“Vienna, not Berlin, was to initiate the crisis that led to war. It did so with full deliberation, but the war it had in mind was a war in the Balkans, not a war for the world.”
Aside from deciding upon the scope, I suppose one of the hardest things to do when writing a book on World War One is organizing it. Do you organize it chronologically and then jump from theater to theater, do you organize it by theater and then proceed to cover the whole war within that scope, or do you do something else? In The First World War, military historian Sir Hew Strachan takes the approach of presenting the war theater by theater, with the added inclusion of the homefront and politics.
After spending a few pages discussing the cause and outbreak of the war, Strachan jumps into the Western Front and covers the major events until about 1916, then jumps to the Eastern Front, Turkey, the oceans, Africa, the U.S. as The Great Neutral , back to the Western Front, the homefront, the U.S. entry, and the war’s end. This was a bit confusing to me because he would cover a theater up to 1917 then start back in the Autumn of 1914 in a different part of the world.
I found several aspects of the book very interesting, especially the following theaters/battles:
Now, either due to an old-age memory fault or not paying attention in class 25-30 years ago, I was shocked to learn from Strachan that Germany was pretty much 100% responsible for putting Lenin into power. I am sure Germany has deeply regretted that particular move.
Strachan does not have the gift for prose that Barbara Tuchman has but his style is readable. Overall, I enjoyed the book. The biggest criticism I have for the book is that he talks a lot, and I mean A LOT, about the British and the Germans. So much so that the book should have been called The UK and Germans in World War One.
A secondary criticism is that the images and maps in the book do not render well on the kindle. As with The Guns of August, this is more of a complaint with the kindle than the book itself, although I suspect that the editors may be at least partially culpable in this matter.
All in all, I recommend it and give it
Aside from deciding upon the scope, I suppose one of the hardest things to do when writing a book on World War One is organizing it. Do you organize it chronologically and then jump from theater to theater, do you organize it by theater and then proceed to cover the whole war within that scope, or do you do something else? In The First World War, military historian Sir Hew Strachan takes the approach of presenting the war theater by theater, with the added inclusion of the homefront and politics.
After spending a few pages discussing the cause and outbreak of the war, Strachan jumps into the Western Front and covers the major events until about 1916, then jumps to the Eastern Front, Turkey, the oceans, Africa, the U.S. as The Great Neutral , back to the Western Front, the homefront, the U.S. entry, and the war’s end. This was a bit confusing to me because he would cover a theater up to 1917 then start back in the Autumn of 1914 in a different part of the world.
I found several aspects of the book very interesting, especially the following theaters/battles:
- The Africa Theater, including the quasi-guerrilla style campaign by the Germans in East Africa,
- The Mesopotamia Theater,
- The Battle of the Falkland Islands,
- The Battle of Jutland.
Now, either due to an old-age memory fault or not paying attention in class 25-30 years ago, I was shocked to learn from Strachan that Germany was pretty much 100% responsible for putting Lenin into power. I am sure Germany has deeply regretted that particular move.
In March 1917, despite the obvious paradox and equally obvious dangers in Imperial Germany sponsoring Marxism, Arthur Zimmermann convinced the Kaiser and the army that the Bolsheviks’ leader, Lenin, who was living in exile in Switzerland, should be smuggled back into Russia. On 16 April 1917 Lenin arrived in Petrograd at the Finland station, having crossed Germany in a ‘sealed’ train. This was one revolutionary effort which reaped spectacular returns, albeit in a situation where spontaneous revolution had already occurred. On 15 July 1917 the Provisional Government in Russia collapsed, and the Bolsheviks tried to seize power in Petrograd Street fighting peaks on 17 July Kerensky took charge and Lenin went into hiding -for the moment.
Strachan does not have the gift for prose that Barbara Tuchman has but his style is readable. Overall, I enjoyed the book. The biggest criticism I have for the book is that he talks a lot, and I mean A LOT, about the British and the Germans. So much so that the book should have been called The UK and Germans in World War One.
A secondary criticism is that the images and maps in the book do not render well on the kindle. As with The Guns of August, this is more of a complaint with the kindle than the book itself, although I suspect that the editors may be at least partially culpable in this matter.
All in all, I recommend it and give it
