The First World War: A Complete History

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic overview
Review: Gilbert's one-volume account of World War I is replete with the high level content expected in a single-volume history. This text discusses various root causes of WWI, all major battles and the socio-political atmosphere of all combatant nations, both during and after their participation in the war.

Gilbert does not stay strictly with an overview perspective, but rather puncuates key moments, whether they be policy enactments or key seconds in a fierce battle, with eye-witness accounts. These hands-on perspectives serve to move the point of the text from a mere history lesson to a cautionary tale of poignant significance.

This text is a fantastic start for anyone interested in studying the basics of WWI. It does not contain the minute details of other, more advanced works, but it more than adequately portrays WWI as both a stirring tale of war and a glaring condemnation of its brutality.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic overview
Review: Gilbert's one-volume account of World War I is replete with the high level content expected in a single-volume history. This text discusses various root causes of WWI, all major battles and the socio-political atmosphere of all combatant nations, both during and after their participation in the war.

Gilbert does not stay strictly with an overview perspective, but rather puncuates key moments, whether they be policy enactments or key seconds in a fierce battle, with eye-witness accounts. These hands-on perspectives serve to move the point of the text from a mere history lesson to a cautionary tale of poignant significance.

This text is a fantastic start for anyone interested in studying the basics of WWI. It does not contain the minute details of other, more advanced works, but it more than adequately portrays WWI as both a stirring tale of war and a glaring condemnation of its brutality.

Rating:
Summary: A Readable Account of World War I
Review: I approached Martin Gilbert's work, The First World War, with a somewhat cynical attitude, being unconvinced that a historian could write a readable, yet detailed account of World War I. Gilbert succeeded in producing a work that is both readable and riddled with an abundance of vital information. Considering the fact that this conflict was essentially a trench war and void of the prominent historical figures of World War II, this is a major accomplishment.
I have always been a diligent student of World War II, Nazi Germany, and the formative years of the Soviet Union. This book was my first soujourn into the First World War. Gilbert does a credible job in tying in historical persons, places, and events between both conflicts. I concluded this book believing strongly that a responsible study of World War II was impossible without a strong foundational examination of both this conflict and the subsequent Versailles Treaty.
Gilbert's book reads as much like a novel as it does a history. He chooses to focus much more on the political and social machinations of the war as opposed to detailed battle and/or military strategies. He infuses his historical account with countless examples of poetry generated from the conflict. His attempt to portray the humanity and suffering of the war, at times, became somewhat overbearing.
I strongly recommend this book as a well-rounded study of the First World War. This volume contains a wealth of vital information concerning both World War I and provides an academic foundation of the root political and military causes of World War II.

Rating:
Summary: MORE THAN HE COULD CHEW - maybe
Review: I gave this one five stars simply for the effort the author gave. To try to cover such a complex subject, so far reaching, in just one volume...well...you have to at least admire Gilbert for that. That being said, I did feel that the book did indeed give a great overview, lacking in some areas though it may be. Hopefully, the young student, after reading it, will be inspired to continue reading about this pivotal point in our history. This war, which was actually never finished until it's second half, WWII, changed the face of the world is so very man ways. We need to study it and learn. So much of what we are today, was created during that epic. Again, I thought the author probably tried to bite off more than he could chew here, but it is well worth the read and probably should go into your collection. Very much recommend.

Rating:
Summary: An Apologist's Tale of WWI
Review: I was extremely disappointed with Martin Gilbert's The First World War: A Complete History. Gilbert gives very short shrift to the Central Power's perspective. Gilbert painstakingly documents every instance of German excess in Belgium while ignoring the effect of the Allied Blockade, resulting in the "Turnip Winter" of 1917. While it is important to document the savage brutality of trench warfare, the British war poets quoted by Gilbert cannot claim to speak for the majority of combatants on either side. This work falls quite short of being the complete history of WWI.

Rating:
Summary: A Superb Overview of the "War to end all Wars"!
Review: Sir Martin Gilbert, a British historian who rose to fame and fortune as the official biographer of Winston Churchill, outdoes himself with "The First World War: A Complete History". Although some posters on this board have complained that Gilbert hasn't really written a "complete" history of that great conflict, I believe that Gilbert's meaning needs to be put into perspective. It IS true that Gilbert has not written an in-depth, "complete" MILITARY history of the war. Those who are seeking an in-depth analysis of the battles, strategies and tactics used by First World War commanders should look to other works, such as those of John Keegan, for fuller insights. However, Gilbert does offer a "complete" view of the war in ALL of its terrible aspects, not only the military scene, but also how the war changed the politics, national boundaries, culture and society, technology, and economies of the nations involved in the struggle. For a general reader or history buff who hasn't read much about the First World War, then Gilbert's book is simply the best that's been done. As Gilbert points out, the First World War had a greater impact on Europe and the world than the Second World War in many ways. So many of our current methods and machines of warfare - submarines, fighter planes, tanks, flamethrowers, poison gas and the rapid-fire machine gun - were all invented during the war. The First World War also witnessed warfare against innocent civilians on a then-unimagined scale. The Germans sank passenger ships (such as the Lusitania) with submarines - killing innocent men, women and children with little or no warning. Both sides carried out aerial bombardment of cities and towns, with little or no regard to the safety of the civilians below. Where this book especially shines is in Gilbert's ability to show the tremendous suffering of the soldiers in the trenches, men who often lived like (and with) rats in miserable manmade caves while under constant enemy bombardment and machine-gun (and poison gas) fire. Gilbert really brings home the senseless slaughter (there is no other way to describe it) of an entire generation of young European men. And, of course, the war changed Europe forever. Three great royal families were overthrown - the Romanovs in Russia, which led to the Communist takeover and the rise of the Soviet Union, with all that foretold for future world events (such as the Cold War between the Soviets and the USA); the arrogant Hohenzollern family in Germany, which led to chaos in the German government that didn't truly end until a hate-filled Austrian who had fought as a corporal in the German Army - Adolf Hitler - became dictator in 1932; and the Hapsburg family in Austria, who had been players in European politics since the Middle Ages, but whose empire broke up after the war, creating the Eastern European nations we have today. Franklin D. Roosevelt gained invaluable military and government experience during the First World War as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to President Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill nearly saw his political career destroyed when he was forced to take the blame for the disastrous invasion of Turkey (a German ally) in 1915. The invasion was his idea, but its failure wasn't - but Churchill was nevertheless forced to resign as the head of the British Navy, and not until after the war ended did he begin his long political comeback.If this book has any flaw it is that Gilbert clearly favors the British and French against the Germans, who are seen as the "villains" of the book. Historians tend to disagree about Germany's actions during the First World War - some believe the Germans were the "villains" of the war, others believe that every major European nation shares some of the blame for the conflict. However, the bias is not so strong that it seriously affects the book, and for anyone who is interested in getting a "complete" and wide-ranging overview of the "War to end all Wars" - militarily, politically, socially, culturally, and economically - then Martin Gilbert has written the best one-volume book to date.

Rating:
Summary: Reading Blind!
Review: The book's value is severly compromised by the lack of maps. It is impossible to follow the progress of the war and to understand exactly what is going on. I was so frustrated that I had to pull out an atlas and try to pinpoint the areas that the author was refering to. In the end I just gave up and the book has been gathering dust in my library ever since.

Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Book on the Tragedy of WWI
Review: This book is difficult to rate numerically. Many people will rate it on what it isn't, not on what it is.

Unfortunately, it isn't what its title says; it isn't a complete book on WWI. The book is dominated by a British view. The Prime Minister of France at the beginning of the war is mentioned only once, while Churchill is discussed often. It avoids discussion of strategy or military issues. There is no critical discussions of generals, their abilities, systems, or anything approaching these tasks.

Conversely, it is a BRILLIANT book for what it is. While there are no discussions of whether the German systems were better than British ones, Gilbert does describe the new army, recruits, and their lack of experience. Gilbert describes what happens without commentary.

The brilliance comes through when you see the book as a description of the totality and horror of the war. This totality and horror is reported so objectively and repeatedly that it becomes overwhelming. The book sparkles as it discusses the massacre of the Armenians, the forced march of British prisoners taken at Kut, the Serbian and Montenegran retreats, the plight of Belgian civilians. It discusses the life of the soldiers in the trenches, the horrors of poison gas, trenchfoot, living in the hell there. People blown up left and right, shot by machine guns. Although 'only' 600 pages, its continual description of tragedy seems perpetual.

And Gilbert reminds us how the later generations were affected by the war, again, merely by mentioning what they wrote about the war and what they did in it. For instance, DeGaulle meeting Tukhachevsky in a POW camp, Hitler's letters to his landlord, and Mussolini's experience, how Ben-Gurion was willing to help the Turks but got turned down. There are legions of such examples, and the death of poets and the loss of brillaint men is always at hand.

A book really devoted to a total history of WWI would not emphasize the death of poets of the march of the captured soldiers at Kut relative to politics, strategy, and the like.

So, numerical ratings fail. As a book on the complete history of WWI, I cannot recommend it. As a book to talk about what WWI was and what it meant, I strongly recommend it.



Rating:
Summary: Off-target and slip-shod
Review: This is an ambitious attempt to tell the history of World War One in a single volume. Given the length and complexity of the War, I suppose that any historian writing about it as a whole has to be selective in which parts of the War are to have more attention than others: quite simply, there is not enough space to cover everything in equal depth.

Martin Gilbert's book is no different, but I found that my main problem with it was that his selection appeared strange - true, it is a very Anglocentric account, but to neglect the French contribution as much as he does perplexed me. Given the space limitations of the one-volume general history, why was so much space was given to poetry? Indeed, Gilbert seemed addicted to it. There was so little about the effect of the war on the various home fronts (apart from airship raids), and listing the number of casualties. Poets weren't the only ones who died. Also irritating was Gilbert's propensity to tell of the experiences of people who only became notable during World War Two.

At times, I felt that the size of the task he set himself daunted Gilbert. Sections are little more than lists of battles and numbers of casualties - context and analysis being dispensed with. The production values (at least in the edition I was reading) were frequently poor: a dismembered part of a paragraph appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the text on one page.

The editing and proof reading left a lot to be desired too. A sentence like the following should have been tidied up prior to print:

"On May 17, in Prague, a provocatively named Conference of the Suppressed Nations of Austria-Hungary was held in Prague."

At one point Chancellor Kohl of West Germany is named "President Kohl".

Given the money I'd parted with, I expected better.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: A VERY COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF WORLD WAR I
Review: This is an excellent book to read after reading Robert K. Massie's "Dreadnought, Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War" which seems to just stop after England declares war on Germany in August 1914.

Gilbert gives us a brief introduction to the war (not as good an introduction as Massie's, but adequate), and covers the various campaigns of the war in detail, enough so that the reader has a very good understanding of the different forces affecting those soldiers at war and those civilians and politicians back home.

The author keeps the war on a "personal" level, treating us to mini-biographies of some of the players, and then, pages later, describing how they were killed. Apparently there were quite a few poets in the English army since every now and then, Gilbert quotes from them, especially the ones who get killed. And there are many of them, since this is mostly deadly trench warefare.

Gilbert keeps to realistic detail which helps us read his book not as a history but an account of the war and those who fought it and what they actually went through. For this and for the fact that he keeps the reader alerted to the overall military and political "big picture" I have to give him five stars.

The book is a complete and interesting picture of the war for the general reader. I enjoyed reading it and felt I now have a better understanding of how European life and attitudes were so diferent back then, and how the boundaries of Europe had to end up where they are today.