"1916 - A Global History" by Keith Jeffery

1916 - A Global History. Keith Jeffery. 377 pages.

I completed this book today.

My current passion to better understand WWI and its implications runs unabated.

The last WWI book I read was last month, "The First World War," by John Keegan a comprehensive, account of WWI, start to finish.

Jeffery's book centers on 1916 only. Barbara Tuchman's highky acclaimed book, "The Guns of August," whicb I have read, is about WWI during 1914. I'm now looking for a 1915, 1917 and 1918 book!

1916 is best remembered for The Somme, Verdun, and the Brusilov Offensive. But, of course, there is much more. And, Jeffery covers the "much more" in greater depth than I have heretofore read.

By the end of 1916 the war had been raging for almost two and one half years. Along the western front both sides were entrenched along a four hundred mile long line stretching from the Belgian coastline, through northeastern France, to Switzerland. No one side seemed to be gaining advantage over the other.

After the western front line had been solidly established by early 1915, it was the allies that did most of the attacking that year. The Germans decided to dig in and built an extensive trench system to include secondary and tertiary trench lines behind the front line trenches. The allies had only one trench line and, in 1915, devoted most of their energies, not to extending their trench system, but to attempts to push the Germans back to Germany.

I visited some of the 1915 allied offensive battlefields in 2015, one hundred years after the battles were fought. Neuve Chapelle, Loos, Arras...

The allies followed standard battle procedure in 2015: artillery barrages to disable the German front lines followed by allied infantry storming the German lines.

But, the machine gun, new in WWI, changed everything. The infantry charges inevitably failed. Because of poor communications technology, artillery barrages were often not effective. And, charging infantry were mowed down by machine gunners at unprecedented levels compared to earlier conflicts where machine guns were not available.

In 1916, both sides attacked (allies, Somme) and Germany (Verdun) with no major, sustained penetration achieved by either side, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. There were sixty thousand British casualties, including twenty thousand dead, on the first day of the Somme alone.

It had become clear that the war at the Western Front was a stalemate evolving into a war of attrition which would be won or lost according to which side could hold out the longest.

Jeffery covers in some depth attempts by both sides to float peace initiatives in the face of a carnage that stood to wipe out the best of a generation of young men in all the belligerent countries.

At first, all belligerents seemed seemed amenable to a negotiated end of the war. But, no party from either side was willing to take a tangible step.

Woodrow Willson floated a 1916 peace initiative that was soundly rebuffed by both sides. Each side had hard liners who felt that seeking peace denoted weakness. Following through on such "peace initiatives," so the hard liners felt, would inflict more damage on their respective national psyches than the costs of the war itself.

Jeffery covers the evacuation of Gallipoli in January of 2016 in depth. Gallipoli was a 1915 operation and much of what I have read and seen talks about the 1916 evacuation as a post script. I spent 10 days touring the Gallipoli battlefields in 2015.

Apropos Gallipoli evacuation, we learn about Captain C. R. Attlee of the 6th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, who was to head the first Labour majority government in Britain. Clement Attlee was deployed as part of the rearguard and given the task of holding 'the last line, known as the Lala Baba defences' on the sourthen side of the Suvla sector. Attlee was the last but one soldier to leave Gallipoli, followed only by the divisional commander, General F. S. Maude. Attlee's own account of the evacuation is quoted in Jeffery's book.

The book had compelling chapters on lesser known, but, important phases of the "world" war.

The Isonzo campaign in Italy. There were twelve battles fought between the Italians (allies) and the Austrians (Central Powers) on this front in 1916. Many British arts types... authors, actors and journalists had declared their pacifism, but, still supported their country in the war effort by manning an ambulance corps on the Isonzo front. Ernest Hemingway joined this group and drew from his experience there when he penned the novel, "A Farewell to Arms."

There are chapters each on the Jutland naval battle, the Brusilov Offensive and the eastern front, the war in Asia, the war in Affrica, and the unraveling of the Russian war effort as Russia descends into revolution.

America's "slide" to war, from being Wilsonian neutral, is treated in detail.

WWI was "fought in America!"

I was fascinated by the accounts of German sabotage efforts in America during the war. The greatest single German attack on the USA during the war occurred during the night of 29 July 1916 at the huge freight terminal on Black Tom Island in New York harbor. A series of enormous explosions destroyed two million pounds of munitions stockpiled for dispatch to Europe and great quantities of other commodities.

I noted a strange coincidence regarding my completing this book while traveling on my current motorcycle journey to Dawson, City, Yukon and various Alaska destinations. I write this review while traveling the Inside Passage on Ferry Mantanuska of the Alaska Marine Highway system.

Berthed in the harbor at Haines, AK was a Holland America cruise liner, "Noordam."

From the Jeffery book account: a German admiralty agent, Franz Rintelen, who worked for a German bank in the USA before the war, was sent back to America by the Germans to sabotage labor relations in US war material factories. Rintelen was recalled by Berlin in August 1915 because of German worry about his insecure behavior.

While traveling back to Europe with a forged Swiss passport, British naval Intelligence got wind of his presence. When the ship was stopped at Ramsgate, Kent, for blockade control, Rintelen was arrested. The ship on which Rintelen was traveling? the "Noordam (not the same ship, of course)!"

The book has more of a human face than most of the WWI accounts I have read, to date, by focusing on the experience of individuals. The book covers a diverse array of subjects, yet brings the far flung events together putting the war in understandable context.

A worthy read.