"If the war didn't happen to kill you, it was bound to start you thinking."
George Orwell on WW I
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The curse of knowing too much history is that after awhile it all just begins to scare the bajeebers out of you. So with that in mind, here are three WW I books you might also find interesting, if not disturbing as well.
1) Catastrophe 1914: Europe goes to war (2013) Max Hastings, pub. Alfred A. Knopf: NY
2) The Illusion of Victory (2003) Thomas Fleming, pub. Basic Books: NY
3) Liaison 1914 (orig. 1930/1968 ed.) Major General Sir Edward Spears, pub. Stein and Day: NY
Both Hastings and Fleming do a fair job in explaining the historical lead up to the armed hostilities in August 1914. The Brits were seeking to constrain German ambitions for having their own empire [Also, and for what it is worth; the Brits had been actively war gaming naval wars against Teddy Roosevelt's growing "Great White Fleet" of dreadnoughts during this period.]. The French wanted face saving revenge for their decisive defeats suffered during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The Germans under the haughty Kaiser and an emboldened German General Staff were demanding world respect that was commensurate with the world economic power they had become. At the other end of the spectrum was Russia's Czar Nicholas II who forgot his backward empire was no match for Germany's military might. And lastly, the original sick man of Europe, Austro-Hungary and its Ottoman Empire had not yet realized it were already a dead man walking by the turn of the century.
Throw in some healthy doses of individual hubris on the part of the different belligerant leaders, national pride that turned false for many in the firestorm of war, gross collective under-estimations of an opposing army's capabilities, their resolve, their tolerance of extraordinary pain, and each country's unexpected economic resiliency; and you have the makings of a disaster of global proportions.
General Spears book is just an eye witness account of how really (really) ugly those first five weeks in August and early September 1914 had become for all sides. To borrow the words of Joseph Stalin from a later war: "It took a very brave man to be a coward" in the German, Russian, British, or French Armies during the opening days of WW I. According to Spears, merely getting lost, falling out due to physical exhaustion, or just separated from one's own unit could oftentimes mean a summary firing squad at the hands of your own army's command.
Horrible yes. Could it ever happen again? Absolutely yes, but ahhh what memories...ehh?
