Customer Reviews

The First World War

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Few scholars today can match Hew Strachan's grasp of World War One's history. This is an excellent work that describes how global the war truly was and how it impacted its own generation as well as the next century to come. Anyone interested in World War One should consider reading this work.

The book covers many topics and it is somewhat interesting to see the placement of relatively obscure theatres, Africa, the high seas, and the middle east placed early in the book. Most other works relegate these areas to one combined chapter or footnotes to a larger picture. But these show how the war affected the entire world and rightly deserve their own chapters.

What is most appealing about this book is how it refuses to lay total blame on Germany for the war. Ever since Versailles, France, Britain, and to a lesser extent, the United States, have sought to blame Germany for everything the war caused. In this respect, Strachan follows Holger Herwig's argument on his work covering Germany and Austria-Hungary's relationship. Each power went to war with specific aims and all were legitimate in their own opinions. By losing, Germany got the short end of the stick. Of course Germany's harsh treaties with Russia and Romania were prophetic in that they were a preview of things to come at Versailles.

Strachan argues the Central Powers stood little chance of outright military victory (mainly because Germany had no serious allies to support them) and thus sought to weaken the Entente in any way possible. Most belligerents assumed there would be a 1919 campaign and were somewhat surprised when the Central Powers ultimately imploded in October and November 1918.

The book is well-written and very readable. It has many photographs but no maps. His theory that the war contributed much to the 20th century is right on the mark. I disagree when he says World War Two was not inevitable based on the Versailles Treaty, but that is how scholarship works. He's not wrong, he just didn't offer enough evidence to convince me otherwise. Strachan is attempting a three volume project on the war and this book is an overview. Even he agrees the project may be ambitious as the first volume took fifteen years to complete. But he makes up for it with this one-volume book that is among the most comprehensive on the market today.

Hew Strachan has written an excellent history of the war that deals with how Germany and its allies lost the war politcally and militarily. According to Strachan, Germany lost the war politically because it did not have any civilian agencies for wartime concerns such as rations and the making of munitions. Due to this weak civic structure, the military took over areas of the government that should have been dealt with by civilian ministries and as a result Germany became ecnomically impaired during the First World War. Germany also failed to use the forces of nationalism to its advantage in Africa and its plan to exploit Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East faltered because it was in direct opposition to Turkish secular nationalism.
Germany struggled in the war due to the fact that it did not have a common strategy with Turkey and Austria.The Turks and Austrians launched military operations that did not directly benefit Germany's war aims because of this lack of strategic planning. The British, French, and the Americans, however, in 1918 were able to put aside their national differences and launch coordinated attacks on the Germans. The three above mentioned nations were also able to out produce the Germans in the latest technological equippment such as tanks.The only weakness of the book is that Strachan appears to skim over the Eastern Front but for anyone who wants a concise history of the war I would highly reccomend this book.

This new account may not uncover any new scholarship but its picture packed pages ensure that it is a worthwhile read. Nearly half the book has pictures in it and there is a wonderful inset of color photos. The color photos show the unique international character of the allied armies, from Senegalese French troops to Vietnamese and Sikhs. The rest of the text is a plodding, sometimes enjoyable read about the first world war and its important events. From Jutland to Serbia to the Fall of Russia, the French mutinies and Gallipoli the war is covered. There is not quite enough coverage of the Turkish-Russian theatre or of the Armenian genocide but this is to be expected. There is good coverage of the many weapons used, including the German rail guns, the 250mm long guns. Scant coverage is given to German surface raiders or Von Spee but `Castles of Steel' is the superior choice for the naval war anyway. In final summation this is a good read and the pictures are excellent.

Seth J. Frantzman

The "War to End All Wars" wasn't. Instead it was the harbinger of things to come. In spite of the evidence of the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian war and several others, the Generals hadn't learned that the new technologies had changed the face of warfare forever.

In many ways, the after effects of the war are still among us. It started in the Balkans, strangely enough only a few dozen miles from where the second Peloponnesian war had started, and where the Bosnian, Serbian, etc. 'wars' were fought a few years ago.

In its writing style, this book almost reads like a good novel. In the completeness of its treatment of the subject, this book is encyclopedic. Aspects of the war such as the fighting between South Africa and German South West Africa (now Namibia) are covered where even some larger multi volume histories have ignored them. This is likely to become the definitive book on the First World War.

Hew Strachan's The First World War is a very rapid 340-page overview of the war from its origins through its legacy. Its ten chapters cover such things as the global aspect of the war (Japan and Africa), the Ottoman Empire, the western front, the naval war, revolution in Russia and mutinies in France and Italy, Germany's last gamble, and the peace settlement. Unlike most books on the subject, Strachan covers the war in Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and the war at sea (economically as well as militarily) as, if not more, extensively as he covers the western front. The book also briefly covers the home front. The section on wartime diets was very interesting (pg. 218) as was the author's point that the war did not bring women into the workforce as much as it caused women to change jobs within the workforce (pg. 171). The military campaigns are described briskly which makes it difficult to follow for a reader like myself who is not up on the geography of the time and military strategy. He includes maps at the front of the book, but they are individual maps for separate battle fronts. A clear overview map would really help. I found Strachan's description on the ways in which tactical experience changed the focus of production and use of tanks and aircraft very interesting and well-written (pg. 313).

I do not recommend this book to someone who is just beginning to read about the First World War, as Strachan moves through events very quickly and drops a lot of names which may not be familiar to those just learning about the war. For example, he mentions such concepts as "live and let live" and the three-tiered voting system in Germany without giving the reader any background information (although he expertly explains Germany's "stab in the back" theory). I think a reader will become lost very quickly if this were the first WWI book encountered. The author's take on the war's legacy also seems very rushed (getting to the "meat" of it in the last paragraph of the book). His point that the Treaty of Versailles did not make the Second World War inevitable is not explained. He mentions this idea in the second to last paragraph and does not give any evidence to support it. This book seems to me to be more of an outline than a thorough look at the war (he is writing a three volume work on the war, the first of which was published in 2001). He does not cover much in depth. For beginners, I'd recommend PBS's excellent book and video documentary The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.

What makes this book valuable to me are the photographs. It is not a pictorial, but it has many photos throughout the book, most of which I have not seen before. Interesting photos include one of a Scotsman wearing a kilt while in a trench (pg. 194) and a giant group photo of British factory workers (pg. 235). The real treat is the section of color photographs of the war (most of which were taken by the French army). As Strachan puts it, these photos "reveal a different war, where the sky can be blue, the grass green and the uniforms less sombre."

Hew Strachan is working on what will probably be the definitive, 3 volume history of WWI, with the first volume, To Arms already out. This work, I'm assuming, is a summary, a pocket edition, of what will be fleshed out in those 3 volumes, and as such, it is excellent. I agree with the points made by other reviewers, so I won't repeat them here, but one comment -- while a reviewer felt the Eastern Front was slighted somewhat, there is still more in this work than you will usually find in a one volume history, and the role of Bulgaria in the final defeat of the Central Powers was, to me, well done and a new insight for me.

I fully agree this is a 5 star volume, and would further encourage anyone to look carefully at buying all 3 volumes when they are available if your budget will allow.

Strachan's book feels like it was simply a cut-and-paste of a much longer work. Names seem to appear out of nowhere and pieces seem to be missing. The book does give an overview of the conflict but the lack of cohesion makes it too confusing. Events are not described in chronological order and one finds things jumping between 1914-1918 a lot. I was disappointed by this book. If it were better organized it would have made a more enjoyable read.

This book attempts to reduce the First World War to 300 pages and a bit, and succeeds for the most part. It's written by Hew Strachan, who's one of the better-known First War historians around right now. He edited one book on the First War already, and has penned the first of three volumes he's intending to write on the subject. He wrote this book in concert with a TV series he created for British TV.

In working on the TV series, he divided the war into 10 parts, and he does that here, also. This means that the campaign in the east, and consequently the Battle of Tannenberg, come about halfway through the book. Social and cultural aspects of things are at best skimmed over, while military maneuvers and political events are summarized briefly. While the writing is serviceable, it's certainly not poetic or anything: Strachan is a history professor and it shows. Things aren't helped by the fact he's British, which means his turns of phrase are sometimes unfamiliar to an American eye. The text is supplemented by numerous photographs, including an insert in the middle of the book in color.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, though the writing isn't quite up to the standards of a short accessible history. It is, however, a good overview of the war.

While this is an abridgement of Strachan's three volume work on the First World War, it is complete in that it actually acknowledges and discusses the war outside of Europe. Most historians ignore or merely mention in passing the African and Asian theatres in order to rehash the European aspect again.

Strachan lacks bias and avoids any controversial conclusions but includes COLOR pictures of the Great War which enhance and already readable and entertaining work.

Best single book on WWI I have read yet.

Out Of the books that I've read regarding the First World War, I have to say that this book clearly is the best book that I've read on the subject. This book clearly shows the reader how it all started, ended and the effects of the war which lasts even to this day. I especially like how it tackeled all the aspects of the First Wrold War including the all of the countries fear of revolution and how the battles on all fronts are explained, which are can be clearly understood by the reader.

I definitely recomment this book to anyone who wants to know about the First World War or to anyone who are intrested in history.