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Victory 1918 by Alan Warwick Palmer
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Victory 1918 (original 1998; edition 2001)

by Alan Warwick Palmer

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963280,533 (3.69)1
Drawing on cabinet papers, memoirs, official histories and diaries to look at the war from the top, this book examines the background to the Allied triumph and its aftermath. The author also uses letters and reminiscences from officers and men to heighten the drama of neglected campaigns with almost forgotten incidents: prowling wolves around British bivoacs in the Vardar blizzard; weary troops marhcing towards Baghdad, to sleep where they halted; the cooks who declined the surrender of Jerusalem; and sandbags stuffed with seaweed in order to protect the treasures of Venice.… (more)
Member:nbmars
Title:Victory 1918
Authors:Alan Warwick Palmer
Info:Grove Press (2001), Paperback
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:non-fiction, war, history, wwi

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Victory 1918 by Alan Warwick Palmer (1998)

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Good book. ( )
  Lewis.Noles | Mar 23, 2024 |
In contradistinction to many other histories of World War I, historian Alan Palmer shifts the focus away from the Western Front. Other fields of battle became more salient as the war wound to its conclusion, and he explains why that was so.

At this late date in the 21st Century, most Americans who know anything at all about World War I think of it as an almost unremitting, awful four-year slugging match fought from the trenches on the Western Front in Northern France until the Americans came along and forced Germany to (almost) surrender. [The war was primarily fought between the “Central Powers” (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) and the “Allies” (France, Russia and Britain). Other countries joined one side or another as the war progressed, with Italy joining both at one time or another.]

Indeed, if you look only at the number of troops employed, killed, injured, or missing in action, that isn’t such a bad summary even though it omits a rather large portion of the war that took place between Germany and Russia (that Germany won) on the Eastern Front.

One wonders how the commanders and the politicians of the contending armies could have continued to send literally millions of troops to their death in battles that advanced the front lines no more than 10 miles, and usually a lot less, from their starting point. In fact, as Palmer reports, several leaders attempted to break the stalemate of the Western Front trenches by starting invasions elsewhere. The first such effort by the British was the assault on Constantinople that became know as the Battle of Gallipoli, which ended in disaster for the Allied invaders.

Britain’s Prime Minister during the last part of the war, David Lloyd George, thought the way to defeat Germany was “by knocking away the props,” i.e. defeating Germany’s allies and invading Europe from the south and east. In Alan Palmer’s recounting of the war, that is close to what occurred. It is true that at the very end of the war, the Allies had assembled three rather large armies, in Iraq, Salonica, and northern Italy, that were poised to invade Germany from its lightly defended south and east. Nevertheless, it cannot be gainsaid that Germany’s losses in manpower and equipment on the Western Front, along with the arrival of more than one million Americans, were probably more of a factor in its decision to seek an unfavorable armistice.

Palmer does not actually conclude that the war was won on the Eastern and Southern Fronts. It’s just that he seems more interested in those campaigns than in the hecatomb on the Western Front. And who can blame him? Armies actually moved about in the Middle East, and in the East, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were decisively defeated. Besides, a lot less has been written about those theaters.

Evaluation: Palmer is a vivid writer who brings the events of the war to life. His accounts of the last weeks of the war on all fronts and the negotiations of the “peace” are masterful. This book might not make a good introduction to World War I literature because it pays somewhat scant attention to the most significant theater of the war. However, it is a very good addition to the voluminous literature of the war for those of us who have read a substantial amount about it already.

Note: Maps and photos are included in the hardcover version of the book.

(JAB) ( )
  nbmars | Aug 15, 2018 |
Palmer focuses on events occurring away from the Western Front, where there is plenty of other action happening too. Instead he writes about the front in Greece, Italy, the Balkans and in the Middle East. His view is that enough pressure was brought to bear in other vulnerable locations that Germany was forced to commit resources it could not afford and consequently forced a collapse in France. An interesting read. ( )
  ksmyth | Oct 29, 2005 |
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To the memory of my parents, Warwick Lindley Palmer, 1885-1970 / Edith Mary Palmer, 1886-1954
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The First World War determined the political and social character of the twentieth century.
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Drawing on cabinet papers, memoirs, official histories and diaries to look at the war from the top, this book examines the background to the Allied triumph and its aftermath. The author also uses letters and reminiscences from officers and men to heighten the drama of neglected campaigns with almost forgotten incidents: prowling wolves around British bivoacs in the Vardar blizzard; weary troops marhcing towards Baghdad, to sleep where they halted; the cooks who declined the surrender of Jerusalem; and sandbags stuffed with seaweed in order to protect the treasures of Venice.

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