Customer Reviews

Cassell Military Classics: To Win A War: 1918 The Year Of Victory

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Terraine's view is that Haig by aggressively pursuing the war in the spring and summer of 1918 led to victory over the Germans. Generally he thinks the Americans helped but were not decisive in the victory over the Germany Empire. The French helped but their Army was tired of the war.
This is obviously a different picture than what is normally thought of the war. It is factual but places the perspective onto the British as the ultimate victors of World War One.
Also, it disregards Haig's earlier blunders in 1916 and 1917 when
he wasted thousands of lives on a few miles of scorched earth.
Haig might have been right at the end, but not during the earlier
years of the war.

Like all John Terraine's books this account of the fighting during the last year of the First World War, first published in 1978, is extremely well researched and written with pace and style. It is also very controversial.

The pride that men took in the winning of the war, and the admiration they displayed for Field-Marshal Haig in particular was soon dispelled. The 'War Memoirs' of David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill's 'Great Crisis' cast doubt on the idea that Haig was a master strategist, and people began to think that another, less bloody and less destructive, way of winning the war might have been found. Specifically, that Haig's concentration on the Western Front was a tragic mistake, with incalculable consequences. More effort should have been devoted to knocking away the 'props' - the minor countries liked Bulgaria and Turkey which supported the German and Austrian 'underbelly.' Fuller and other military writers propagated the idea that the generals could have made more use of the tank. The works of the war poets and the prose of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves enjoyed considerable popularity. Haig came to be regarded as a butcher. The idea also got about, in Germany and elsewhere, that the British had not really won the war at all. The Nazis believed that the German Army had not been defeated, but 'stabbed in the back'. In the early 1930s the Oxford Union voted in favour of a pacifist motion. The idea that the Great War as a whole was simply 'pointless', the sacrifice 'futile' and 1918 one last miserable chapter in a vast incomprehensible waste of life, was widely accepted.

It was Terraine's mission to revise this revisionism; and in this book he attempted to explode, in particular, the myths about 1918. To my mind he demonstrates very well that 1918 was a year of victory, and that the War did not simply wind down. During the period between July and November 1918, the British Army won a remarkable series of victories. Led by Haig, it played a major role in driving the Germans back from their line of furthest advance, in breaking the so-called Hindenberg line, in pushing the Germans almost as far as the German frontier and breaking their morale. Terraine's maps alone would be enough to prove that point; and the tank played a very minor part in this fighting. Moreover, I think his thesis that the Western Front was the only one that mattered, or could matter, is also made out.

However, it is much more debatable whether the morale of the German Army would have collapsed anyway, in view of what Terraine himself tells us about events in Germany itself; and likewise whether British and French attrition in 1915, 1916 and 1917 played a major role in the victory of 1918(an important part of Terraine's defence of Haig). Likewise, it is open to doubt whether the British public have ever been brought to accept that the slaughter was all worthwhile. The scars ran too deep for that, I think.

Good overall history of the last 100 days on the Western Front. Terraine is a man of many prejudices. Particulary against Prime Minister David Llyod George. The author is very much a proponent of General Haig and his policies of war by attrition. Per Terraine that is the only way either side could win on the Western Front. Alot of other historians would differ. But the tecnological innovations, like the tank and airplanes, were so new and in such an infancy stage to allow a strategic victory via technology.

When describing the larger arena Mr. Terraine does a fantastic job. His descent to divisional, regimental, company actions were for me impossible to follow. Maybe British readers would have an easier time.

While reading this book I couln't help but comparing this book to Alan Palmer's "Victory 1918". Palmer's book takes a much broader view of the last year of the war, including all the other fronts. For me Palmer's book is a much better read and more interesting.

Later generations have forgotten what a huge undertaking World War I was. John Terraine has written a number of other books about World War I. Outside of his prejudice against even talking about the other fronts I rate him quite high. His work is a must read if you want to study WWI or the Great War as it was rightly named.

Terraine, although firmly belonging to the unfashionable "Haig was right" school, produced an informative and exhaustive study of the little known last few months of the First World War. At times overly detailed with battlefield information, and laboured with the axiom that victory in the First World War was due purely to the steady attrition of the German forces, the text effectively details the evolution of tactics in the last stages of the war. Other historians and commentators, such as Basil Liddell Hart or Denis Winter, would interpret the events entirely differently but Terraine shows remarkable erudition in arguing the alternative. Read in conjunction with the works of Martin Middlebrook, especially Middlebrook's work on the German offensives of early 1918, Terraine's book illuminates how the last months of the Great War were fought in the West. Thoroughly recommended for the history buff.

As an Englishman, I was extremely pleased when I first read the synopsis of this book. John Terraine is a widely respected author of British military history, whose book "Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier" set the tone for a new perspective on the First World War. Terraine clearly has nothing but admiration for the soldiers who fought it out in the trenches of France and Flanders, but this account is a challenge to the commonly held view that the Generals of the time were "reactionary bunglers" at best, and "callous, uncaring butchers" at worst. Terraine's account demonstrates that this was certainly not the case.

Allied strategy and tactics did evolve, and the main proponents of this were the British, the first to utilise tanks in warfare. It is clear that the key to the final Allied success was in the initial resistance to the German Spring Offensive. The Allied line may have been stretched, but it was by no means broken.

Terraine's opinion on the Versailles settlement is also interesting. According to him, the peace failed not because it was too punitive, but because it was neither punitive enough, not moderate enough. It was an ineffective go-between which left too many issues unaddressed. In all, it was hardly a reward which reflected the heroic actions of the soldiers on the ground.

An excellent read.