Barbara Tuchman
Read December, 2018
I was led to this one by Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast, with a dab of "let me learn more" as we've been under a lot of reminders of 100th anniversary of various WW I events. I can safely count this as a notch in the "pretentious reading" list, as it was the 1963 Pulitzer Prize winner for General Non-Fiction, as well as being a rather dense dose of history.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mean "dense" as any kind of negative. I love some dense and obscure non-fiction. This pretty much satisfied all of my smug, "better than you", literary pretensions. The style of writing would be considered old fashioned now, with it's regular quotations of French phrases (a command of at least literary French being necessary for anyone who considered themselves cultured), verbose descriptive passages, and usage of what would now be considered pretentious and scholarly vocabulary. The book traces the events that lead up to WWI and the first month of the war (hence the title). It halts just as the German armies are outside of Paris, before the long and dreadful months and years of trench warfare which is the more usual focus of WW I.
One of the things I noticed, partly as a tie in to having listened to the Hardcore History series on WWI, is how much the war started in what might as well have been another world. Although artillery, automobiles, and even airplanes were available and in some use, for the most part armies entered into the conflict using horseback cavalry with sabers, and infantry who fought at close range in waves with ordered ranks of rifle fire and bayonet charges. Some armies had switched to drab khakis and grays for camouflage reasons, but the French army went into this war still proudly sporting their traditional uniforms of blue coats and easily spotted bright red trousers, while generals commanded from horseback in white gloves and plumed helmets. Intelligence sources were sourced from ground scouts with occasional forays into the air via early airplane, dirigible, and hot air balloon, and transmitted via telegraph and occasionally wireless. At points armies suffered from a lack of information, including their orders from command, due to a lack of communications cables. Honor was considered a valid reason and motivation. War was conducted based on rigorous theoretical bases from war colleges studying and teaching from European continental conflict of the last hundred plus years.
On the social side, men, including powerful leaders were not afraid or ashamed to be seen showing emotion, such as weeping at dramatic events, whether political or personal. Social conventions and strata were often given more weight than abilities in choosing leaders, from appointment of war ministers to determining commanders and actions of armies. In some respects, it could be argued that a great deal could be gained by normalizing emotions, especially for men, as well as socially enforced manners and conventions. In others it becomes evident that social strictures can be equally detrimental to innovation in the face of changing technology and unexpected events.
Some things have not changed since then though. Nations frequently committed the same errors we still see today, with generals in their offices disregarding the reports and requests of the actual troops and commanders on the field in favor of what theories and teaching said should be happening, blithely ignoring the realities of a changing world and style of combat around them. Countries blatantly manufactured events, from bombings to invasions, to justify their actions, as well as for propaganda against opposing forces and civilians. In all of this the true victims were the troops at the front and the civilians in the path of the troops. Germany in particular engaged in the still used tactics of terrorizing civilian populations with executions and forced labor in an attempt to cow any attempt at opposition or guerrilla warfare by those local to the troops. Despite the horrors of randomly rounding up and shooting entire towns, Belgium, in particular, resisted, burning stores and destroying bridges and railroads ahead of the incoming German invasion.
Because of the limited scope of the book, it leaves off as a cliffhanger, with German armies just outside Paris, and French and English forces moving into place for a flanking movement to halt the German invasion. Between the scholarly level of the prose, and the amount of dates, names, places and events, this is not a book for light beach reading. I would, however, highly recommend it for it's educational value, as well as its ability to create a desire to learn more about this part of history, due to the standing of armies and events at the end of the time frame covered.
