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Summary: A 21st Century History of the War
Review: I've been interested in the subject of the First World War since my undergraduate days back in the 1970's. At that time the Fritz Fischer thesis, that Germany's decision on war was a grab for world power, had considerable appeal. I've always had problems with that view since it didn't address the question of why war in 1914, but not in 1905? Had Germany really wanted to make short work of Russia and France she could have done it then with the Russian Army in a shambles after their defeat by Japan. War did not come however. Instead it came nine years later with Germany in a much weaker strategic situation. What I think is most difficult for the reader to do today is to see Europe from the eyes of the elites who made the decisions in 1914. The German Army was viewed by many experts has having considerable flaws, not as the precision mechanism we preceive today. Also the European opinion of the Germans was different. Not too many years before many believed that Germany was unsuited for industry, that her people lacked the talent to master science and technology, that they were primarily a simple pastorial people. For many British to have thought, as Ferguson shows, that they could win the war with money alone stems from this. Also we Americans especially today lack any feeling for the sense of inferiority and weakness that the Germans felt towards the French especially. Germany had been before 1870 a collection of petty princedoms which had been played off against one another by the French, British, Swedes and Russians. Napoleon, still a impressive image at the beginning of this century, had fought most of his battles in Germany, moving about the country at will defeating the best armies put up against him. Our view today is dominated by what happened after 1914, not by the history which preceeded it. This book attempts, in part, to rectify this. For balance I recommend G.F. Kennan's The Faithful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War and David G. Herrmann's The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War. As far as the attrocity argument goes, Germany's main crime in my opinion was that they used those methods, which had up to that point been used only against aboriginal peoples, against Europeans. One must remember that the original lopping off hands and feet stories were based on actual Belgian attrocities in the Congo. As to over 5,000 Belgian civilians killed during the invasion, Admiral Dewey dispatched that many Filipinos during the first days of our own Philippine-American War in 1899, a war that we instigated and fought with blatant cruelty. This brings up the trully controversial point (from a US perspective) that Ferguson brings up on page 55. As he states, "Compared with the US, Germany was a pacific power." Stange that none of the reviews have mentioned this. A comparison of even our more recent history (Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama in 1989) to the 1914 German actions in Belgium seem to justify the opinion of Ambrose Bierce, when he wrote, "War has never found us ready. War has never found any modern nation ready, excepting Prussia, and her only once. If we will learn nothing by experience, let us try observation. Let us cease our hypocritical cant, rise from our dreams of peace and of the love of it, confess ourselves the warlike people that we are, and become the military people we are not."
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Summary: N.Ferguson: the backseat driver of history
Review: In 'The Pity of War' Niall Ferguson attempts to correct the traditional view that militaristic Germany dragged the rest of Europe into the First World War. The power of Ferguson's argumentation is the scope of the material he uses. Deftly he switches from pre-war children's books that speculate about a German invasion in Britain to an overview of the military strength of the different European nations at the eve of the war. Whatever aspect of the war he discusses, he is always authoritative. (At times even too much so. Ferguson's speciality is financial and economical analysis. In the chapter on the aftermath of the Versailles treaty, Ferguson arrogantly pretends to know how Germany could have prevented the hyperinflation of the 1920's. Niall Ferguson as the backseat driver to history.). The book is so full of nuance and so well-researched that I was shocked when I arrived at the final chapter 'What if?' Ferguson describes what would have happened, had Britain not sent its expeditionary force to aid the french. According to Ferguson, Germany would then have been satisfied with creating a European customs union (the EU avant la lettre), Britain would have continued to rule the waves and Adolf Hitler would never have risen to power. This ill-founded speculation may have helped to get the author media attention, but it certainly is a blemish on an otherwise very powerful book. Forget the final five pages and concentrate upon the rest.
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Summary: Finally, an objective view of 'The Great War'
Review: In my early high school years I took an interest in military history, particulary WW I and II. I foolishly mentioned to my father that as there were some 40 steps to WW I, and both sides had opportunities to step back from the precipice, all were equally culpable for the carnage. I was almost beaten for that, as both my parents lost three uncles and my grandfather was wounded three times fighting the Huns. My parents therefore had a vested interest in propogating the myth that these sacrifices were made to protect freedom and democracy.Niall Ferguson's book takes aim at several myths about WW I and integrates several ideas in one volume. Several have been addressed before in other forums to better effect, and he has missed, I think some salient points. These include the British desire (under Churchill, no less) to maintain total naval supremacy in the face of the German Navy's dreadnoght buildup. British intelligence also failed to anticipate German chemical research success in fixing nitrates from the atmosphere to produce explosives. This allowed German industry to continue to operate at full capacity despite the blockade. Ferguson's industrial and economic capabilies are very consistent with those found in Paul Kennedy's 'Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' (1987), but Kennedy says it better. The perception of war by the public before and during WW I is quite enlightening, as is his conclusion that some men actually enjoyed the killing. There is much anecdotal evidence to support this. For many men war is the only time that they achieve any importance or success, and they fade into obscurity afterwards. Although a different war and front, picture Sgt Steiner from 'Cross of Iron' and you've got the picture. In sum, Pity of War is an extremely well researched tome that attempts to dispel some of our most cherished myths. I can only give it 4 stars due to its occassional lack of focus. It is required reading for any politician considering sending soldiers, sailors, or airmen into battle.
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Summary: Provocative, but ...
Review: It is a thought-provoking book which is well worth reading, though the arguments are indeed full of contradictions and sleights-of-hand (...). Some of the most provocative claims are made in a single throw-away sentence, without evidence to back them up. One point I think should be made: (...) the book has not broken the last taboo, etc. In Britain there is a strong tradition of disillusionment with the war, which only began to be challenged in the 1960s. Mr Ferguson's book is part of this dominant tradition. The most original thing about the book is not the arguments, but the form of analysis. Mr Ferguson recognises something that has eluded military historians for too long: war is an economic activity. For example, he considers questions like: how much did it cost to kill each soldier? what was the kill ratio of German soldiers versus Allied soldiers? and so on. Questions like this are so obvious that it is a wonder no one has really asked them before.
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Summary: Pity and Ulterior Motives
Review: �It was worse than a tragedy,� Niall Ferguson concludes in his analysis of the First World War. �It was nothing less than the greatest error of modern history.� (p 462). Every aspect of the war Ferguson describes is interpreted, in some cases reinterpreted, in order to prove this point. The horrors of war he details chapter by chapter, the inhumanity, the sacrifice, were all in his view ultimately futile, in fact counterproductive. Why was this tremendous loss in vain? The core of Ferguson�s argument is his revisionist assessment of German war aims. In his view, �All the economic clauses of the September Programme implied was the creation � some eighty years early, it might be said � of a German-dominated European customs union.� (p 172). This is naïve. The Europe of our timeline would be unrecognizable to the client states of the militarized Prussian superpower that would have emerged in Ferguson�s vision. Ferguson himself has to admit German territorial aims were far more extensive, certainly in the east. He quotes the remark of the German chancellor Bethman Hollweg that this ��Middle European Empire of the German Nation� was merely �the European disguise of our will to power,�� but ignores its implications, saying, �even put like that, Germany�s European project was not one with which Britain, with her maritime empire intact, could not have lived.� (p 173). The question is, for how long? Ferguson is basing his entire argument on an incredible amount of blind faith in the good intentions of the Second Reich, specifically that its imperial ambitions would be satisfied with the status quo he envisages in the September Programme. There are any number of potential future flashpoints in his counterfactual reality: the increased pressure a strengthened German/Turkish alliance would place on British interests in the Middle East; German assertion of territorial rights at the expense of Belgium and France butting up against British mandates in Africa; German economic exploitation of Latin America and China expanding in tandem with its geopolitical agenda; an expanded German naval presence on the high seas in the Pacific. Britain would have to draw the line against Germany somewhere at some point � could she stand alone? Ferguson is absolutely right to maintain Germany would have lost the war had it not been for British intervention. That intervention would have been impossible had Germany not violated Belgian neutrality in order to strike at France. Had Germany locked down her western border she could have carved an empire out of Russia at her leisure. She chose to widen the war. France had no choice but to fight. Ferguson says Britain could have chosen to stay out, and should have. But could she? Protecting the integrity of the Low Countries was an article of faith in British strategic thought. French encroachment in this region in 1793 was the pretext for British involvement in a global war that dragged on for 22 years at appalling cost. Even though the French assessment of her vulnerability after the Revolution was far more legitimate than Germany�s in 1914, I doubt Ferguson would argue Britain should have stayed aloof and allowed the creation � some two hundred years early, it might be said � of a French-dominated European customs union under Napoleon. Why? Pity for the human cost of war is not Ferguson�s real agenda. He makes it clear that, ultimately, the real pity of the First World War was it weakened Britain and led to the dissolution of his beloved empire (a position made more explicit by his recent publication of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, and its accompanying TV series). �Had Britain stood aside � even for a matter of weeks � continental Europe could therefore have been transformed into something not wholly unlike the European Union we know today � but without the massive contraction in British overseas power entailed by the fighting of two world wars.� (p 460). Even this self-interested position is untenable. Setting aside for a moment the moral bankruptcy of attempting to do so, Britain could not have continued to rule subject peoples forever. And Britain was falling under the industrial shadow of the United States long before 1914. Ironically, in Ferguson�s counterfactual world, a friendless Britain, excluded from Europe and under pressure in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, may well have had her remaining commercial assets stripped by the rising power of Germany on one side and the United States on the other. There isn�t space here to critique Ferguson�s arguments point by point, but among the more serious errors of omission, Ferguson has in my view chosen to deliberately underestimate the impact of the Allied economic blockade on Germany. He devotes no more than five pages (p 276-280) to the subject. C. Paul Vincent�s The Politics of Hunger is listed in the bibliography but I didn�t see it cited anywhere and its conclusions are so radically different from Ferguson�s I wonder if he didn�t choose to conveniently lay it to one side even if he did read it. Putting all the bloodshed of the world�s first total war in perspective is difficult to do. But the fact remains that just because the outcome was terrible, that is no guarantee the alternatives were better.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: Like other reviewers here, I have my doubts about whether Ferguson's analysis is correct but his book absolutely should be read if for no other reason than the critical analysis that it forces on the reader when other books about World War I are read. Even if his conclusions are wrong, the considerations he puts forth must be included in any intelligent appraisal of the War, its causes and its aftermath. Interestingly however, they typically are not.
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Summary: Detailed and controversial economic history of World War I
Review: Niall Ferguson got headlines for what would have otherwise been a book for specialists of World War I when he included arguments that Britain should not have entered the war. He acknowledged that this would have certainly meant the fall of France and the acquisition by Germany of territory in the East at the expense of Russia. His argument created a great stir in Britain, which (like France) suffered enormously high casualties in World War I, much worse than in the World War II. Ferguson's book is a thoroughly argued, revisionist approach to the War. He disputes everything from the importance patriotism and war fever played in the early rush of enlistments to whether the Allies were economically more efficient than the Central Powers. Do not buy this book expecting an easy read. Ferguson supports his arguments by large amounts of statistical studies that are daunting even to a reader familiar with the controversies surrounding the war. In the end, one is left with the belief that it could not have been a good thing for Germany to have eliminated France and Russia as world powers, which would have allowed it to build up its Navy in competition with Britain. Of course, there is one benefit that would have come from Germany winning World War I; with the German political structure intact and victorious, it seems certain that Adolph Hitler would have lived his days out in obscurity.
In short, this book is only for someone deeply interested in the economic and social history of World War I.
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Summary: Breaking the Taboo
Review: Niall Ferguson has effectively broken the Taboo in British Society on the origins of WWI, namely you mustn't say that there was British blame in the origins of the war. it is known that the war would have faded out in 1914 if we hadn't got involved. But I would like to take it further than Niall Ferguson, nmely had we not got involved, and but for the plans of the British War Party, there would have been no war in the first place. mr. Ferguson is right in his conclusions.
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Summary: Economic Impact of The War
Review: Niall Ferguson is a professor at NYU plus a fellow at Oxford and the Stanford Hoover Institution. He has authored at least six other books on politics, history, and economics. In this book he attempts to explain where we went wrong in World War I, plus he makes certain projections on how he thinks things could have worked out better for all the parties involved. He put together the book with lots of economic analysis and comments.
I thought his book Colossus was great and I gave it 5 stars. It was brilliant and innovative. This present book is in some ways more scholarly and is really an economic-political, book but you will find it among the WW I war history books at the bookstore. So he has WW I competition and this book tilts towards the macro economic side of things. But this is still a good book with lots of comments, charts, graphs, political comments, and much food for thought. One cannot dismiss all his ideas and you can tell from reading his other books that it is a Ferguson book with his trademark graphs and economic charts, but is not the best book on the war per se.
I put together a Listmania list of World War I books and there are many popular books ranging from great to so so, from scholarly and detailed histories (Strachan) to picture books. If you want a pure war book, then the problem here is that he is going over fairly well defined ground and there are some good competing writers that are a bit more scholarly.
In any case, if you are thinking of buying a general WW I book, the best book or at least the most comprehensive books at the moment seems to be some of the books by Hew Strachan a professor at Oxford who is in the middle of publishing five books on World War I, including The First World War by Viking - which is an overview, and it is very detailed. There is a certain buzz and excitement about his new books. I think that it is probably the best single current book, but eventually it will be replaced by his three volume set, of which so far only volume I is printed.
As an alternative to the present book by Ferguson, you might want to look at David Stevenson's Cataclysm: The First World War as a Political Tragedy. Many consider that book to be the best analysis books.
So just 4 stars.
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Summary: Revisionist history by a master historian
Review: Niall Ferguson is arguably one of the best and brightest historians of his generation. As such, his _Pity of War_ is a new interpretation of one of the seminal events in the last 150 years. Rather than a formal "history" of the First World War, it is more of a collection of essays and papers on his take on the conflict. While his arguments are interesting, I am skeptical of many of his conclusions, and find some of his arguments bewlidering. Ferguson claims, for example, that Britain should have left Belgium out to dry, which would have ended the war with a unified Europe and Britain's Empire in tact. While I would argree that WWI destroyed the British Empire, it is a little disingenuous to claim that Germany would have "unified" Europe. Other arguments claim that it was not propoganda, but the "thrill of the fight" that kept the war going on for so long, that Germany was not militaristic, and that the Versailles Treaty was not harsh enough. Much of Ferguson's book flies in the face of the conventional wisdom on the First World War - and to be fair, some of his ideas do warrant further attention; however the bulk of the book seemed a far reach to the plausable.
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