The First World War

Rating:
Summary: World War I, From A to Z
Review: "The First World War," is THE definitive history of WWI. Author John Keegan narrates every significant battle in each theatre, complete with an analysis of the tactics employed and the strengths and weaknesses of the commanders involved. The result is a thorough review of one of the greatest conflicts of all time.

Keegan provides both a macro and a micro view of the war. National level war plans and stories of wounded soldiers slowly drowning in shell craters are recounted with equal emphasis, showing how the decisions made by politicians and generals affected soldiers on the ground. One can almost feel the elation of young men hurrying off to war amidst bands playing and the adulation of adoring female populaces. This enthusiasm became a distant memory as days in the trenches turned to weeks, then months, and then years. Keegan describes artillery bombardments lasting for weeks, followed by hoards of infantrymen charging into still uncut barbed wire. Defenders then emerged from muddy trenches to pour murderous machine-gun fire into the attacker's ranks, turning battles into carnage on an unprecedented scale. Mere yards of real estate were bought and paid for by the blood of thousands. These attacks would then be repeated in reverse by the opposing side a few short weeks later.

He then describes attempts made to end the stalemate. Keegan graphically portrays the horror of French troops at Ypres, as they became the first soldiers in history to experience the hell of poison gas. Later, tanks were introduced to break the deadlock. General officers and their staffs, not at all insensitive to the suffering of their troops, studied tactics manuals and the possibilities inherent in new technologies. Human beings were not supposed to be able to survive the attacks they so meticulously planned. Yet they did survive! Soldiers inevitably emerged from their trenches to inflict massive casualties on their attackers. The result was near mutiny in the ranks by French, and later British, soldiers who had endured the misery for longer than human beings could stand. Finally, exhausted both at home and on the battlefield, the German Army capitulated; the ensuing peace and the technologies developed in WWI sewing the seeds that would grow into an even more destructive war a few decades later.

Keegan's work is not light reading. His descriptions challenge the powers of visualization of the average reader. Still, it is a detailed scholarly review of one of the most significant conflicts in history. Vietnam has Harold Moore's, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young." Korea has S.L.A. Marshall's, "Pork Chop Hill." World War II has Shirer's, "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Keegans, "The First World War," ranks up there with all of them.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult book on a difficult topic
Review: If you are looking for a summary overview of World War I, look elsewhere. If you love history and cherish detail, Keegan is a fabulous, though challenging, read. The origins of the war, and the circumstances surrounding the armistices that ended it, are endlessly frustrating to those who like history shrink-wrapped, but Keegan does a superb job setting the stage.

Where the book falls short -- even for those of us who enjoy historical works -- is that it describes offensives in minute detail with too few maps. Unless you live in Belgium or eastern France, or have a thorough knowledge of the geography, you may be frustrated in your attempt to understand the significance of much of the detail. This is a serious flaw.

Strengths: I thought Keegan hit some important points when discussing WHY military leaders in the War were unable to effectively command their forces, and also how such terrible casualties resulted. Essential concurrent events such as the October Revolution in Russia, and the crumbling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, are described in sufficient detail without these sections attempting to serve as self-contained histories of topics beyond the scope of the present work. Also, several of the photographs were amazing, especially the one showing a French soldier being greeted during the liberation of eastern France. Finally, the author provides balanced coverage of the conflict around the world, not focusing unduly on the infamous Western Front.

To the reviewer who found the book to be a bore -- one of the most frustrating aspects of the First World War was that it was a terrible stalemate for four years. Keegan astutely writes that a duller conflict would be hard to conceive. Add to this the senseless slaughter of millions (1.7 million French alone by 1918) and the ominous result (the disastrous Versailles treaty and crippled German republican government) and I believe the author achieves his purpose. This is NOT an exciting account. Neither are the best fictional works of the War -- Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.

This is a very good account of the Great War. With additional maps, it would be a great book. Recommended for history buffs with an appetite for detail.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and very readable
Review: If you were to look at the world around you and ask yourself what is the event that most influenced society as we know it, it would be hard to look past the first world war.
That is why I was keen to read an account that could encapsulate most of the important narrative of the war in one book, a near impossible task but one which John Keegan manages to pull off in this book imo.
The key to the success of this book is in its impartiality; too many history books, particularly those relating to war, where nationalism is a factor, are guilty of this academic travesty yet Keegan rarely if ever strays and the battles given the most coverage are generally those most pertinent to the overall outcome of the war, thus eastern and western fronts are given equal exposure.
Of course Keegan does give his own interpretations at times on topics where no definitive answer is possible, such as why a society as affluent as early 20th C Europe could allow itself to fall into such an abyss at a time of relative prosperity and also the accountablity of the actions of those in high command in the slaughter of a whole generation.
The main flaw in the book that I can think of is it's lack of backround information on artillery; Keegan time an again refers to the importance of artillery in the shaping of this war as opposed to those preceding it yet his descriptions of the types of guns used are brief with little background knowledge so that we aren't really sure how these technologies came to be and what exactly opposing sides were using in the destruction of whole regiments, battalions and in some instances of unparalleled horror, whole armies.
Still, in the overall context of this book it is a minor flaw and certainly doesn't overshadow the thoroughness of his piecing together of four years of world warfare; such is the gratuitousness of battles such as Paschaendaele that I doubt I would want to delve any further into the goings on in those blood soaked fields of 1914-18.
This is more than just a solid account, it is a comprehensive one.

Rating:
Summary: Easy reading history of WWI
Review: John Keegan does a great job compiling a readable history of WWI. I did not realize that the US involvement in WWI was so relatively inconsequential from a military viewpoint and so important from a psychological viewpoint. Of course, Great Britain gets most of the credit for the victory from this resident of England. Rightfully so. I am now looking for a parallel history from the US viewpoint. One gets the impression that if the French would have just gotten out of the way and the American involvement started earlier we could have finished this war with a lot less bloodshed and perhaps prevented WWII.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Well-Written History
Review: John Keegan has managed to write this book, covering the whole of the First World War, and he has done it well. As other reviewers have said, this history is not radical or vastly different but it is very clear. Managing to convey the horror of the war whilst remaining impartial and focused is no easy matter. Here, Keegan has managed to do this.

I definately recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: Different Style But Same Outstanding Analysis
Review: John Keegan is this era's best-known and probably greatest military historian. Keegan burst into the American public's consciousness with his best-selling "The Second World War." The book made Keegan a household name among military buffs in this country as he was in his native U.K.

"The First World War" is an excellent account of the military, diplomatic, and political events leading up to and during the "war to end all wars." World War I book and documentary coverage lags far behind WW II because archival footage of the first conflict pales in comparison to the events from 1939-1945. The fact that WWI was mostly concentrated in the European arena instead of being a truly global conflict also has led to reduced coverage. Of course, World War II is also 25 years closer to our time and encompassed far greater destruction in terms of material and lives lost.

However, as the "First World War" makes clear, the importance of World War I to history cannot be underestimated. Of course, the fact that the unresolved problems caused by WW I led to World War II -- and in particular, a bitter German soldier with a grudge by the name of Adolf Hitler -- is well known to historians. What is less well known is that the trauma and pain inflicted on the participants -- particularly France -- had repercussions for decades. Germany would slip into the control of a demented madman; Russia would fall to the Bolsheviks; the British Empire would begin to have cracks for the first time; and France would in many respects never be the same again.

The French people and France are covered extensively in "The First World War." Keegan takes an in-depth look at the actual and psychological trauma that losing so many young men in the trenches of Europe caused to the French psyche. This is a country that essentially fought the Germans to a stalemate for 4 years, yet only 20 years later, would fold within 6 weeks in World War II. So many young French women were widowed, and so many potential husbands were lost among the French youth, that the demographic imbalance from the war continued to affect France half a century later. The trauma of losing so many good young men -- in what became a stalemate over non-moving trench lines that mostly served as target practice -- probably also explains France's post-World War II go-it-alone strategy that continues to this day, the only such attitude among any of the 5 permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

"The First World War" is not like Keegan's earlier book on WW II. It suffers from a lack of maps, though the lack of troop movement in the earlier conflict renders any maps more difficult as they tend to be localized. The book focuses more on the personal experiences of individual infantrymen and the attitudes of various countries comprising the Allies and the Central Powers. The chapter dealing with the diplomatic entanglement that led to the conflict, "The Crisis of 1914", is excellent and perhaps the best diplomatic overview of how a world war started that none of the antagonists wanted. Keegan's military genius is also useful in explaining the logistics of trench warfare and the inability of the primitive communications systems to keep up with what was happening at the front in real time. We take this for granted today in the age of cell phones and GPS, but in 1915 delays of a few minutes to a few hours were all to common to finding out what was transpiring a few miles ahead. Needless to say, countless errors were made costing tens of thousands of lives. Finally, Keegan covers all of the prevailing military doctrines of that time, including the Schlieffen Plan, the German thrust that was to bypass French fortifications by cutting through Belgium.

More photos of the destruction of heavy artillery when used at close range could have been included. Keegan does a good job describing the damage to forests, foliage, and terrain but it might have added color to the sections describing the deep psychological damage done to young infantrymen during hours of bombardment. Finally, the uneven rough pages with "old texture" takes a while to get used to, though it added a bit of authenticity and air to the accounts of some 80 years ago.

"The First World War" is a worthy successor to Keegan's other military tomes and only disappoints when compared to his masterful analysis of World War II.


Rating:
Summary: Conventional Wisdom
Review: Keegan is a very fine historian and this is fairly representative of his work. Avid World War One buffs will find very little new here, but it is a good overview of the facts of the conflict. I sense that there is a, not surprising, tendency by modern historians to break new ground in their research. Why else publish a new work on this well-known story? This book does not do that. It does give a very good one volume recap for the casual historian or lay reader that needs to know the rough outlines of the issues surrounding the war. Keegan's writing is elegant and authoritive and there is little here to criticize in his interpretation or treatment of the facts.

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Summary: Trench Warfare, Through and Through
Review: Let me start by noting that John Keegan undertook a daunting task in attempting to describe the entirety of World War I in a single volume. Many notable accounts of the war focus on a single aspect of WWI, e.g., the battles of 1914, the Zimmerman telegram, the collapse of the central powers, etc. Keegan takes this all on and more. The result is an often absorbing, but sometimes monotonous and sometimes confusing account.

Keegan's writing exhibits a mastery of both the major events and the subtle nuances of the war. He describes the military, political, and socio-economic climate in perceptive detail, and does this for all the combatents. The reader will surely learn a great deal by tackling this book.

Nevertheless, the book suffers from two serious flaws, only one of which perhaps was within Keegan's direct control. First, the book is seriously lacking in maps. For example, the entire book contains just four maps for the entire Western Front. Many pivotal towns are simply missing from the all-to-general maps. Many battles in minor theaters have no accompanying maps at all. As a result, the narrative is often difficult to follow. Second, given the static nature of the fronts in World War I and the generally consistent military strategy during the war, the desciption of each battle is more or less a repeat of the last. The narrative separating the descripions of the battles is also somewhat repetitive, resulting in a sometimes tedious read. I often found myself looking ahead to the next section.

All in all, the reader of The First World War will certainly be rewarded by completing Keegan's informative account. Unfortunately, however, the book often reads more like a textbook then a "live" history.

Rating:
Summary: The Great War - full of Sound and Fury
Review: Mr. Keegan is our foremost historian on European military history, and he is at the peak of his powers in writing about The Great War. As he relates in introducing this impressive volume, his interest in this catastrophic and utterly purposeless conflict started at a young age and remained highly personal throughout his life to the present day. The Great War was a shattering trauma to the families in the towns and villages where Keegan grew up. Still, today it eclipses in many ways the memory of even the Second World War (which Keegan convincingly argues cannot be understood without a grasp of the Great War that preceded it). To fit this story into less than 500 pages requires a quick pace. (Barbara Tuchman's account of the war's beginnings Guns of August is vital to supplement what is represented herein by Keegan). However, Keegan never neglects the necessary detail and personal aspects of events, never fails to impress the reader. The Western Front - the failure of the Schlieffen plan and the great "turnabout" and counter-offensive of the Marne, Loos, Verdun (again, for the necessary detailed understanding, see Alistair Horne's Price of Glory: Verdun - 1916) - is the focus, but the Eastern Front is not neglected. Keegan's description of the epic struggle between German and Slav (pieced together from scant sources since these lost souls - millions of lives thrown away in unremembered, epic struggles - left few records of their experiences), with the spectre of the Russian Revolution and the coming of the Stalinist state, leaves the reader with a shudder of revulsion (anticipating that this war of hatred would continue and accelerate to worse heights in the Second World War). The Eastern Front was, if anything, in many ways more horrifying than the trench warfare that wasted away - with no purpose or benefit to anyone involved in any way - a generation of manhood from France, Britain and Germany in the Western Front. All of Keegan's works are treasures for the interested reader. This volume is perhaps Keegan's best. It has a personal intensity that enhances the impact on the reader, while still maintaining due balance of storytelling and factual representation of academic research.

Rating:
Summary: A very detailed book of The Great War
Review: Mr. Keegan, an English author, has put a lot of information in this book. Honestly, it may seem a little dry, but if you desire to learn about this unfortunate war, this book can help. Mr. Keegan opens with an excellent first paragraph, explaining that "when the guns at last fell silent four years later, a legacy of political rancour and racial hatred so intense that no explanation of the causes of the Second World War can stand without reference to those roots." He follows with the second chapter called "War Plans" and details pre war preparation and Germany's Schlieffen Plan. This book focuses on the total war. So both the eastern and western front, and also the war at sea are all covered in detail. Mr. Keegan even covers the Russian revolt and the last Tsar.
Overall this is a decent book written by a decent Historian.