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The First World War (2): The Western Front 1914-1916 (Essential Histories)

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Peter Simkins, a former senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, provides an excellent summary of the First World War on the Western Front in Osprey's two volume Essential Histories series. Simkins brings his vast knowledge of the subject to bear and delivers a tight narrative that hits all the highlights of the war on this front; overall, this is an excellent summary. Unfortunately, Simkins also brings an unabashed over-emphasis on the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France - at the expense of the French and Americans. British mistakes tend to get glossed over in this account and the role of Britain in the Allied victory borders on exaggeration. Simkins is also unwilling to swerve in the slightest from conventional wisdom on this subject and accepts unequivocal German war guilt at face value (views on this subject are highly controversial and have evolved over time, but Simkins eschews both controversy and historiographical evolution). While Simkins' two volumes offer an excellent summary of the First World War on the Western Front, readers should be aware that this is the "official" BEF version of events, with much less balance from other participants.

The author's opening section on "the road to war" is excellent and carefully weaves together the wide diversity of factors that led to the outbreak of the First World War. While the author's assessment that "the primacy of Germany's responsibility for war in 1914" is obvious based upon its preparations of an offensive war plan, the guilt of other actors (such as Russian cultivation of Serb ultra-nationalism that led to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand) is alluded to but not exposed. The section on opposing armies, while brief, is also excellent. The author includes ten maps to support his narrative: European alliances 1914-1916; the rival war plans; the battle of the frontiers; the First Battle of Ypres; the Battle of Neuve Chapelle; the Battle of Loos; the Western Front 1914-1918; the Battle of Verdun; the Somme Offensive 1 July 1916; and the final phase of the Somme offensive. The author's English bias is evident in the maps, with five of ten maps focusing on British battles but only one on a French battle; even the map on the 1914 Battle of the Frontiers fails to depict the doomed French offensive in Lorraine. Given the importance of the Battle of the Marne, a map should also have been included on that subject over a relatively minor battle like Neuve Chapelle (which was important in English eyes, but otherwise no more significant than the many failed French offensives in 1915).

The author's narrative of the fighting in 1914-1916 is clear, concise and often insightful. While Simkins notes the standard criticisms of the German Schlieffen Plan - logistical weakness and Moltke's weakening of the critical right wing - he also notes that the Germans failed to adequately address Belgian resistance: "what really harmed their plan was the need to detach some five corps from their right wing to invest Naumur, Maubeuge and Antwerp." As Simkins sees it, the Germans put inadequate forces into their main effort, then diverted too many forces from that weakened effort on secondary tasks, then loss their nerve due to a puny Allied counterattack on the Marne. Simkins also views the German decision to revert to the defense on the Western Front in November 1914 - instead of finishing off the depleted BEF - as "a huge mistake." Aside from ignoring the exhaustion of Germany's own troops at that point, Simkins exaggerates the value of the BEF remnants in the fall of 1914, which were perhaps 5% of Allied troops on the front. In fact, the original BEF was essentially destroyed by this point and the Germans had no ability to destroy the dozens of new divisions being raised in England, Canada and Australia. After detailing the various offensives of 1915, Simkins concludes the narrative section with accounts of the two great set-piece battles, Verdun and the Somme. The discussion of the Somme is adequate, but fails to convey the "mission creep" in the German plan that caused a deliberate attritional battle to transform into a major bloodletting for both sides. On the other hand, Simkins' discussion of the Somme follows the standard British line, that while losses were high, the offensive succeeded in "gutting" the German army of pre-war regulars and thereby contributed to victory later. In reality, the Somme was an expensive failure that "gutted" the BEF far more than the Germans and it was the combination of having to fight both Verdun and the Somme in 1916 that really strained the Germans. The only real omission in this volume is the lack of any real detail on the air war (e.g. the "Fokker scourge").

The final sections in this volume are paeans to British sensibilities about the First World War. The section, "Portrait of a Soldier" details the experiences of a 19-year old British private who served only six months in the period of this volume. Certainly highlighting one of the "Old Contemptibles" of 1914 or one of the New Army "Pals Battalion" members would have been more representative of the British war effort in this period. This section is followed by "Portrait of a Civilian" which - surprise, surprise - covers a British female auxiliary. Obviously, no attempt was made to balance this volume with French or British perspectives. The section on home fronts does provide three paragraphs each on Germany and France, but this is relatively an afterthought. Overall, this volume is an excellent summary of the first two years of the war on the Western Front, albeit for an Anglo-centric perspective.

2002's "The Western Front 1914-1916" is one of several entries in the First World War series of Osprey's Essential Histories. Veteran British historian Peter Simkins provides a concise introduction to the Western Front, which became the decisive theater of the war.

In rapid fashion, Simkins sketches the road to war, the opposing armies and their respective war plans, and how those war plans played out in the opening weeks of the war. The narrative then settles into the prolonged stalemate of of trench warfare, including the massive bloodlettings at the Siege of Verdun and the extended Battle of the Somme. Simkins closes with two featurettes, one on a British private soldier and another on a woman's auxilliary member, before forecasting the epic 1917-1918 struggle on the Western Front.

Simkins' narrative is supported by the usual excellent Osprey selection of photographs, maps, and graphics. Presenting two intense years of military and political developments in under 100 pages inevitably leads to simplification. Although Simkins surveys a complicated story fairly well, there is no attempt to wrestle with controversy or alternative points of view. "The Western Front 1914-1916" is a decent introduction for the general reader and highly recommended to that audience.