Customer Reviews

The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

World War I began with both sides sensing great victory in a short period of time. Germany faced the more delicate strategic situation. Russia was mobilizing to the East and France and Germany to the West; Germany could not divide its forces and hope to triumph along both fronts. Germany made the following calculation: if it used the bulk of its forces against France, using the Schlieffen Plan (invading through Belgium) and achieved a quick victory, it could send spare forces to the East to defeat Russia. France's plan was massive attack against Germany and through boldness achieve a quick victory. Of course, as we know from history, World War I was a slow bloodletting lasting for years. No quick victory happened.

This book is enriched by many German records becoming available from what was once East Germany after reunification. These records add considerable new information to the telling of this story. Another useful feature of this book is the description of key figures, giving a human dimension to the massive battles, involving armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers each. Generals such as French, Joffre, Moltke, Lanrezac, Bulow, Foch become human rather than just cardboard characters. Given that the human frailty of some of these generals was crucial (lack of nerve, too much aggressiveness, or just the right touch of aggressiveness and caution) was often a key variable in battle, this helps make sense of the action.

The book takes a largely chronological view. It begins by outlining strategic vision of the various actors. For France, the disastrous outcome of the Franco-Prussian War weighed heavily. Germany, aware of the forces that would be arrayed against its armies, developed a plan for rapid mobilization and rapid movement of troops to the offensive (the Schlieffen Plan). As war came closer--and actually began with the aftereffects of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand--the book outlines the moves as they occurred. In the process, some myths are rejected (such as the idea that the war was something of an accident, with people not realizing the consequences of their actions). The nature of the armies by all parties are described, from army to cavalry (I was surprised to see how effective cavalry were during the first part of World War I) to artillery to airplanes.

The development of actual movement of forces and battles quickly began to depart from the careful plans of both the French and the Germans. The book demonstrates that many fights were chance engagements. Others allowed parties to prepare, as airplanes could detect enemy movements (sometimes) far away and provide valuable intelligence. The movement of forces leading to the Battle of the Marne are described in much detail (sometimes I lost track of which army was where), including the massive casualty lists that developed. We see the sometimes testy relationships among generals on both sides.

One wish: better maps. There are maps provided, but many maps are not as clear as they could be; the font is awfully small in some maps (making it hard for someone like me to read). Nonetheless, these do help.

All in all, if one wants to get a detailed sense of this monster battle, this is a good book to look at.

It is easy to write a positive review of a book, it is far more difficult to offer meaningful criticism. I had eagerly awaited Holger Herwig's new book, "The Marne, 1914," as there has been much recent research I hoped to see distilled in a comprehensive account of the campaign.

The book contains a more detailed overview of the German III Army operations on the Meuse and of the German VI Army operations in Lorraine and against Nancy than has been presented previously.

However, I found Herwig's writing style to be dense and his arguments hard to follow. In the prolog (on page xii), he argues the Marne Campaign to be the most decisive land battle since Waterloo. But in the epilogue (on page 319), he concludes, "the great tragedy of the Marne is that it was strategically indecisive." The thread connecting these two arguments is missing.

You don't always know what Herwig is arguing, but you do know what he argues against, but not always why.

Herwig dismisses recent controversy over the Schlieffen plan in one paragraph (on Page 40) that seems to boil down to, "everyone knows there was Schlieffen plan."

Herwig does not examine tactical actions or training for either side, nor does he look and low-level tactical action on the battlefield, but none-the-less dismisses assertions of the superiority of German tactical training and doctrine (on page 214). His dismissal is based on the failure of the German attacks around Nancy in Lorraine during September. Zuber had made the claim based on his evaluation of combat in the Ardennes in August.

Herwig presents casualty figures for the campaign (pages 315-316), but not in a format that allows an apples-to-apples comparison. Mosier, in the "Myth of the Great War," showed the Germans took two casualties for every five the Allies (Britain & France) took. Both argue that artillery ruled the Marne battlefields, but neither demonstrate how heavy artillery was effectively used during the maneuver battles of the Marne campaign. Remember, radios were not used tactically, and it is hard to string wire for communication during a meeting engagement.

I disliked Herwig's recycling of the US Army WW1 Atlas maps - mapping prepared especially to support Herwig's text could have been useful and enlightening.

This book will be a useful reference on the Marne campaign, but for a good summary I recommend readers' go with Tyng's venerable, "The Campaign of the Marne,1914" or Strachan's Volume I, "To Arms." Both are referenced extensively in Herwig's book.

I was impressed by the author's ability to weave together source material from English, French and German language sources. Too often English speaking historians limit their research to English language sources and a smattering of German or French accounts. Herwig has managed to combine these disparate (and sometimes contradictory) sources into an even-handed, comprehensive and seamless account of the Battle of the Frontiers, fighting in Belgium, and the first Battle of the Marne. While I have not been drawn to accounts of the First World War prior to this book, I am going to make it a point to keep an eye out for Herwig's work in the future. Highly recommended. One note - I do share the other reviewers concern about better maps.

Awesome!

It's the fairest way to describe this book; an awesome portrait of utter trust and complete stupidity on an industrial mass production scale. It succinctly explains the emotion behind Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's statement, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

Herwig explains why the five mellenia style of war in which commanders sent men into face-to-face combat while watching from positions where they could see the entire battlefield, ended on Nov. 11, 1918. By August 1914, war was industrialized; sadly, the intellect of commanders was far less than what Caesar or even Pharaoh Cheops would have recognized or accepted.

He has an eye for fine detail of the bloated or blasted corpses of horses and cows ... left in the sun as the German "gray machine of death" rolled forth. In a time without porta-potties, he quotes an American reporter for 'Colliers Weekly' magazine who wrote of "...a smell of which I have never heard mentioned in any book on war -- the smell of a half-million unbathed men, the stench of a menagerie raised to the nth power. That smell lay for days over every town through which the Germans passed."

These half-million men went into battle against like numbers of French soldiers, with senior commanders sometimes being out-of-touch with officers in the field for days at a time. Charles de Gaulle, a lieutenant when the war opened, later wrote, "Morally, the illusions behind which the soldiers had taken refuge were swept away in a trice."

It took years for this truth to sink into the outdated thinking of senior commanders; Herwig explains in chilling detail how vast masses of trusting soldiers eagerly went into the cauldron of death. In today's world, intelligence and communication are key elements; in World War I, courage and spirit of soldiers was considered all-important.

Herwig concludes "the great tragedy of the Marne is that it was strategically indecisive."

Perhaps. My view is the "great tragedy" is senior commanders who act without knowledge, which to me is the brilliant theme of this book. When faced with an obstacle, such bullet-headed commanders know of nothing better than to redouble their efforts to drive troops forward in a vain attempt to prove themselves right despite their complete ignorance of battlefield realities.

The industrial impact on war was obvious in the American Civil War of 1861-65; sadly, most military commanders never learned from this clear concise example. By outlining this battle and events leading up to it in careful detail, Herwign shows the folly of trusting faith, heritage and tradition to make up for the lack of intelligence, innovation and ingenuity.

This was truly the battle that changed the world, even though some military commanders still don't understand. Iraq, until the "surge" of 2007, is a recent example.

'The Marne, 1914' is an awesome collection of facts, some never before available. It explains the nature of the follies in which 10 million men died and 20 million were wounded, out of 60 million who served. That alone is an example of massive stupidity; Herwig concisely explains how such ignorance ruled the conduct of a war-to-end-all-wars.

In brief, "Awesome!"

This good book is a detailed history of the opening campaign on the Western Front of WWI. As Herwig acknowledges, this is a topic about which much has been written. The distinguishing feature of Herwig's book is that he focuses on decision making by the Germans, drawing on archival sources that became available only after the collapse of the USSR and the GDR. Herwig, consequently, offers a clearer picture of the German conduct of the campaign, though there is nothing here that dramatically changes existing concepts. This book is written clearly, though like much operational military history, a good deal of the narrative is unavoidably dense. There is some information about the experience of the war at the small unit level, but this is less portrayed than the experience of the commanders. The quality of the accompanying maps is not very good, which is a real obstacle to following the narrative.

Herwig opens with a solid description of the opening of the war, based largely on existing secondary accounts, and stressing WWI as a preventative war initiated by the Germans. He does a fairly good job of showing the German fear of the Franco-Russian alliance and general sense of encirclement. This is followed by a good discussion of pre-war German planning, centering on the famous Schlieffen plan. Herwig follows with detailed series of descriptions of the series of battles that occurred across the Western front, culminating in the battle of the Marne itself. What emerges is a picture of the enormous scope of combat conducted largely with 19th technology and methods. Transport was train, horse, and foot. Communications technology was primitive, when used at all. There was, for example, no direct radio or telephone contact between the First and Second German Armies, the German High Command had a single radio set, and the French Army went to war with thousands of carrier pigeons for communications. Its clear that commanders on neither side really appreciated the power of modern field artillery, though the Germans seem to have been better equipped with heavier guns. Under the circumstances, its not surprising that the remarkably ambitious German war plan failed. The German First Army on the very right flank of the German invasion force could achieve its objective only after marching hundreds of miles in hot weather, facing intermittent French resistance, and with increasingly inadequate resupply.

What is remarkable is how close the Germans came to success. This is probably attributable to a combination of being able to maintain the strategic initiative, the quality of their troops, and incredibly bone-headed decisions made by the French commander, Joffre, in the early weeks of the war. Joffre's obsession with attack in central sectors of the front and his refusal to accept that the Germans were attempting a gigantic flanking maneuver through Belgium played right into German hands. Joffre eventually realized his errors and acted energetically to retrieve the situation. The German Chief of Staff, von Moltke, of whom Herwig is quite critical, made little effort to coordinate the actions of his armies. This lack of high level oversight and coordination may well have proved fatal for the Germans. At the Marne, the general disorganization of German efforts led to a highly unfavorable tactical situation across the front. As is typical of military historians, Herwig tends to attribute the outcome to command decisions. His discussion of decision making by the French and German commanders seems well founded, but he may underestimate the effects of general exhaustion of both armies. Its certainly plausible that better organization and decisions on the part of the German commanders would have changed the outcome, but would the Germans have been able to capitalize on their battlefield success?

I enjoyed reading this work, mostly because it presented the German more fully than is generally encountered. Although there has been tons of volumes written on the opening battles of World War I, new material is still coming out of the various archives. This work benefits from such material, and 95 years after the battle manages to offer a fresh look and analysis. That in itself is an outstanding achievement. The book should have earned five stars, but unfortunately the defects were many.

The narrative meanders from side to side and often imparts a sense of impending doom that somehow vanishes a few pages later. Sometimes the Germans are reported to have achieved an important victory, but then there is no subsequent effect from that victory. It is even difficult to tell sometimes whether or not the author believed a certain engagement is a victory for one side or the other. The narrative simply doesn't tie the events together, and the maps provide little help in this regard. In addition, the reported casualties often do not seem to be consistent with what one would expect from the narrative. For me, at least, the book often raised questions that sent me to other references. That allowed me to really get into the subject matter, but when I was done, I questioned why I was forced to do all the extra work.

That being said, there were many good features in this work. The experience of the German Army in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 was told to good effect in explaining the 1914 actions against resistance from civilians. Von Buelow's lack of confidence and aggressiveness (as well as Moltke's), contrary to the tradition of the German Officer Corps, was fully developed and analyzed. On the French and British side, only Joffre's personality received treatment as good, and French actions in particular sometimes seemed stylized. Maybe it was the constant digressions detracting from the sweep of the battle that affected me adversely. At any rate, the book left me feeling unfulfilled when I should have been satisfied. Obviously I am conflicted in writing this review, and that reflects poorly on the book's organization and narrative.

All in all, I guess I expected more. The book is well worth reading, adds new material and perspectives, covers the German side rather well, but somehow does not rise to five stars.

Recommended to all those interested in World War One.

There have been a great many books written about the Battle of the Marne in September 1914, so why you ask do we need one more? Professor Holger H Herwig's narrative of the battle seeks to diverge from the standard Anglo-French historiography of the battle and look at it from the German perspective (i.e. more on how the battle was lost, rather than how it was won). His primary hypothesis about the root cause of the German defeat is that faulty command and control (C2) techniques - including poor leadership in key positions - doomed the so-called Schlieffen Plan. It is a good hypothesis which the professor does an effective job of supporting, although he does not mention that there are competing hypotheses, such as Martin van Creveld's well-argued Supplying War (1977), which shows that the Schlieffen Plan was logistically unsound. Other hypotheses argue that von Moltke, the Chief of the German General Staff, doomed the Schlieffen Plan by excessive operational changes. Herwig also provides value-added content by incorporating documents gleaned from recently-released archives in former East Germany, although this represents only a tiny portion of his supporting evidence. Overall, the strength of Herwig's The Marne 1914 is as a fine analysis of command and control failure at the operational-level.

Unfortunately, there are a number of irksome qualities about this book, beginning with the awful maps copied from the West Point Atlas of WW1. It is extremely difficult to follow unit movements or actions on these maps (e.g. von Gronau's impressive spoiling attack on the Ourq River that robbed Joffre's counterstroke of surprise and Third Army's night bayonet attack that threw Foch's Ninth Army back (the map shows only some arrows, but no indication where the corps and divisions the author mentions were located). While there are some first-person accounts incorporated, overall the author's battle narrative is rather sterile and difficult to follow. He also put me off at the beginning when he stated that the "Battle of the Marne" was not just about the actions fought on the outskirts of Paris, but about the entire campaign fought between 1 August and 10 September 1914. His early chapters on the frontier battles seem to distract from his main hypothesis and then once the action heats up around Paris he simply drops coverage of Alsace-Lorraine. Finally, the author never really gets into the nuts and bolts of military doctrine, tactics or organization. When he claims that each German corps had 144 135-mm guns (in fact, the German Army had a total of only 4 13.5cm K09 guns in 1914), which would translate into over 4,000 13.5cm guns, it's easy to see that he has skimmed over important details. Instead, the author spends a great deal of time discussing German atrocities committed against civilians in Belgium - which again is not very germane to his hypothesis.

Professor Herwig is on firmer ground with the faulty C2 hypothesis. He points out that unlike the elder von Moltke in the successful 1870-71 France-Prussian War, the younger Moltke made no effort to get out of his headquarters in Luxembourg and spent the entire campaign hundreds of miles from the front. This "chateau generalship" could have been mitigated if Moltke had used telephones and couriers to keep in touch with his advancing armies, but Herwig does a good job pointing out how little the German army made use of the latest means of communication in 1914. Not only did Moltke not have reliable communications with each army, but the armies could barely communicate with their neighbors on each flank or with their subordinate corps. Finally, once the Allies began their counterattack on the Marne, the weakness of key commanders such as von Bulow aggravated the inability of Moltke to orchestrate the campaign. Some of this more a question of leadership rather than C2 per se. Overall, this a very well-argued hypothesis, but whether or not it was THE key reason why the German invasion failed is less certain. Van Creveld's hypothesis also demonstrated that the Germans simply could not effectively supply their armies outside Paris, while the French were fighting right next to their main supply base. Herwig also comments that the French commander, Joffre, relied on interior lines and railroads to shift troops to the Paris area to gain a numerical superiority at the critical point, while Moltke was relying on exterior lines and infantry marching on foot; this seems like a no-brainer at any military staff college, but apparently it never occurred to von Schlieffen or Moltke. In short, why were the Germans surprised that the French could quickly transfer troops to defend their capital? Another related reason for the German defeat that the author brings up, is that the Germans were surprised that the French still had the spirit to launch furious counterattacks after weeks of retreating - this suggests that the General Staff based too much of their planning on the enemy they fought in 1870, not the one they would face in 1914.

In the end, the author essentially concludes that the great German General Staff and a few key commanders suffered a mental melt-down on 6 September 1914 and robbed Imperial Germany of possible victory. He does not claim that German victory was inevitable if they had not retreated from Paris, but he does suggest that they might have at least walked away with some tactical victories on the Ourq and against Foch's 9th Army that could have left them in a better position for the fall campaigns. Perhaps.

If you've never read anything other than survey level histories of WW I this book is a fantastic deep dive into the first weeks of the German drive on the western front. Holger Herwig, benefiting from newly available archival material, brings a new insight into the strategy and actual execution of the German war plan. The difficulties associated with the loose command structure of the German army are well articulated: the Federal nature of the army at the outset of the war (Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon, etc. armies rather than a singular German army); primitive communications and lack of strong unifying control; and the sclerotic senior command corps. This is as opposed to Joffre on the French side, changing plans and sacking commanders at will to find proper leaders once the war started.

Whether or not one accepts Herwig's view of The Marne as the key event in European history for the next 30 years does not diminish the understanding of the battle that you take away from this book. Source and end notes, index all first rate. LIke most of the other reviewers I am puzzled by the lack of quality maps (most of the maps appear to be from 1950's USMA study), especially when you are describing movement in detail. That is the reason why I rated 4 stars instead of 5 stars.

Holger Herwig's "The Marne, 1914" actually covers considerably broader ground than just the September, 1914, Battle of the Marne. Rather, the book closely surveys the first several weeks of World War One on the Western Front, culminating (with more of a whimper than a bang) in the famed action near the Marne River. The focus is perhaps somewhat more on the German army than upon France (and Britain and Belgium), but the Western Allies are by no means neglected. Both sides are shown to have committed long catalogues of errors (although the Germans ultimately were less capable of recovering from their mistakes). The primary limitation of Herwig's book, from my perspective, is the absence of maps that clearly depict what was going on. For a reader not intimately familiar with the geography of eastern France, at times the narrative presents a daunting barrier of unfamiliar names. There actually are quite a few maps given, but in general they show army (and corps) postiions against a background of rivers and cities and towns labeled in very small print. Trying to use those maps to spatially envision what the text is describing can be a frustrating task.

I have on my shelves something toward twenty five to thirty five books either addressing this battle directly as in individual enity, or large sections of several of some of these books which include this particular battle either in part or as a whole, along with other accounts and other aspects of WWI. If you do a google search and type in "The Marne," you are given a choice of 9,460,000 choices...at the time of this writing. I must admit to coming very close to passing this one up when it was placed on the shelf at the local library, as I felt it most likely redundant, but all in all, I am glad I did not.

Beyond a doubt, The Battle of the Marne, which was fought in 1914 and was the first major encounter of WWI, is one of the tipping points of history. Never before, and hopefully never again, will such an event occur, nor an event with so much riding on the outcome. This battle led to what German military historian Gerhard Ritter called the "monotonous mutual mass murder," in the trenches over the next four years. In this battle France and Germany mobilized and amassed close to two million each and Britain very near 130,000 additional men. We are talking millions of lives lost and to a great extent, an entire society, way of life, and an era came to an end. This war directly gave us WWII, and if you look at if from a certain angle, ever war fought since, either directly or indirectly. We are what we are today due to this insane period in our history.

As has been pointed out, one of the reasons this work is a bit different, and the primary reason that I went ahead and read it, is that it perhaps places a bit more emphasis to the German point of view than many of the works I have. It was gratifying to find that the German High Command and indeed many of the field officers were just as incompetent, inept and foolish as were the French and English leaders. This work reinforced my long held belief that all aspects of this conflict were seen through the eyes of men whose minds were in the era of swords, bayonets, horses and single shot muskets. Their minds simply did not or could not envision, fathom or comprehend the weapons, the massively destructive weapons which had been developed since the Napoleonic or Franco-Prussian war. There is no doubt in my mind that the men who conducted this war on both sides, were in many ways absolutely clueless. The author has made this point in this work and made it well.

The author, Holger H. Herwig has drawn upon reference material which until the break-up of the Soviet Empire were unavailable. With the collapse of Eastern Germany, many records were found which were though to have been destroyed during WWII bombing raids. This alone makes this work worth the read. Of course there has been, as with any new work, the question of revisionist history brought into the mix when discussing this work. It is my position that we simply do not know and will not know the answer to that question until other scholars and competent military historians have had a chance to throw in their two bits. Now do be aware that this new information will not cast any blinding revelations on the subject nor changes the views of those that have studied this battle, but it will give the reader a different slant and some points to ponder that may well have been overlooked before.

This work is well written and reader be warned; it is extremely detailed! I personally like this sort of work, but that is personal preference and those that want only the "big picture" or broad overview will soon be overwhelmed by facts and military minutia. At times the author's style is a bit flat and lacks somewhat in the "excitement factor," something many will not enjoy. The prose though is exact and when read leaves the reader with a perfect understanding of the message the author is attempting to bring us. I found this work to be extremely readable.

It is interesting, as the author points out, to speculate the results of a German victory during this most decisive of battles. No four years of mass slaughter in the trenches, no WWII, No Hitler. On the other hand, we would have had almost complete dominance of Europe by the German Republic, then and for the foreseeable future.

The one thing I disliked about this work, and this is a major, major pet peeve with me, is the lack of quality maps and the lack of an adequate number of maps. This was an extremely complex battle with much movement by the various forces involved and covered a rather large area. Maps, maps, maps...it needs more and better maps. This is the only reason I am giving this one four stars rather than the five stars it would otherwise deserve.

World War Two was probably one of the greatest disasters (ranks right up there with the plague of several hundred years previous to these events) and I must say, in my opinion, one of the most mindless endeavors of mankind in the history of the world. This battle, this war is well worth delving into. It is a part of our history and the effects of this battle and of that war is still being felt even to this day and I dare say, for years to come.

I highly recommend this work. If your interest includes this era, then this work should be on your bookshelf.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks