The Myth of the Great War : A New Military History of World War I

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Summary: Concerned with the main tactic: trench warfare
Review: World War One was a great catastrophe, destroying the lives of millions in a way that the United States might understand because the American Civil War in 1861-1865 had been a slaughter. THE MYTH OF THE GREAT WAR by John Mosier, subtitled A NEW MILITARY HISTORY OR WORLD WAR I, is promoted on the cover of the hardcover edition (2001) as HOW THE GERMANS WON THE BATTLES AND HOW THE AMERICANS SAVED THE ALLIES. At the beginning of the book, it is easy to see how forts in Belgium fell quickly under heavy artillery attacks which dropped far more high explosive shells inside their walls than any normal soldier ever expected to encounter so soon in an invasion. Plans for French attacks developed so slowly that it is easy for this book to keep repeating how much the Germans benefited by attacking first at points where they expected to be attacked. "The Argonne was a true sector of the war, never at peace, always at struggle. But the most intense part of it occurred in the summer of 1915, when in a bloody repeat of what had happened in April in Artois, a devastating German offensive ripped into a planned French offensive." (pp. 154-155).

The maps in the hardcover edition are by Robert Laurent, located within the body of the text on 12 pages. The first six maps are important for the events of 1914, first near Liege and Namur in Belgium, then from the French coast (English Channel) to Verdun and Saint-Mihiel near the German border. There must be a mistake in the date 15 June 1914 on the map on page 76, because the Germans did not have front lines just east of Ypres, Belgium, or Arras and Amiens, France, before the war started. The map of the British Sector 1915-1918 on page 230 (where Lille seems to be about 50 kilometers from Ypres or Arras, twice as far as shown by the scale of the other map) shows a Passchendaele 1917 line which is not quite in the same place. This book places much emphasis on how erroneous initial reports of military action in this area were, particularly when the French were attempting to proclaim as many victories as possible. A newspaper reporter who knew the area might be able to see many military positions outside the forests from an airplane, but no one was brave enough to attempt anything that might result in a report of information that would be considered secret by either side, and any plane counting bunches of German heavy artillery was certain to be considered a spy and shot down by a red baron. This book is mainly about the war on the ground, where most of the casualties were a result of artillery barrages. The French and British expected the Germans to lose more soldiers than they did, and Winston Churchill is praised for being one of the few authors who wrote about the number of actual casualties. Airplanes do not get mentioned until a French attack is compared with the American effort that finally succeeded years after the French failed to budge the German position. "In August 1918, when the AEF finally got the salient back, Pershing committed over 3,000 artillery pieces, 1,400 planes, 267 tanks, and 660,000 men to the offensive." (p. 145). With so many little planes buzzing over whatever was going on, it is not surprising that Americans would expect accurate reports from anyone who did not suffer too much from an earlier opinion of that war.

The Germans were good at digging in, which provided them with good protection from most attacks, but I was surprised at the use of underground explosives similar to a surreptitious attack on the Beatles in the Movie `Help.' There was a church in ruins but still held by the Germans at the highest elevation of the Vauquois butte, until the French blew it up with a twelve-ton mine on 23 March 1916, "turning the highest point into a gigantic crater. Two months later, on 4 May 1916, the Germans set off sixty tons of explosives underneath the French lines at the southeast end of the butte. The resulting crater, thirty meters deep and one hundred meters in diameter, buried 108 French soldiers from the 46th Infantry Regiment, along with an equivalent amount of the French line." (p. 138). Ultimately, of a thousand metric tons of explosives used in 520 underground detonations, the French used 664 tons in 320 explosions. (p. 139).

Having much better resources at the beginning of the war in August 1914, when it acquired the most industrial part of France, Germany was able to occupy new territories in each year of the war. "Belgium in 1914, Serbia in 1915, Rumania in 1916, Italy in 1917, and at the end of 1917, Russia as well. Whenever the Germans could throw the resources together to mount a major offensive operation in the West, it was successful." (p. 5). America was far enough away at the beginning to avoid having a large number of officers killed. When Pershing arrived in France in June 1917, he quickly called for a million men to be assembled in France by May 1918 near the German border. A great German offensive of March 1918 tried to win the war before July. The British had their troops on the front line and were quickly overrun. When American troops began to battle in June, the Marines did not have as much censorship, "So in the ensuing battle, the Marine brigade got all the publicity, even though the army brigade did just as much fighting." (p. 321). Even as the Germans retreated from territory they had gained (July through November 1918) the British were losing "over one hundred thousand men killed, while French figures came to 161,000, and American to about sixty thousand." (p. 328). Sometimes the American army is the best side to be on, even if it gets censored.