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The First World War by John Keegan
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The First World War (original 1998; edition 1998)

by John Keegan

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3,213424,110 (3.85)65
The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation. Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent. But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable." By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.… (more)
Member:carlsefni
Title:The First World War
Authors:John Keegan
Info:Hutchinson (1998), Hardcover, 511 pages
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The First World War by John Keegan (1998)

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» See also 65 mentions

English (34)  Dutch (3)  Swedish (2)  French (2)  All languages (41)
Showing 1-5 of 34 (next | show all)
It is difficult to put together a single volume history of the First World War but this is one of the good ones that I can recommend to someone just wanting to get into the subject. ( )
  everettroberts | Oct 20, 2023 |
You need maps if you are going to read this. You REALLY need maps. ( )
  CMDoherty | Oct 3, 2023 |
This is actually my third time reading this audio book. I read it for the second time more than a year ago. As many times as I have listened to Simon Preble read this book now, I still feel that there is too much detailed information for me to get as much out of listening to this book as I might get from eyeballing the text. But it is not only the amount of information that gets to me so much as the weight of it in terms of the amount of material, the vastness of the regions involved and the staggering loss of life. Countries lost ten, thirteen, or seventeen percent of their young men. These casualties numbered in the millions for some nations. Where they numbered in the hundreds of thousands, it is only because these were small countries to begin with or, as in the case of the Turks, because they just never kept good count of their losses.

The author's description of the war as tragic and unnecessary is brought home by his description of the steps that led to it. Austria and Russia share equal blame for being slaves to treaties that they could have ignored. Competing factions in Germany either wanted war or wanted to avoid it; if only cooler heads had won the day. But they did not. And so, the Schlieffen plan--a military plan designed by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, a field marshal who died a year before the war began, was brought out and handed to Helmuth von Moltke, the son of his namesake who had conquered France for Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and incidentally for the first Kaiser Wilhelm, back in 1870, but Moltke the Younger was not his father and he changed Schlieffen's plan in ways that put the brunt of his attack into what Schlieffen had intended as a feint, while turning the part of the attack that was supposed to be the main thrust into a feint. Keegan acknowledges this at one point, but mainly seems to think that the plan was poor to begin with. Schlieffen himself, says Keegan, thought that the material logistics required to make his plan work could not be satisfactorily organized and coordinated.

The massive technology brought to bear by each side on the other was monumental. Two kinds of gas warfare were developed and used. Huge guns with distant ranges, heavy machine guns, the first use of tank warfare, all merged together in the First World War, but communications were still backward and the generals often had no way of coordinating attacks except with the low tech expediant of having soldiers run from one position to another carrying handwritten messages. (This was the job of Cpl. Adolf Hitler who is mentioned once in passing when describing his Bavarian unit's engagement near Ypres.)

But 1914 is rightly considered the end of the "long 19th century" as conceived by world historians. (The long 19th runs from 1750 to 1914.) The ninteenth century was not quite over as troops initially marched off to war with equipment that would be rendered antique by the war's end. Consider the tank, which had not gotten the kinks out yet and tended to mire in mud. Late in the war, when they were used on a battlefield made of dry, chalky soil, they nearly turned the tide but were nevertheless backed up by cavalry--men on actual horses.

Keegan reminds us that this war really was a world war: the Allies--who included Italy and Japan--took most of Germany's colonies from her in Africa and the Pacific. A naval battle was fought off the coast of South America. As it would again in World War Two, Germany fought the French and British (and later the Americans) on the western front and the Russians on the eastern.

The French and Austrians--both brought to heel by Germany in the mid-nineteenth century--actually started out well in the First World War, but both eventually foundered. The French lost too many men and were forced by the Germans to fight alone as the Germans divided the allies in hope of thereby conquering. The Austrians fought the Italians with some success but the Russians less successfully and were weakened to the point where the Germans had to take the lead militarily.

Stalemate was the theme of the war, especially on the western front where the battle zone became almost rigidly fixed, shifting only slightly from time to time, while a few miles from the war zone the civilians lived in relative peace. There were places on the eastern front where this happened to some extent, as well.

After its Austrian ally collapsed, Germany was left alone to fight the world, and it is no wonder that General Erich Ludendorff concluded that there was no way for Germany to win (even though he later subscribed to the myth that Germany only lost because politicians stabbed the army in the back).

Keegan ends by pointing to the aftermath of the war. The Second World War was a continuation of the first, he says. Those who went home after the war often harbored thoughts of revenge. The Allies took revenge on the Central Powers by forcing them to put up with impossible terms including admitting to having caused the war and paying exorbitant reparations, the loss of territory and the dismantling of the military, the blockade of German ports. The Austrian Empire was divided into several new countries and German cities were taken over by Bolsheviks. Adolf Hitler gave voice to the German mood when he called for rejection of the Allied terms and their systematic undermining until Germany was a world power once again, only to plunge once more into world war. ( )
  MilesFowler | Jul 16, 2023 |
Pedestrian review of World War I. Nothing much gained, but a nice overview if that is what you are looking for. ( )
  apende | Jul 12, 2022 |
World War One rocked our planet to its core. There wasn't a corner of the globe that didn't feel its effects in some way or another. Historians like John Keegan call it the Great War because it left over ten million people dead and countless others shattered both mentally and physically beyond recognition. As Keegan explains, it was the first time world powers used ferocious modernized brutality to subdue their military enemies along with innocent women, children, and livestock. No living creature stood a chance against this new age of warfare. Keegan pushes you into the muddy trenches, onto the blood soaked battle fields, and into the intimate lives of courageous but doomed soldiers. Against this bloody backdrop Keegan also brilliantly sheds light on secret political and religious negotiations, heated war-room strategies, and closed-door council room debates. With Keegan you travel to the Western front, East Africa, the Carpathians and beyond. This is a comprehensive history of one of the most polarizing events known to man. ( )
  SeriousGrace | Dec 7, 2021 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
John Keeganprimary authorall editionscalculated
Forsman, LennartTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Olsson, Robert C.Designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
To the men of Kilmington who did not
return from the Great War, 1914-18
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The First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation. Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent. But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable." By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.

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