts not often covered in any depth (probably most notable being the Galician and Serbian Fronts). There is no real discussion of events outside of Europe.
In framing the outbreak of the war, Hastings explicitly rejects the notion that this war was morally different than the Second World War. Despite the writings of Sassoon and others, he does not see the war as being morally ambiguous or unclear. He firmly assigns the lion share of the blame for the war to Germany and Austria (with Russia as, perhaps, an honorable mention). But, he is quite clear in believing that, had Germany conquered in 1914 as they did in 1940, Europe would've been a far darker place than many realize, and he quotes from numerous sources to support that conclusion, primarily German. As part of this discussion, he delves a great deal into atrocities, real, imagined and feigned. The worst were, unsurprisingly in Serbia, where Austrian and Slavic hatreds ran deep. But he is quick to point out a good many German ones, as well, primarily in Belgium but also in France and Russia. Surprisingly to me, he portrays the Russians as quite chivalrous in their conduct, at least in 1914. His statistics are interesting -- for example, there were over 6000 documented civilian executions by the Germans in August 1914 alone; the Germans claimed the Russians killed around 100 over both August and September combined.
Hastings saves a lot of his ire for specific individuals. The Kaiser, for instance, "displayed many of the characteristics of a uniformed version of Kenneth Graham's Mister Toad." Or, "Conrad (Austro-Hungary's military leader) retained a boundless capacity for promoting disaster." However, his continuing ire is most reserved for Britain's field commander, Sir John French, a "poltroon" who he manages to berate at every turn, with a great deal of merit, I might add. Indeed, Hastings covers the British Expeditionary Force's activities in great detail, even while constantly reminding the reader that the French and Russians were fighting much larger battles, with tremendous losses (he points out that the deadliest day in WW1 was not at the Somme, but in 1914). He does not paint the British Army in a very positive light, at least in its effectiveness, though at the same time he heaps praise on the common soldiers and junior officers. The accounts of the BEF retreat from Mons, consolidation near Paris, the race to the sea, and the desperate defense of Ypres was quite engrossing.
What Hastings does most brilliantly, however, is to personalize his account using the words of those that lived through the war (and many that did not). Every page drips with personal anecdotes and stories, taken from journals, letters, and the like. From senior political and military leaders and their circles, down to common soldiers, peasants, and the like, he has a thousand personal details that really help to bring home the war and its effect on Europeans of all stripes. I could not possibly begin to do this part of the book justice, as the details are countless. (OK, I will include one: I did not realize that a single territorial unit of the British Army, the London Scottish Regiment, included the actors Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, Cedric Hardwicke, and Ronald Colman.)
So, next up is a slight departure with The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers. The novel has been mentioned in several of the books I've read thus far; the author has been mentioned as well, both for his book and the rather colorful life that he led during this time.
Yet another outstanding book. I agree that Hasting's real contribution, apart from amassing so many primary sources, is that he puts WWI in perspective--no, it was not "pointless" and German militarism was a dangerous spectre, as it would be 30 years later.
ReplyDeleteHe's also one of the first of the recent western authors to not give short shrift to the eastern theater, which had some of the more critical engagements of the war. For example, the early Russian successes in East Prussia resulted in the withdrawal of 4-5 German divisions from the West at a critical juncture--a dilemma faced by many a wargamer! Additionally, the sheer barbarity of Austrian and German behavior is something else that often gets subsumed into more recent history or dismissed as "propaganda." Turns out those original reports had something to them after all.
The disastrous opening engagements between the French and the Germans that summer also set the stage for what would come next and Hastings does a great job of limning it for the reader but without getting lost in the sheer scope of things. He also does a good job of putting the BEF's contributions into perspective. There's an ex-US Army officer (of German descent, of course!) named Terence Zuber who has been writing extensively what could only be termed as revisionist history of the opening campaigns, to the point of ludicrously (IMO) claiming there "was no Schlieffen Plan" and that the "BEF was defeated." The BEF may not have done as well as the official histories have claimed (who did?) but Zuber overdoes things in a way Hastings does not.
That he gives some credit to Russian battlefield behavior does not surprise me, given my own research. The ingrained brutality of the Red Army that came later was not at all like the behavior of the tsarist Army, which was also capable of excesses but nothing like the Germans and Austrians perpetrated that summer. Some atrocities were attributed to Cossack regiments during the early phases of the invasion of East Prussia--sheer chutzpah on the part of the Germans who were busy shooting hostages (men, women and children) in almost every village they occupied in Belgium and France during the same period.
Hastings, overall, has done the public a service in authoring a very well organized and presented overview of the outbreak of the war--not as hyper-detailed as Hew Strachan or as superficial (if not as silly) as some of the other revisionist nonsense that is starting to show up on the bookshelves during 2014.
Also concur about his Falklands book--I believe it is still the best single volume that looks at the war in its entirety from one who actually covered it as a correspondent.
I agree that Hastings does a good job of bringing back a few key aspects of the fight that have been buried over the years. German barbarism, while nothing like the Nazis, was still far worse than any of the other combatants, except for perhaps the Serbian front, where a lot of old scores being settled. Blaming Germany also makes sense given the argument that they could have stopped the whole mess, but didn't. Still, I tend to give Austria and Russia more blame than he does. This is nothing new nor is it just history -- among Russia's justifications for invading Crimea this month was the splitting of Kossovo from Serbia int he 90s, which Russia still sees as the kid brother they need to protect. We may forget these things, but the Russians and tohers don't.
ReplyDeleteI do wish he'd have covered more of the French disasters in 1914, given the immensity of their losses. Still, he's a Brit author so it is only fair he'd spend most of his Western Front page count on the adventures of the BEF. In his further defense, it is great reading, whereas the French offensives of Plan XVII would've made for grim, repetitive reading. I am not sure how you can say the BEF was defeated. They were beat back, surely, and poorly led at the top, but, like Geroge Washington a hundred or so years previous, the fact that they remained intact as a fighting force was critical to keeping Britain in the war on the continent -- it was never going to be a naval war, unless Kaiser Bill was unleashed to run amok, and his people knew better than that.
Out east, I thought the statistic of less than a hundred executions of Germans by Russians was quite amazing -- not the level of brutality normally associated with the Russians. The Russians, though were certainly plagued by poor leadership, a witnessed by Tannenberg. but it was not the blowout that might've been expected. What Hastings really makes plain on the Eastern Front is the melange of ethnicities involved -- every side hada mishmash of every ethnicity imaginable. It must've been an utter nightmare to manage so many languages and groups all mixed up -- not at all the usual nation-state wars we're used to (and such as the Western Front was more like).
Oh, one other tidbit I forgot previously -- Hastings does a good job of bringing home the immense number of horses invovled in the early days of the war. I mean, I knew there were a lot used, but he does an excellent job of making one understand what that meant; everything from fodder requirements, to the effects of cavalry battles, and the like. it's one thing to know abstractly about things like this; it's another to really begin to grasp the implications.
ReplyDeleteCavalry was truly an expensive arm--somewhere in the vicinity of 25 percent of Russian railway capacity was taken up during the war to provide for forage and other necessaries of the mounted arm.
ReplyDeleteTannenberg, while a defeat, was not the disaster it was later made out to be, especially by emigre Russian officers looking for a reason to explain the collapse of the tsarist government. The real culprit was the head of the Northwestern Front, a General Zhilinskii, who badly bungled coordination between 1st and 2d Armies. Contrast that with the South-Western Front's campaign in Austrian Galicia, which got off to a rough start but ended up inflicting nearly 500,000 casualties on the Austrians and nearly collapsed their war effort (thus heralding an ongoing requirement for Germany to bail them out).
Russia's role in the outbreak of the role is less clear than some historians would like. It was very, very clear to Austria, Germany and everybody else that the Russian relationship with Serbia (and other Balkan states) was well-established and definitely a factor to consider in any diplomatic gamble. After humiliating Russia in 1909, it was pretty obvious to everybody that any attempt to put moves on Serbia would involve Russia.
Drawing the modern parallel, nobody should be at all surprised at Putin's attempts to re-establish some form of hegemony over the "Near Abroad." Maybe somebody should provide copies of Hasting's book to the current national security apparatus.
My take on Tannenberg that the victory was played up to propagandize the Hindenburg/Ludendorff team's brilliance; even the name of the battle was selected to recall Teutonic-Russian conflicts of the past (referencing the 1410 Battle of Tannenberg). It seems to have worked, given the dynamic duos future career trajectory.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to Russia and its role in the start of the war, semantics comes into play, methinks. They made it crystal clear their position about Serbia -- does that mean they were inflexible and unreasonable, or that the Austrians (and Germans) were the unreasonable ones? I think this is part of the problem in assigning blame. What is viewed as reasonable by one side (Russian defense of Serbia) might be viewed as instransigent by another (Austria). Still, at the end of the day, Austria was reckless and was egged on by Germany, whose inflexible military startegy ensured that a war, any war, would be a big one.
As for Russia, Crimea and Puin, a Tsar by any other name...
Dunno. Russia's position was well known, but it was also negotiable--Foreign Minister Sazanov, for one, was not averse to finding some solution to the crisis that did not involve the dismembering of Serbia. That was the real deal breaker (rightly or wrongly) for the Russians. The Austroids actually had a fair amount of international sympathy, especially given Serbia's reputation for supporting shady and/or violent irredentist activities.
ReplyDeleteBut when the Austroids overplayed their hand and turned it into an international crisis that, thanks to Germany, threatened to immediately involve both Russia and Germany, it put the ball firmly in the Central Powers' court.
Russia was reacting to events more than it was initiating them, at least in my humble opinion based on the evidence. This is not to say there was not a pan-Slavist movement in Russia that was every bit as unhinged as the one we are seeing today. But the degree to which they really influenced events is debatable, especially as the guy who had the most opportunity to push their agenda had dropped dead a few months earlier.
The German decision making (or lack thereof) during the whole 1914 crisis is truly breathtaking in its irresponsibility. And you can draw modern parallels with today in that countries recognized as great powers don't have to necessarily have malicious intent in order to pursue reckless and irresponsible policies (or non-policies, as the case may be).
"you can draw modern parallels with today in that countries recognized as great powers don't have to necessarily have malicious intent in order to pursue reckless and irresponsible policies (or non-policies, as the case may be)"
ReplyDeleteAgreed completely! In this case, Germany as whole did not seem interested in war (many were, of course). However, their reckless behavior and egging-on of Austria certainly led to it, wanted or not. They certainly deserve blame for ensuring it would also involve Russia, France and even Britain, thanks to the Schlieffen Plan.
I'v read a couple of Max Hastings' book, to include "The Battle for the Falklands," and thoroughly enjoy his work. Other than the Armenian genocide, I never heard a peep about atrocities committed during the course of the war. It's not that I thought no atrocities were committed, they've just been completely overshadowed by the ones committed during WWII.
ReplyDeleteWith reagrds to atrocities, I think you're right to say "overshadowed" by later ones. WW1 was brutally destructive, but think the level of atrocities was no worse than many 19th or 20th Century wars. They did happen, but not on the massive scale of WW2.
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