"The First World War" by John Keegan

Keegan's "The First World War" ties it all together.

Above: "The First World War," John Keegan 427 pages.

I completed this book today.

From August 2014 through June 1919 will be the one hundredth anniversary of some phase of World War I (WWI). Around this time 100 years ago, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his throne, the US declared war on Germany, and the beginnings of serious mutinies of French soldiers undergoing German attack at Verdun were noted.

In July of 1917 (one hundred years ago coming up soon) was the Third Battle of Ypres (the Battle of Passchendaele) a bloody, failed attempt by the Brits to break through the German lines. Note: I visited Ypres in October of 2015. My visit was almost exactly 100 years after the Second Battle of Ypres... the first time that toxic gas was employed in warfare (by the Germans). The allies, in later battles, also used toxic gas.

Recent books I have read on WWI have been specific to belligerents, theaters, or periods within the war. For example:

"The Fall of the Ottomans," Eugene Rogan (belligerent)
"Gallipoli," Edward J. Jackson (theater)
"The Guns of August," Barbara Tuchman (period - 1914)

among others...

Also, my recent WWI battlefield trips have, of course, been selective. You would need at least a year to visit all key WWI venues.

Jun 2015 - Gallipoli
Oct 2015 - Western Front - British positions, Flanders/France.

Keegan's "The First World War" ties it all together.

As much as a history book can be, the book is a page turner.

NEW INSIGHTS

Keegan interprets familiar facts to arrive at new insights. For example, on the so-called Armenian Genocide: I say "so called" because some countries, including the United States, have not recognized the deaths of between a half million and one and a half million Armenians during WWI in Anatolia as being a "genocide."

Armenians claim that Turks engaged in wanton killing of Armenians outside of the "normal" exigencies of warfare.

Keegan notes that there were subversive Armenian organizations within Turkey at the outset of WWI who were transacting with Turkey's enemy, Russia. Keegan gives an estimate of those killed at 700K which is on the low end of usual estimates.

A war was on. Some Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire showed disloyalty to their rulers by hob nobbing with the Russian enemy. The Turks react by force marching up to 1 million Armenians from Anatolia to Mesopotamia. Things got out of hand. War? Genocide? Notwithstanding the Armenian claim of genocide, the issue today remains "up in the air."

LEADERSHIP STUDY

Keegan's story moves smoothly among kings, field marshals and eighteen-year old riflemen.

Take John French. General John French was head of the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) at the war's beginning in 1914.
French's. worldview was circumscribed by his past experiences in fighting overseas... mostly limited engagements such as in the Boer War.

Britain was known as a sea power. Her army, up until WWI, was relatively small compared to the continental armies of France, Germany and Russia. As Britain's WWI fighting forces grew to include "Territorials, (equivalent to reservists)" and new recruits "Kitchener's Army," making war on a massive scale, including with newly trained, non professional soldiers, was finally seen to be outside of French's capability.

French was replaced by the stern, Presbyterian general, Douglas Haig. Haig reminds me of Patten. Both channeled Julius Ceaser. Both had a sense of destiny as great generals which was inspired by their religious beliefs.

A VERITABLE WORLD WAR

WWI was more, much more, than The Western Front. Keegan's book covers it all.

There was a navel engagement in the Falkland Islands (won by the British against the Germans) early in the war.

Japanese and British troops forced German troops to relinquish their trade concession in Tsingtao, China.

A million people died fighting WWI in Africa alone. Their sacrifice has largely been forgotten today. One of Germany's great military leaders during WWI was Von Lettow-Vorbeck, who survived the four years of the war, in what is now Tanzania, leading guerrilla actions against frustrated Entente commanders.

WWI's greatest sea battle, The Battle of Jutland, was fought in the North sea, late May and early June, 1916. The battle ended in a draw. But, it was a strategic win for the Brits as the German fleet did not threaten for the remainder of the war.

Italy was fought Austria in a series of twelve battles along the Isonzo River throughout most of 1916.

During 1916, British forces were marching up the Tigris River towards Ottoman controlled Baghdad.

In 1916, the Ottomans attempted (unsuccessfully) to dislodge the Russians from the Caucusus.

Finally, the Eastern Front was twice as long as the Western Front, running from the Baltic Sea east of Konigsberg to southern Galicia at the eastern tip of the Carpathian Mountains.

Russians on the Eastern Front lost the most WWI killed of all the contestants: 2 million. Aside. It was an eye opener for me that during the four years of the Russian civil war (1918 to 1921) more Russians were killed than during WWI itself. Keegan gives more than a couple of pages to the Russian civil war.

MUSINGS ON PICTURE CREDITS

I think that Keegan must have chosen the few images of war leaders for his book plates based on his impression of their importance to the war.

For German leaders, he chose, of course, Kaiser Wilhelm II; also, Hindenburg, Ludendorf (the two victors of the battle of Tannenberg and later leaders of the entire German war effort), AND Von Lettow-Vorbeck, the wily Africa fighter.

There were no plate images of former German Army chiefs of staff von Falkenheyn (viewed to have failed with Verdun) or Moltke (failed to follow through in realizing Schleffein Plan to capture Paris).

There was a plate of a bust of von Schleiffen, the pre-war author of the military plan which articulated a strategy to capture Paris via a sweeping action through Belgium.

The only Russian image in the book plates was of Aleksei A. Brusilov, who led the Russian army in its 1916, highly successful, offensive in the Carpathians - Eastern Front - against the Austrians. Brusilov later became chief of staff of the Russian army.

GERMAN DILEMMA: East or west?

Keegan's smoothly flowing narrative describes the challenge for German war planners to determine how many, and which, of their troops should be sent to this or that front. One of many such dilemmas was how to allocate resources between the Western and Eastern fronts in 1916.

The allies would coordinate their own attacks at an annual conference at Chantilly, and, in so doing, would insure that the prospective plan would always pressure the Germans to have difficulty in making difficult resource allocations between the two major fronts. In December 1915, the Chantilly plan was for the British to attack north of the Somme River and for the French to attack south of the Somme River. The Russians were to attack in the Carpathians, on the Eastern Front.

The Germans foiled the allies' December 2015 Chantilly battle plans by starting a major offensive at Verdun, south of the Somme, in February 2016. So, one of the two planned Western Front, Entente offensives turned into a defensive action.

The Somme, and the Carpathians (the Brusilov Offensive) on the Eastern Front were launched by the Entente on schedule during 2016.
When the Austrians started faltering against Brusilov's onslaughts in the east in 1916, the Germans had to withdraw troops from their offensive going on simultaneously at Verdun - Western Front - to send them to the Eastern Front. Who knows what the outcome would have been at Verdun had the Germans been able to keep up their troop forces there?

BATTLES ON A SCALE UNIMAGINABLE TODAY

Keegan soberly describes the staggering scale of human suffering during WWI.

Technology...the machine gun, improved artillery, poison gas, airplanes and tanks all contributed to battle casualties on a scale never before experienced in warfare.

Lack of efficient communications between front lines and leadership in the rear further exacerbated casualty rates as too many soldiers were killed by friendly fire and units on the verge of breakthrough of lines halted because orders to proceed were delayed.

French, British and German generals relied on the ever increasing weight of artillery to destroy the enemy's defenses before launching mass infantry assaults across the killing zone of no man's land. The advent of the machine gun turned these forays into mass slaughter, where far more soldiers were killed than in an infantry attack during, say, Napoleon' s time, a century before.

Britain spearheaded the Somme offensive in July of 2016. 20K young Brits were killed on the first day of that fighting. I visited the Somme battlefield in October of 2015. There I saw the Thiepval Memorial which lists the names of 70K young men who fought at Somme, but, whose bodies were never retrieved.

February 2016, Germany mounted an attack on the French front at Verdun. Verdun was the longest battle in the war lasting until November of 2016. There were 700K casualties in Verdun including both sides. Death's usually represent plus or minus 30% of casualties. The numbers are staggering... incomprehensible.

EXHAUSTION

Keegan recounts the story of how, in 1917, three years into the brutal war, soldiers on many fronts, seeing the deaths of so many of their comrades and continued stalemate, refused to fight.

The French soldiers, battered by almost a year of being under German attack at Verdun in 1916, mutinied at when asked to mount an offensive in 1917.

In 1917, Italian soldiers gave up while under attack from German and Austrian troops at Caporetto, a small frontier town on the River Isonzo. Caporetto marked the point at which time people began to scorn the fighting ability of Italians... a scourge which still hounds the Italian soldier today.

The Russian soldiers , who in 1916 had courageously fought in the successful, Brusilov Offensive, in what is today southern Poland, refused to fight, after the Tsar's abdication, in 1917.

END OF WAR DYNAMIC

Keegan's narrative of the war's denouement is compelling.
So... 1917... the soldiers are running out of gas in most of the armies to varying degrees. Yes, there are units that still fight with conviction, but nearly four years of constant stalemate accompanied by thousands of casualties is taking its toll on everyone.

Germany gets a bonus. Russia concedes, driven by the tumultuous Russian revolution and the abdication of the Tsar.

Germany can now ship fifty of its crack divisions to the Western Front. These are Germany's best soldiers. They have won battles... Tannenberg... Garlice Tarnow... Romania.

As the war grinds on, things are looking up for Germany... at least Ludendorf thinks so (later, when the momentum starts moving against Ludendorf, he loses it. His reputation, even amongst his peers, was that he was pretty good if things were going well, but unstable when the pressure was on).

But, the German's have to move before the Americans, who have just declared war, get up to strength.

Ludendorf identifies a segment of the line south of the Somme defended by Britain's Fifth Army.

The February 2017 German push at first goes well for the Germans who push the line to within 25 miles of Paris. But, German troops gorge on the good life. Food and liquor. France behind the lines had a booming and prosperous war economy. German troops weaken when exposed to spoils of behind the lines France. The British Fifth Army, which though bludgeoned, had stayed intact, regroups and the Germans are pushed back.

Everybody's tired. Everywhere authorities sending back channel messages to work out armistices.

Pershing builds doughboy force. By April 2018 he can form his own Army so he no longer has to send doughboys to fight under British or French leadership. Brits and French see the doughboys as a bit naive and untested, but show gratitude for America's entry. Fresh, untested, but optimistic doughboys, change the course of the war.

On Oct. 2015 I visited St. Quentin where, in 1918, a contingent of doughboys and Australians made the first breach of the Hindenburg line. The Germans were now on the run. The war was, for all intents and purposes, over. The Germans would soon sue for armistice.
Wilson, who campaigned on keeping America out of war, didn't want to send the doughboys to Europe. But, political pressure in the US arising from Germany's wanton unrestricted U-Boat action against US cargo ships in the Atlantic, and the Zimmerman telegram - where Germany promised Mexico Texas if they'd declare war on the US, forced Wilson's hand.
In sum.

The book did a great job of linking the multiple parts of the war together. The writing is clear and detailed. One learns how the war began, how it was fought, why it was won by the Allies. Keegan conveys how it felt.