Customer Reviews

Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Making of the Modern World)

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Having read widely in World War I histories, I must say I have some considerable difficulty in placing this book among them. On the one hand, the author does a good, if not unique, job of describing the wholesale destruction which marked the German advances in the West at the beginning of the war and the seemingly epidemic destructiveness which infected the other armies as they went about their business of devastating their enemies. Thus, he goes some way toward fulfilling the promise of the title chosen for his work. On the other hand, and it's hard to tell whether this was planned or he just couldn't help himself, he also provides a tangential but I thought quite interesting examination of other aspects of the war including the fallacies which arose and have persisted about the terms and effects of the Versailles Treaty and the tenuous connection between the politics of the German defeat and the rise of the Nazis. The upshot is the reader's confusion about what exactly the author was up to. If the book was intended as a general history of the war, it fails badly if only because it does not address so many significant events and personalities. If it was meant to demonstrate that the wholesale destruction which characterized the behavior of most of the combatants was an historical first, it's all pretty much been said before, and just about as convincingly. Not at all a waste of a reader's time, but the hours might be better spent reading Messrs. Keegan, Gilbert or Strachan.

A unique account of the First World War. Its' focus is not only on the events on the Western Front, but also the killing fields of Central Europe, Russia and Italy. The author emphasizes certain aspects like the first weeks of the war where the Germans caused much cultural damage and destruction in Belgium and in the areas they occupied in France.

Mr. Kramer treats each countries experience of the war as distinct and does not merge this as a `unified war trauma'. Civilian deaths were much more common in Eastern Europe - the Balkans, Russia and present day Poland. Soldiers in Russia and Austria were treated as dispensable - ill-fed, poorly clothed - many more starved to death, froze to death or died of disease than on the Western front. The Germans came closest to waging total war - for example they recruited slave labour in both Western and Eastern Europe.

Mr. Kramer questions much retrospective thinking on the First World War - he lays the blame squarely on both Germany and Austria-Hungary for initiating and causing the war. Was the Treaty of Versailles so harsh on Germany - have we to swallowed Hitler's myth of the stab in the back? The Weimar Republic suppressed files showing Germany's aggressive intent before the war began. Even though the Somme and Passchendaele caused mass death on the Allied side they also caused a morale crisis for the Germans.

Mr. Kramer also discusses the aftermath of the war in Russia, the Balkans and Italy where war became internalized and Fascism triumphed under Mussolini. Each country experienced different after-effects of their struggle which are still felt to this day.

First, this book was well worth the read even though I give it but 3 stars. It is not a quick read, but not so academic that one gets frustrated. The problem as I see it is that the book lacks an overall theme. The author says he is going to talk about a "dynamic of destruction," but after reading this, I just don't see what that means and how this book's thesis is all that different from others.

While Dynamic of Destruction was interesting & informative, it was not what I was expecting. I read about this book on a holocaust web-site. I was hoping it would get more into more causes and examples of mass killings in the many little wars before and during the Great War.

This book is probably more suited to serious scholars of the war. I am really just a beginner about the war. If I knew more background of the period, I may have gotten more from the book than I did.