'Catastrophe' by Max Hastings - magisterial and humane history of the First World War

The Telegraph UK ^ | October 17, 2013 | Nigel Jones

[Ravnagora]

German soldiers cross into Belgium in August 1914 Photo: RA/Lebrecht Music & Arts

Like one of Field Marshal Haig’s family whiskies, Max Hastings is a dram that steadily improves with age.

His own trenchant views on war, and caustic opinions of the commanders who ran them, tended to obtrude too obviously in his early works, suggesting that if only he had been present at key military conferences costly errors would have been avoided.

However, Hastings’s recent massive volumes on his specialist subject, the Second World War, have shown why his position as Britain’s leading military historian is now unassailable. They demonstrate not only his always formidable grasp of the nuts and bolts of logistics and strategy and an authoritative narrative sweep, but a new humane note of empathy not always present in military history, or indeed in his early works.

In this enormously impressive new book, Hastings effortlessly masters the complex lead-up to and opening weeks of the First World War. As a historian, his objective is twofold: to pin the principal blame for launching the catastrophic conflict where it rightly belongs: on Austria and Germany; and to argue unashamedly that Britain was right – politically and morally – to fight it.

In advancing these arguments, Hastings takes on two foes: first, revisionist historians such as Cambridge’s Prof Christopher Clark who have recently sought to exculpate Germany and put tiny Serbia in the dock as the chief villain, for organising or conniving in the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo – the spark that gave Vienna and Berlin a perfect excuse to set off the conflagration.

[KC_Lion]

May I also recommend this:

It’s World War One; there’s thirteen million killed; it was all because the militaries of both alliances believed they were so highly attuned to one another’s movements and dispositions, they could predict one another’s intentions, but all their theories were based on the last war. And the world and technology had changed, and those lessons were no longer valid, but it was all they knew, so the orders went out, couldn’t be rescinded. And your man in the field, his family at home, they couldn’t even tell you the reasons why their lives were being destroyed.

[deadrock]

What was the.fatality count for WII?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Count me as a Max Hastings fan.

[bravo whiskey]

most of the blame for WW1 rests on the head of a narcisstic, incompetent, arrogant, petulant, childish, clinically insane ruler named wilhelm II. description sound familiar?

[Berlin_Freeper]

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One of the latter, whose life informs much of Tuchman's book, was the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, who enjoyed the opulence and elegance of the courtly tradition while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants under his thrall. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors.

[PUGACHEV]

My grandfather, who lived through those times, always blamed the British. In his view, by denying German goods a market in the Commonwealth countries, and by doing their utmost to restrict German goods from other countries, like Argentina, for example, the British prevented Germany from taking its proper place in the world economy. It also put a huge chip on their shoulder, and guaranteed a war at some point. Germany was just too large, and too dynamic to be kept down for long.

[rellimpank]

—nonetheless, in another of the weighty tomes on the subject which I have read, it is asserted that the German General Staff , knowing his kinship to and ties to Great Britain, usually didn’t let him know what they really were planning-—

[rellimpank]

—and , while not generally mentioned , from the time of Bismarck on , there was apparently much feeling in the British right-wing of politics , that the new “Germany” should be reduced to a nation of agricultural serfdom-—naturally enough, the Krauts didn’t agree-—

[Defiant]

That war was so horrible Europe has still not recovered. Was there anyone back then who was talking about an alternative strategy to trench warfare? I know tanks were invented as a response, but anyone who has studied military history knows that frontal assaults are just plain stupid, and that armies need to use indirection with a goal of NOT fighting. In that regard, didn't someone early on point out the futility of trench warfare going back and forth over a few miles? Or did they just soldier on?

Early in the war, soldiers on both sides sang Christmas carols to each other. By the end of the war, they just wanted to kill the other side and get it done with. Perhaps that war played as big a role as anything in killing off Christianity in Europe.

I too love Hastings' work. Perhaps he has an answer to my questions in this book.

[17th Miss Regt]

About 54,000,000.

[deadrock]

Difficult to comprehend. Very grim.

[morphing libertarian]

I’ve seen stats for the soviet union of 20-26 million dead, civilians included.

This is believed to be the major reason why the soviets subscribed to the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. They didn’t want a nuclear war with the US with more millions dead.

I also believe Iran doesn’t give a damn about MAD. They are religious fanatics. They just want to have the bomb and I believe they will initiate first use.

[Little Bill]

My Great Uncle, Newfoundland Regiment British Army, that if he knew then the realities he have hid in the woods with the Frenchies.( Exact Quote.)

[niteowl77]

—and , while not generally mentioned , from the time of Bismarck on , there was apparently much feeling in the British right-wing of politics , that the new “Germany” should be reduced to a nation of agricultural serfdom-—naturally enough, the Krauts didn’t agree-

The German awareness of the Morgenthau Plan - the "agrarian serfdom" plan championed by FDR's Sec'y of the Treasury - stiffened the resolve of many individual German soldiers in 1944 and '45, even ones that were no longer particularly enamored of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Words do have consequences, although not necessarily for the political hacks and government weenies that spout them.

As far as blame for WWI goes, there is plenty to be ladled out, and everyone gets their share. I'll have to see if the local bookstore has a copy of "Catastrophe," but I've gotten weary of books full of politicians, generals and grand overviews to the point where books like "A Rifleman Went to War" or "Storm of Steel" are more welcome here than "the latest great scholarly view of the subject."

Mr. niteowl77

[ClearCase_guy]

That war was so horrible Europe has still not recovered.

I second that. The 20th century was a long period of decline. Christianity in decline. Freedom in decline. Culture in decline. We did develop toys and technology (I won't complain about antibiotics and computers) but so much of the 20th century was movement away from what a Conservative would like to see.

I blame WWI (and the Progressives) for really getting the bad trip going.

[Ravnagora]

[Ravnagora]

Another worthwhile review to read - this one from The New York Times by Hew Strachan:

It Really Was All Germany’s Fault

Max Hastings Traces a War’s Origins in ‘Catastrophe 1914’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/books/max-hastings-traces-a-wars-origins-in-catastrophe-1914.html?_r=0

*****

[drbuzzard]

I’d say it’s a lot more complicated than that. You can’t lay all the blame on Wilhelm II. He was a major player of course, but there were quite a few trigger points at which individuals could have stopped the war, and he was just one of those individuals. Now you can make a case that he was a strong contributor to the powder keg that was waiting (with his provocative positions such as his naval race with the UK), but the rulers of Serbia, Austria, or Russia could have stopped the war from occurring as well.

[Ravnagora]

The rulers of Serbia were as “compliant” as humanly possible (more than they should have been) to Austria’s “Ultimatum” of July 23, 1914, and it still wasn’t “good enough”. Nothing that Serbia did or did not do would have prevented Austria from attacking her, because Austria was hell bent on crushing Serbia.

Well, she should have rethought that desire, because in the end, it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was “crushed” and dissolved.

Wilhelm II is a bit of a complicated case. While on the one hand he was pushing for war, on the other, when war was actually becoming a very real possibility, he started backtracking. By that time though, the wrecking ball was not to be stopped.

****