A WORLD UNDONE: Part 6 Discussion Thread

For Anna, mainly, and anyone else who is up to it.

Part Six: 1918: Last Throw of the Dice

Chapter 31 - Going for Broke
- Background: Kaiser Wilhelm II
Chapter 32 - Entangling Misalliances
- Background: Lawrence of Arabia
Chapter 33 - Michael
- Background: Ludendorff
Chapter 34 - An Impossibly Complex Game
- Background: The Women
Chapter 35 - The Black Day of the German Army
- Background: The Gardeners of Salonika
Chapter 36 - The Sign of the Defeated
Postwar: The Fate of Men and Nations

You've done a fantastic job this past month, Muse. Truly terrific work on a very difficult and complex topic that can suck happiness out of you faster than a Hoover at times, especially in light of incomprehensibly tragic events ongoing in Japan.

The end is in sight! You're almost there!

It was a long, depressing, soul sucking war so not a surprise it's a long, depressing, soul sucking book.

Chocomuse, you are a braver woman than I to lead a reading of such a book. I salute you.

Choc, I had planned to follow along a bit, though it was a tough month for me, one that turned to be even tougher than I thought, but I've peeked in enough to know that you deserve my admiration. Congrats.

I second third fourth fifth all the kudos, Rena. Glad we're on the home stretch. I'm just about caught up after my slow start.

I also followed along. Little time for anything else lately but one more week and I'll be free to study.

Thank you all so much! I didn't realise how discouraged I was until I read your kind words. I know I'm not the only one among us with battle fatigue, so thanks to everyone for keeping us all going.

Me too Choco, ditto what they all said.

One of the things that has really been puzzling me, one of the great mysteries of this war so full of them, is something I mentioned in my review of Svejk: what power is it that compelled the men to continue fighting as long as they did? What power compelled the men to go over the top into the face of certain death, in the full knowledge that the tactic of throwing men against machine guns was not working?

Graves mentions an officer who had to shoot one of his men to compel the rest of the group to go over the top during an assault. now, if I had been in that group of men, I would have shot the officer on the spot, and made a dash towards the rear.

Was that generation of men so conditioned by their class relations? were there other forces at work: patriotism, the Myth of the Good Soldier etc that compelled them? I've been trying hard to imagine myself in this situation in an attempt to understand, but I don't think I can.

I'm really interested in hearing what the other men in the group think. If it was you, what would you do?

I wouldn't have got that far. I'd shot one of the officers in training. No fuck is going to send me over the top to my certain death. Though it's 2011, isn't it. My dad dropped bombs in Europe and his brother fought bayonette style in the Pacific theatre. My uncle would have leapt into Hell's pit and my father would have gone in shortly thereafter. Different animals, entirely.

Meyer adds to the mystery:

At Verdun on May 22... The bitterness of the struggle was becoming unnatural, almost psychotic. "Even the wounded refuse to abandon the struggle," a French staff officer would recall. "As though possessed by devils, they fight on until they fall senseless from loss of blood. A surgeon in a front-line post told me that, in a redoubt at the south part of the fort, of 200 French dead, fully half had more than two wounds. Those he was able to treat seemed utterly insane. They kept shouting war cries and their eyes blazed, and, strangest of all, they appeared indifferent to pain. At one moment anesthetics ran out... Arms, even legs, were amputated without a groan, and even afterward the men seemed not to have felt the shock. They asked for a cigarette or inquired how the battle was going." p.420

Murr, I wonder if it's explainable at least for the French - it was on their home ground, their own country. Is it unrealistic of me to think that this would give them some extra mad impetus to fight no matter what?

Also, from what I've read over the years, it seems you take on an odd sort of mindset in battle, especially in 'over the top' kind of trench warfare. Everything unreal, death feels like an outcome more likely than not, and everything seems inevitable and pre-ordained.

And a different culture from today, who knows how powerful it might be on directing their minds... "ours not to reason why" etc.

I can't find it now, but somewhere I was reading gave the impression that officers were usually standing behind the line to shoot whoever ran the other way.

Por, you realise that shooting an officer in training is certain death for you anyway...

I think I would have been one of those so-called despicable people who shot themselves in the foot. Or a conscientious objector. Easy to say from my comfortable swivel chair in 2011 though.

Class dressage, military brainwashing, the psychosis of the moment... TOTA MILITARIA DELENDA EST!

Plus, men are conditioned to exist in hierarchies, to serve and obey bands, gangs, organisations. Most men just LOVE that war shit, ever notice that?

I'll say this for combat in which you can at least SEE the enemy's face, at least occasionally--those killers knew viscerally they were killers, and what they killed, unlike the high-flying bombers, or robot jockeys.

Bring back spears, arrows, knives, maces and the rest. THEN we'll talk of heroism.

men are conditioned to exist in hierarchies, to serve and obey bands, gangs, organisations

I'm not, you see, so I'm trying to understand this gulf that exists between me and other men.

Like Por, I would be useless in training. Some sergeant major shouting in my face like that is going to get his balls squeeeezed really tight.

Choco, I can understand the French: they had incentive: the Boche was on their land and that. But the BEF?

You would have been held down and tied to a cartwheel for a few days, Murr. Or shot.

#14

Yeah, you wouldn't have gotten far.

I'm trying to understand this gulf that exists between me and other men.

Simple. You're a cat. CATS WILL NOT BE HERDED.

In truth, I'm perplexed too. But I think it was a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. You were shot if you deserted, shot if you didn't. And a so-called 'courageous' death was easier to face than the death of a 'coward'. Society wasn't going to bend on the definitions thereof. Remember in Goodbye to all that when Graves visits London on leave? Society gone mad with hysterical and unrealistic patriotic frenzy. I guess we have to try to put ourselves into the times.

I think guilt and fear, added to that feeling of unreality in battle, must at least begin to explain it. Also some possibility of being wounded rather than killed, if you went ahead with it. Safer, really.

And don't forget the propaganda that they were all being fed from all elements of society. There was a giant feedback loop in operation there.

For a bit of much needed light relief: a sample of WW1 humour.

Does anyone know whether "cracking nuts for the officer's mess" had the same double entendre in 1914-17 that it has today? ;-)

Right as rain Choc. I'd a never made it out of training. I'm not going to die to fatten the wallets of characters like Richard Pearl or Dick Cheney. Not even to fight the Hun, that's someone else's watch. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. And it's pointless to wonder about what I might have done back then. I have a quick temper like my father and uncles (on both sides, unfortunately), so it is more than possible that if they were set on jumping into Hell's Pit I would be diving in right behind them. But always to fight with them and not for that draft dodging pelfer Dick Cheney and those of his kidney.

Like Emerson & Whitman: I contradict myself, while not quite as large as those two, large enough.

I'm gonna ditto Porius in #10 in every particular. Especially the 2011 bit. It's complicated, but I hope if I'd been there, I'd have had the courage to shoot myself in the foot. But I suspect I'd have cursed the officers and the Empire (whichever) and convinced myself to go over the edge anyway on behalf of my comrades, to take a single bullet meant for Tom or Etienne or Friedl. Maybe.

Men go over the top time after time for the same reason sixth and seventh graders take up the cigarette: peer pressure. You live, eat, sleep, and sometimes die with the other guys in you outfit. Your own sense of self-worth requires you go over again and again. To lack the nerve to do what everyone else in your outfit doesn't want to do but does is a shameful thing. It is better to die than to live in ignominy.

It was my goal to go home alive and, if possible, in one piece, but the thought of shirking my duty to make that happen was not an option.

Self-respect can drive a man to do things he would never do in saner times.

Does anyone else feel that large scale wars are becoming obsolete? There aren't any winners, so why fight them.

About the book:

I was thrilled to see that that a**hole Conrad, the guy who wanted so desperately to crush Serbia, lost just about every battle he was engaged in. The Austrians, it seemed, could really sit a horse well, but fight, well, not so much.

I've encountered some obvious errors of the type that drive me nuts. One place refers to Samsonov when it is obvious he is discussing Sasonov. I can understand this, but jeez, not in a published book. This is just a fast, breezy review of WWI aimed at people who know next to nothing about it. I wouldn't use it as source material for a more serious book or a paper, but it will do for the man (or woman) who just wants the basics.

Does anyone else think of Wallenstein when they read this? As I said earlier it's all the politicians. Let them fight wars if they must have them. There are plenty of politicians around. I only have one son.

Men go over the top time after time for the same reason sixth and seventh graders take up the cigarette: peer pressure. You live, eat, sleep, and sometimes die with the other guys in you outfit. Your own sense of self-worth requires you go over again and again. To lack the nerve to do what everyone else in your outfit doesn't want to do but does is a shameful thing. It is better to die than to live in ignominy.

It was my goal to go home alive and, if possible, in one piece, but the thought of shirking my duty to make that happen was not an option.

Self-respect can drive a man to do things he would never do in saner times.

Does anyone else feel that large scale wars are becoming obsolete? There aren't any winners, so why fight them.

About the book:

I was thrilled to see that that a**hole Conrad, the guy who wanted so desperately to crush Serbia, lost just about every battle he was engaged in. The Austrians, it seemed, could really sit a horse well, but fight, well, not so much.

I've encountered some obvious errors of the type that drive me nuts. One place refers to Samsonov when it is obvious he is discussing Sasonov. I can understand this, but jeez, not in a published book. This is just a fast, breezy review of WWI aimed at people who know next to nothing about it. I wouldn't use it as source material for a more serious book or a paper, but it will do for the man (or woman) who just wants the basics.

Does anyone else think of Wallenstein when they read this? As I said earlier it's all the politicians. Let them fight wars if they must have them. There are plenty of politicians around. I only have one son.

14: The BEF would do it, I imagine, to some extent, for the same reason the French would, just a little more attenuated. After all, no individual Frenchman is saving his individual home. One of the interesting topics in the Eksteins book was how, overall, despite grumbling, morale of soldiers remained at the necessary levels on all sides of the conflict. They were individually convinced of the necessity. It also seemed to have a large element of what Martin alluded to. After a certain point, you are largely doing it all for the sake of your immediate unit. Why is that such a powerful motivation? People are social animals, I guess. Not much of an answer, I suppose, but best I can do.

Die so 'rummy' can have 6 palatial homes, no thank-you. 'Ike' warned us.
The wars these days are about money and little else. Our own current tap-dantzer-in-chief 'corporal bam-vereen' is no different from the rummycheneywolfowitz boyz. Why is it that none of these guys, or precious few of them have ever carried arms? Bush2, Slick Willy, Bamvereen (he's busy at the moment filling out his brackets and packing for Rio, blame it on Rio, never sacrificed. The neo-cons are draft dodgers almost to a man. I ask you, what's it all about?
I know it's a complicated matter, but no deal on going-over-the-top for 'rummy' & co.
First taste of battle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfvCjLgbpy0
A mere scutcheon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3SxxhSpLrY

Thanks Gene, I was hoping you'd say something here, since you've actually been there.

But for your point Does anyone else feel that large scale wars are becoming obsolete?... Touch wood! But before WWI they said that war was a thing of the past, from an uncivilised world. Then after WWI, it was 'the war to end all wars'. It's true that the atomic bomb in WWII began the Cold War, which is a better state of things that so-called hot war, but even that hasn't stopped powerful nations from interfering in other nations' affairs, and hasn't stopped the Weekend Australian newspaper from talking about Australia's "allies", just this last weekend.

There aren't any winners, so why fight them. Ah, but leaders of nations are so reliably stupid.

yes, thanks everyone, but I'm still with Por on this. no deal for me. The whole notion of sacrifice, of service, stinks of the biggest bullshit.

Slick, I must have missed something somewhere. Can you give a touchstone or full reference to the Ekstein book you mentioned.

The Rites of Spring by Modris Ecksteins. A truly great study of WWI, etc.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1D9143AF930A25750C0A96F94826...

http://aproposofwetsnow.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/caught-between-two-worlds-a-rev...

http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=The_Rites_of_Spring

thank you Por. Looks excellent.

Sorry, I thought you were one of the folks that prompted me to read the Ecksteins. Now I am thinking it was Anna and Porius, and you and Anna prompted me to read the Tuchman book. Both were great. Thanks all!

Sonnet
On seeing a piece of our heavy artillery brought into action

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse.
Spend our resentment, cannon, - yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent or enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

Wilfred Owen

Incredible.

I finished reading A World Undone last night. While the broad outlines of WWI are fairly well-known, there were a number of things I read in this book that did rather surprise me. I don't think there are any spoilers here. I'd be interested in your comments and to hear about what, if anything, was a surprise to any of you.

First, I was struck by the fact that more than one person was already anticipating that if war came it would be a "world war." "World war" was being talked about as though it were a fait accompli before it even got started. After ruminating on this for a bit, I guess that shouldn't have surprised me since there were all those diplomatic and colonial entanglements which, particularly in the case of the British, pretty much involved every part of the world. Nonetheless, it got my attention.

That there were voices of reason here and there, but they were drowned out by more forceful voices and even by some who lied. And those liars were diplomats, ambassadors. This is hard to digest. You expect politicians to lie, but ambassadors to their own governments?

Considering the fact that machine guns were used so much in the war, I was surprised to read in a parenthetical remark that "From the start of the war to the end, cannon would account for most of the killing." (I'm sorry I cannot give a page reference but it was in Chapter 9.) This may be a function of my military ignorance, but if I had been asked to guess, I would have thought machine guns were the most lethal weapon.

That the German doctrine of the offensive took on cult status was actually a bit of a shock. This was discussed in "Background: The French Commanders" (Chapter 10). Again, blame my military naivete, but this policy which apparently precluded rational discussion of contrary strategies led to "fateful, almost fatal" consequences, according to Meyer. That does not surprise me. It is the cultishness that does.

That so much incompetence was tolerated was almost incomprehensible to me. But the incompetence seemed to start at the top. So many grandiose plans that seemed brilliant on paper fell apart in execution thereof, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives at each attempt. Meyer says there were 9 million dead among soldiers alone, not accounting for all the noncombatant casualties.

That the highminded talk at the beginning about returning Belgian and French occupied lands to their respective countries -- which helped the Germans justify their own aggression -- that it all went by the wayside by the winter of 1916-17, as reported in Chapter 25. By then the German generals "were insisting that Belgium must at the war's end remain a German dependency or even be absorbed in the Reich . . . . Belgium's postwar dependence on Germany . . . must be 'economic, military and political.'" We understood that Germany's invasion of Belgium and France was merely tactical at the beginning to knock the French out so Germany could concentrate on the East. But once they got bogged down on the Western front and were in a very bad humor about the whole thing, they changed their minds. Which, I suppose, was inevitable.

That the return by the Germans to an unrestricted submarine campaign not only led directly to the entry of the U.S. into the war, but indirectly resulted in the conversion of Germany into a military dictatorship under Ludendorff. The whole discussion surrounding this effective surrender by the Kaiser was fascinating (Chapter 25) in the way it all unfolded. The combination of weakness of individual personality in the case of the Kaiser, and the fact that he had been worn down in the case of Chancellor Bethman Hollweg and the irrational zeal in the case of Ludendorff just compounded the problem.

That all that expenditure in lives and materiel by all the players -- Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France and Russia, and others -- was effectively unpaid for.

"In addition to being the greatest bloodbath in the history of western Europe and the greatest in eastern Europe until the Second World War, the Great War was a process by which all the great powers, victors and vianquished alike, transformed themselves from bastions of prosperity into sinkholes of poverty and debt. Financially as in so many other ways, the war was a road to ruin." (Chapter 25 Background: Consuming the Future.)

All of these surprises aside, the money quote for me in the entire book came at the end of Chapter 26 when French Commander Nivelle was planning his Chemin des Dames offensive in the face of much opposition by "several of France's most proven commanders," a soldier named Louis Lyautey who had been out in Morocco, when he learned of Nivelle's plan, is said to have exclaimed, "This is a plan for the army of the Duchess of Gerolstein."

This could be said about the entire war effort.

not much to say here, except to add that I agree with what you say, Poquette, and to thank you for your comment.

Me too, thanks Suzanne.

Regarding the machine gun thing, my military knowledge is exceedingly low, but the cannon was what caused the explosions of those fortresses and tunnels, killing hundreds at once - and was also of course the thing that pounded in the barrages behind the lines. The machine guns simply killed the men who came 'over the top' towards the lines, and I guess that must equate to less slaughter all up. And considering all those many so-called 'battles' where men ran into machine gun fire and died on top of each other, clearly the barrages were more intense than I can really imagine.

There's a book called Deafening by Frances Itani, which probably isn't good literature, I read it a long time ago before I had any discernment in these matters. But I remember being interested in the contrast it presents, between the silent world of a deaf girl, and the unimaginable and unceasing noise of her hearing boyfriend on the Western Front.

Here's a German cannon. Apparently a railway-transported, concrete-emplaced predecessor to the Big Bertha German 420-mm howitzer, also of WWI.

Here are my thoughts on David Jones's In Parenthesis, a work I still feel troubled by.

http://www.librarything.com/work/130113/67010867

Rena, I see what you are saying. In my naivete, somehow I had thought they would be able to avoid the cannonfire easier than the machine gun fire. But I see now that this was not the case. That cannon photo is bloodcurdling. Just unimaginable . . .

Tomcat -- your review captures the horror of it all as apparently does the poem itself. I had been unaware of David Jones until this group read. Must look for this.

Suzanne, I'm not sure, but I think that the pictured cannon was probably one of the ones that destroyed the Belgian fortresses at the start of the war, with the shells that sink through thick concrete. Used more for buildings (though with people in them) than directly pointed at people. This thing is a heck of a lot bigger than the heavy artillery that Owen was talking about in #32. And I dunno, but I think both are technically 'cannons'.

Really though, I'm talking through my hat. I'm only supposing, and don't really actually have a genuine clue. And indeed bloodcurdling is the word, I simply can't imagine being at the other end of one of those things. Either end, actually.

Murr, your review is intriguing. Seems a strange choice to end the book as he did. Does anyone know what his feelings about war actually were? There's an excerpt from it in my book of WWI poetry (collected by Andrew Motion), and I found it eerie and powerful. A quiet moment in the trenches, with the sun moving down the trench wall.

So, let's have a roll call. How many of us are still going? How many are finished?

I'm still going, though as 'leader' I really shouldn't be. However, fact is, I am. Still in 1917 in fact. But I hope to finish by the end of this week, all being well.

I long ago finished reading the book, but I'm still here.

Robert

I'm done with my WW1 read, but I'm still here.

I finished the book and am hoping we will have a wrap-up discussion. So I guess that means I'm still here! ;-)

I'm still in 1915, but moving slowly. The trench warfare, which is reading a book, has reached that point where neither I, nor the book, can make a break-through.

45: I feel that way still and I am about halfway through 1918.

I'm reading intermittantly, no longer sequentially through the book, and still kicking about.

>45 geneg: & 46 - Oh, me too. I'm glad it's not just me. But I've just got through Nivelle's offensive and and taking a deep breath before Passchendaele.

If only someone would learn something! But the incompetence goes on and on and on...

Okay, so it's time for a wrap up.

Is Meyer a bit too slap-dash? Personally I don't think so - most of the glitches in information we picked up on have been cleared up; what's left is pretty minor.

Do we get the impression that anybody at the time learned anything from WWI? I guess it was the last time trench warfare was used. Otherwise, what? Seems to me people only learned resentment, a perpetuated hatred of the enemy countries, hence WWII (at least the European WWII, the Pacific war was a little different). Generals didn't appear to learn much. The world in general learned a cycnism it hadn't had before.

Were any of the leaders worth admiring? Seems to me any with potential got kicked out too soon for them to do much good.

Was the book worth reading?

Also, if you ever visit Australia, as well as seeing ME, you also should go to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It's a really excellent museum: http://www.awm.gov.au/visit/visit-mustsee-first.asp (the picture in the link is a full-scale diorama, and very effective)

>49 ChocolateMuse: yeah, seems like a depressing mess all around. Thanks for leading us through it, though! I thought the book was worth reading--it gave me a much stronger sense of the actual factual history.

A must-see movie recommendation: Stanley Kubrick's Paths of glory! Murr--you especially, as we had the same gut reaction to the martial law executions--have you seen it? MUST.

WWI, set in the French army (I suppose in 1957 it wouldn't have done to insult the Brits), FANTASTIC screenplay, tight, heart-stopping plot. This is the first time I thought "okay, so Kubrick really was a genius".

OK, I'm going to be more of a (though not a total) nay-sayer about Meyer. I think you've got to think of Meyer as being as much about views on history as the history itself to make him truly worthwhile - a sort of Orientalist analysis - and that you need enough grounding in the period to avoid getting taken in by some of his simplications. Murr's co-reading was really very helpful to me in following this. He has a narrative that very much focuses on the western front and the various major and particularly European capitals (other than Istanbul). He is more comfortable and thus better as you get closer to London.

What doesn't he give us: useful insight into the class and social tensions and the imperial and colonial tensions that preceded the war and real insight into some of the changes in technology and society that made the war so distinct. He also doesn't give us what I was most hoping for from him - a good narrative of the war's other fronts. He too easily explains things as a muddle and a mess without try to look at the reason it was a muddle and a mess. I confess - I view the Great War as the logical outcome of the really horrid 19th century western european class and social systems and worldviews - in my view, Jane Austen and Rudyard Kipling point in a straight, unbroken line to trench warfare and gas attacks. (If any European worldview was going to prevent that warfare, it would have been the wildly different views in Dickens or maybe, just maybe, Dusty).

Yes, worth reading, in part because he focuses a bunch of other stuff for me, but not something I'd recommend as a first book on the Great War. The threads here were on many occasions, though, two cuts above Meyer for being interesting and bringing together additional insight, and thanks to you, Muse, and to everyone posting, for that. That was truly worthwhile.

I had a professor who described WWI and WWII as the same war, separated by enough time to re-populate Europe and its armies. The real end of the war came in 1945.

I could not agree with Lola more about Kubrick's Paths of Glory. One of, if not the best, roles Kirk Douglas ever had.

I'm Sparticus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8h_v_our_Q

54: That is exactly what Chris says about the two world wars.

>53 A_musing: Now that you say it, A_musing, I agree. Disappointing about the Western Front focus.

The Background sections were on the whole very helpful, interesting and relevant, but since the mess you revealed that he made of the Ottomans, I found myself reading the other Backgrounds wondering how much was really accurate.

Still, as an overview and introduction, I think the book is great.

Some quibbles: almost nothing about Palestine, the Desert War and the Camel Corps; only a Background on Lawrence of Arabia.

Not nearly enough maps.

Personally, I would have appreciated more about the women and the home front; also the medical side of the war. But that's a quibble, since he's chosen to focus mainly on battle and politics, which is fine.

He's not technically a scholar, he says as much in his introduction. So as 'narrative history' we can only expect some opinions to come through.

I also valued Murr's reading of Keegan in parallel. I found it very helpful.

Oh and Sam, I can see Kipling, but why Jane Austen? Is it the rigid class structure, and the acceptance of priviliged and squalid lives as the natural order of things? I'm not sure how that leads directly to the war, which to my mind was largely caused by a military and political desire for power and land-grabbing, which Lord of the Flies tells us doesn't have to come from any sort of society at all.

We ought to keep in mind who Meyer was writing for. It seems as though this has been said before, but the book was undoubtedly aimed at readers who have little or no background about history in general much less the war itself.

Also it has been stated before that Meyer's background is in English literature and journalism. So unlike Keegan, for instance, he is neither a historian nor a scholar.

Taking all that into consideration, I think he did a very good job of providing the broad outlines. He presented enough background material to whet the appetite of anyone who wants to delve further into the war which, after all, was fought on many and varied fronts. There is no way everything could have been covered adequately to absolutely everyone's satisfaction in an 800-page book. It would probably take what -- eight, ten, a hundred volumes to do a complete and thorough history of the war?

But my point here is less to defend Meyer than to say that it may be unfair to point out flaws or omissions that were beyond the intended scope of his book.

If one wants to read a deeper analysis, there is Hew Strachan's three volumes. Heck, if you look at the bibliography at the end of Keegan, he has half a dozen general surveys listed. But then the broader list is broken down among a whole variety of subcategories -- Origins, War Plans, Conduct of the War, Armed Forces, Battles and Campaigns, Politics and Economics, Culture and Society and Biography. There is deeper coverage available if one wants to go there. But I believe it is doubtful that the average reader for whom Meyers was writing would bother.

It is apparent that this group is not average in any sense. Personally, if I were to switch gears from my present proccupations and dive into the Great War with a vengeance, Meyer would be a great place to start building an outline, or to develop one's own timeline (which is something I have a propensity to do). I found his book to be well organized, well written, and its chronological approach makes it relatively easy to follow the broad outlines of the conflict.

In sum, despite the inadequacies -- and I agree about the dearth of maps -- I'm glad I read this book, and I very much appreciate all your different perspectives. It's all been very worthwhile.

You see, I worry that Meyer will simply reinforce unquestioned ways of thinking and so is worst when treated as an introduction. Better to get an introduction that jars one out of your way of thinking a bit - say, some of Katzantzakis' novels set in the period, focused on the dislocations of Greeks from the old Ottoman empire rather than those trenches in the West that most French, German and Anglos obsess over, or some of the poetry Murr has so kindly given us.

As to Austin, and what her role is in reflecting the worldview that leads to the war: perhaps more than any other English novelist in the 19th century, her works are focused on class and its privileges. I think that worldview that focuses on rank and power of the elite as what is important is a central cause of the war among the great powers. All those men making silly decisions causing other people to die are, to no small degree, characters from Austin's books.

All of that may be true, but whether treatment of the war is approached from the point of view of grunt soldier or elite leadership, the outcome remains the same. Fiction, as you point out, and individual biography are excellent sources of the real world impact on a personal level. But fiction is not history. History tries to be rigorous in its approach. Fiction is not bound by the same rules and can inflame the emotions at will with impunity. History written according to that approach is not reliable.

Meyer's reportage "reinforces unquestioned ways of thinking"? That is not my impression. It is through his very reportage that we are all sickened by what transpired. He was indirectly questioning on every page by simply pointing out the facts. Nevermind that he got a few facts wrong. But the general thrust remains the same. The carnage and brutality are the very point of reporting what happened.

Conduct of the war was in the hands of the elite; ergo, the story of decision-making and the direction the war took was about leadership. The effects of the war were very definitely felt by anyone who came into contact with those leaders. I won't disagree with any criticism of them.

As for Jane Austen, she was as much a victim of the class system that oppressed the lower elements of society as anyone else. In a subtle way, her novels expose the rigidities and ossification of the class system. She was obviously oppressed in many ways herself and was making an effort in her small way to break out of the mold. So perhaps it is not fair to treat her as representative of even her middle class status. She was certainly not an aristocrat, although she had aristocratic relations. So she may not be the best example of a forerunner of the endless wars conducted exclusively by elite men.

The dislocations of great masses of people occurred almost everywhere there was any fighting. The Greeks were not the only victims. Talk to the Poles, the Chechins and the Armenians (not to mention the Belgians and even the French). As horrific as those genocides and dislocations were, they were unfortunate sideshows of the main conflict and certainly deserve their own historical accounts.

Be grateful that many younger people who are, I understand, exposed less and less to history in school and who previously had no idea of the enormity of the Great War, by reading Meyer's book, may have received the shock of horror that was apparent to me, at least, throughout his narrative. But of course, I have been preconditioned by other reading -- for instance Tuchman's Proud Tower and The Guns of August. I understand that Tuchman is not much appreciated by the history elites, but I cannot erase from my mind her account of the horrors of Liege and Louvain.

But as far as the trench warfare goes in itself, what's left to question? If that is one's focus, yes, it's a cliche, but it'd be just as bad to leave that out as anything else, if not worse. Thus, as an introduction to trench warfare, the Meyer is good? If you think not, please, say on.

The Katzantzakis novels sound interesting...

I like your point re Austen.

Suzanne, I tend to agree. It consolidated things for me that I didn't know enough about. I've heard about Passchaendaele and Flanders all my life, for eg, but never had locked them in to place and time. Connecting generals to armies, and armies to battles, and battles to outcomes. The basics. I thought it was good for that. However, like you say, this group isn't average, and would probably have benifited more from something deeper, broader, more about questioning than simply informing.

ETA: Suzanne and I cross-posted.

Re: trench warfare, in all its inglory, yes, this is Meyer's strong point, and I would say, putting it in perspective. Unfortunately, if you go back to his intro, that wasn't the book he wanted to write! He wanted to cover the war in all its aspects. I would say that Meyer's perspective on English and French participants is also strong.

My fundamental problem really is the distance-from-London problem I spent some time talking about early on. To hear Meyer tell it, the Ottomans are pretty much lunatic (he uses a half dozen explicit synonyms of the word) easterners behaving irrationally, and the Serbs are more than a brick shy of a load. I would posit, though, that the Serbs may be the single most rational actors he depicts, if you look at their actions rather than his characterizations. It is these unquestioned ways of thinking that he's just WAY off on and can do damage. As to fiction, I'd posit that from the perspective of the Balkans and Greece, there is more fiction in Meyer than in Katzantzakis!

By the way, we've got to read some Katzantzakis in here sometime! I've read only the "lesser" works and would say he is the lone 20th century figure I'd put forward as capable of wearing the holy mantle of Dostoeyevsky. I really need to get to one of his two biggies, The Last Temptation of Christ and The Odyssey: a Modern Sequel.

I want to throw out a separate question: what do people think was the biggest impact of the Great War, not just from Meyer but in general.

While I'm sure many a Russian would take offense, I'd have to say it is the incredible Islamification of the Middle East following the war (and some of the extensions of the war, as in Greece). Between the Balfour Declaration and broader policies of other powers accelerating the process of really concentrating Jewish populations from all over the Middle East and North Africa, the departure of Greeks from Turkey in particular but also other parts of the MENA region back to Greece, the concentration of Turks in Turkey proper, and smaller exoduses to the Slavic countries, including Russia, I'd argue that WWI represented a discontinuity in that region's history that changed some fundamental dynamics in those societies. It would take decades for that process to complete, but without WWI it might have been inconsequential. The powers managed to make the MENA societies more fundamentally Islamic than more than a millenium of Islamic polities had done.

On the other hand, the Western front was just a replay of battles that had been raging since before the introduction of the longbow to the French at Agincourt. There was nothing historically discontinuous about it.

I would say that the biggest impact of WWI was WWII. When you read about the machinations of the peace negotiations and the way the Treaty of Paris got implemented, WWII became inevitable. It was only after WWII and the implementation of the Marshall Plan that Western Europe began the long road away from convening yet another war to settle scores among themselves. Compare the ends of both wars, and there is no comparison.

Is it too simplistic to say that I think it was the beginning of modern society, at least in the West? Breakdown of class system, focus on realism in art, beginning of big technology in science, and the development of the aeroplane to a much bigger extent than it would have without the war. Also began the inevitable round of the century - Great Depression, then WWII as Suzanne says... almost every political, military and economic fluctuation in the participating countries could probably be traced back to WWI. The world would look so different today, one can't help but wonder...

I don't have your understanding of the Middle Eastern side of it, Sam, so I couldn't say if that was a bigger impact.

Don't forget the Russian Revolution, which was given impetus by Tsarist incompetency during the war.

Woo hoo! I finished this book this a.m. Back to the library it goes (I had to renew it twice to finish it).

I think the biggest thing to come out of WWI was WWII, the Russian Revolution certainly a close second. I am not so sure about the Middle East impact. Not sure if some of it would have happened with or without WWI - the Ottoman Empire was anyhow known to be so weak that the Western powers had been eyeing its outlying places for a long time (and taking some of them temporarily - e.g., the Italians in Libya). My Middle East knowledge is mostly about Egypt, which was largely independent from the Ottoman Empire since the Mamelukes.

Amiens after the war: http://vintageobscura.com/2010/vintage/sept-10/6a23362u-amiens.jpg

Aftermath

Otto Dix, Wounded soldier, 1924
(warning, I find this disturbing)

http://www.artexpertswebsite.ca/pages/artists/artists_a-k/dix/Dix_WoundedSoldier...

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
- In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.

There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. He wonders why...
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.

That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.

Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Wilfred Owen

From Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case ..

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later ...

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor" ..

walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V.

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

Ezra Pound

The rest of it here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hugh-selwyn-mauberly-part-i/

>73 ChocolateMuse: wow. :(

Phallic symbols, anyone?

>71 ChocolateMuse: Yes, Dix has that effect, doesn't he? For those in NYC this summer, the Neue Galerie in New York will have "the first large-scale American exhibition" of Dix, one that will include that particular picture, which is one of fifty etchings on WWI Dix called simply "Der Krieg." I last saw his work in person in an exhibition on German Expressionism at the L.A. County Art Museum back in the 80s. Quite something.

There's a slide show here: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jul/20/slide-show-otto-dix/

#76

Oh yes. Reminds me of a scabrous expression in Croatian (and Serbian etc.), "to give (her) a bullet", and the metaphorical "to shoot a bullet", meaning "to screw (her)", "to fuck" etc.

73> I'll second Smartini's "Wow". Transcends war, it do, that poem.

>74 ChocolateMuse: Rena

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.

How did they ever manage to come back from this?

I should have labelled #72 "Clichés".

(more later)

I saw a fabulous Otto Dix exhibition in London years ago. Another artist of the same time and calibre is George Grosz:

Today I was on the bus listening to three teenage girls arguing over joining the military. One was angry at another for saying she "wanted to kill" some friend for saying he wanted to join - she kept saying "It's his choice!" and I wanted to shake her. But I kept minding my own business.

Thank you all for your input in this group read. I for one enjoyed it very much indeed.

I've been saving this one up for very last:

A Lament
We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings—
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

Wilfrid Gibson

Rena, I almost hate to break the spell of this very fitting epitaph, but want to acknowledge you for leading this challenging group read. You did a wonderful job with a difficult subject. Many thanks for helping us to stay with it!

Well said, Poquette; I agree completely.

me too. Well done Choco.

Guys! I went looking for a suitable end-credits song and look what I found!

http://www.besmark.com/ww1b.html

Well, my plan to dump most of my LT groups seems to be working. I finally had the time to do some serious reading (not serious, but a lot) and finished this a few minutes ago.

I enjoyed reading it. Read it, as I do most non-fiction, in a far less critical mode than with some fiction. I enjoyed it. I liked the background chapters. I thought 1918 was given fairly short shrift in the overall, too much time spent up front hurling millions of troops at the wall and watching them slide down, not enough time addressing the American role. It was a good survey of the subject, written for the average eighth grader.

My hero, not because he was any good, at least in this war, was Wully Robertson. The reason is summed up in this short sentence, "To this day he remains the only Englishman ever to rise from private soldier to Field-Marshall...". That must have been a spectacular feat, given British society at the time.

My 16 year old boy went to the Ypres last week with school. I said to him in the car matter of factly: Check the ages on the graves.
When he came back later that evening, I asked him "and ? ". Quite a few were my age he said, some were even younger...

Muse, it must have warmed the cockles of your heart to find that the only allied general Meyer seems to admire and suggest that compared to the others the guy was a genius, I think Meyer even refers to him as a genius, was the Australian John Monash. How do people feel about him now, and is there any light you might be able to shed on his political problems at home?

Gene, it does - as does the battle of Villers-Bretonneaux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villers-Bretonneux .

I'd say a lot of man-on-the-street people don't know who Monash was now, except that there's a Monash University, and many other Monash things here and there. But to anyone with any real interest in Australian military history, he was a man to be proud of.

BTW, back to Villers-Bretonneaux, here's a little quote from the linked Wikipedia page that warms the cockles of my heart:

"The school in Villers-Bretonneux was rebuilt using donations from school children of Victoria, Australia (many of whom had relatives perish in the town's liberation), and above every blackboard is the inscription "N'oublions jamais l'Australie" (Never forget Australia)".

I didn't know whether to post this here or in Porius' obituary thread. I chose here because it's about an Australian and thought it fitting to post it in Muse's threads on WWI.

The last surviving combatant of WWI died this past Thursday. His name was Claude Choules and he served with the Royal Navy in WWI. He was born March 3, 1901 in England. After the war he met and married an Australian and moved to Australia where he joined the Australian Navy.

There is, apparently, one more "last" survivor of the War to End All Wars, a woman who was a non-combatant, Florence Green, who served as a waitress in the Royal Air Force. She turned 110 this past February.

Wow! I remember my grandfather's stories of marching into Jerusalem with Allenby and some of my great uncles' stories about the trenches in Europe. Just WOW!

I was in High School when the last American Civil War Veteran died. What was that old Roman saying "Tempus Fugit. Well, fug it.

Wow indeed. I have the very vaguest memories of an ANZAC march when I was a child, still with a respectable number of aged WW1 veterans in it. Yes, it probably was about 20 years ago, so pretty similar to the turnout of WWII veterans nowadays.

A 1914 view of the war from J. C. Powys: The War and Culture. I am about a third of the way through. Good reading. It is more interesting for not being hindsight.

In the short story anthology some in the Salon have been reading, I discovered Jozef Wittlin's nicely told Salt of the Earth. On the back of the copy I obtained, I find it was printed as part of a series of "Great Novels and Memoirs of World War I". The other entries at the time of publication (1970) were:
The Memoirs of George Sherston
Sagittarius Rising
Sardinian Brigade
Two Prisoners and
The Case of Sergeant Grischa.

95: Thanks for updating the thread with these resources!