Posted on 03/25/2006 4:25:58 AM PST by libstripper
The definitive books on the battles of the 20th century.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
1. "The Price of Glory" by Alistair Horne (St. Martin's, 1963).
Over the course of 10 months in 1916, the French and Germans killed or wounded about 1.25 million of their best soldiers in a few wooded acres around a fortress complex near the French town of Verdun on the Western Front. Alistair Horne graphically describes the sheer physics of the human carnage, yet the battle was not entirely madness: The Germans had a diabolical plan to bleed the French white, and both sides saw that a German breakthrough at Verdun might prove catastrophic for the Allies. Thanks to Horne's brilliance, Verdun is now seared in the popular memory as a slaughterhouse where well-meaning but often clueless 19th-century generals, usually from a safe distance, threw the youth of the 20th century into an inferno.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Beevor's "Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943" is actually sitting next to me on my desk right now. It's a fascinating book. Unlike some previous authors, he got access to newly-released ex-Soviet archives that showed how ruthless the Red Army and NKVD were at Stalingrad. During the battle, they executed over 13,000 men for everything from desertion to "anti-Party activities"--the equivalent of an entire rifle division.
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The WWI memorial at Cantigny just west of Wheaton Illinois has some dioramas of these battles.
This is what happened to the French, two World Wars wiped out their gene pool and all the have left are Chiracs and Villipans.(sp) But ,at least, Chirac can try to preserve their language. I guess they have that going for them.
It does and that's what happened at Verdun. I've not read the book about Verdun; this means I'm going to have to get it and read it.
I find WWI much more interesting and bone chilling than WWII. Those images of No Man's Land and gas masks and flame throwers are just shocking. Many of America's best and brightest turned communist because of the insanity of WWI. If this is where the West is leading then the West needs to be destroyed, etc. I also recommend _Castles of Steel_ about the dreadnoughts.
It looks like "With the Old Breed" and The Fall of Fortresses" illuminate one of Hanson's recurring themes - the military value of the citizen soldier committed to war.
My father was also a navigator on a B-17. Shot out of the sky; interred at Stalag Luft III shortly after they machine gunned the tunnel escapees. At his viewing and the memorial after his funeral, we displayed some photographs from his life. One was his prison camp ID, which I had never seen. Staring at the Nazi cameraman, he did not appear to be a defeated man. He had the look of an implacable opponent.
I visited the Verdun Battlefield & memorial in 1972, 54 years after the war was over.
I could clearly smell the remnants of mustard gas. Residents spent only 6 months at home in the area because of respiratory problems.
Signs around the area warned of straying from the roads because of unexploded ordinance.
There is a huge mausoleum there, filled to the top with millions of bones from the unidentified soldiers. Small windows allow you to view the remains.
At one memorial, 4-5 bayonets, in a perfect row, stick out of the ground. It is said a group of French soldiers in a trench were buried alive by a nearby exploding shell, & that is where they remain.
If you can stand the rude & smelly French, I highly recommend a visit to Verdun for anyone interested.
The casualty numbers in World War One are unimaginable today. During the first day of the Battle of the Somme, there were about 58,000 British casualties. About 20,000 of them were killed.
Think about that. One day (1 July 1916), along 18 miles of front. TWENTY THOUSAND DEAD. That's NINE TIMES the number of American soldiers killed in three years in Iraq. And that was just the British...that doesn't count the German dead on the same day.
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I view WWI as the absolutely preeminent self-inflicted catastrophe of Western civilization. The leaders of both sides shared the same civilized values; none of them was a terrorist or a mass murderer and none advocated terror and mass murder as a way to advance the interests of his country. Nevertheless, due to pure egotism and foolishness they managed to escalate a European royal family quarrel into a holocaust from which the West has never recovered. Most of the horrors of the rest of the twentieth century, especially the rise of Communism and Nazism, can be traced directly to it. The Islamofascist horror we're dealing with now resulted from the fall of the British empire that, in turn, was ultimately caused by WWI and its evil progeny, WWII. Flame me if you want, but I think the British Empire was one of the greatest forces of civilization and humanity ever to exist.
Just continuing where Napoleon left off.
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