Customer Reviews

The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I

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Coffman provides an interesting perspective on the First World War. His reader will find no discussion on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand or information of the Schlieffen Plan. He will instead find details on the Selective Service Act and the famous American air ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Throughout this work, Coffman shows the United States as an important player in the Great War, and refreshingly he does not rehash the European aspects of the war about which so many others have written. Furthermore he is effective in his task, and his reader will have a better understanding of the American World War I military experience. Primarily Coffman examines the US Army, but he also devotes time to the Navy, Air Force, and the Marines. The book gives glimpses at the performance of each branch, and gives brief amounts of information about technological innovations during the war - especially in the realms of naval and air power. As one would expect, Coffman also writes about the major American military leaders such as John J. Pershing and William J. Donovan, but more interesting than his accounts of these men are his vignettes of common soldiers. Coffman obviously devoted a great deal of time conducting interviews with and reading the journals and letters of veterans. These portraits allow the reader to gain a real sense of the military experience of the Americans who fought in the war. Coffman's monograph is an excellent account of the United States during World War I. It is well written and researched, and it even includes enough maps that descriptions of battles can be understood. Its only drawback, and a minor one at that, is that the reader must already have a general understanding of the events in the Great War. Of course Coffman did not set out to write a general history of the war, but a general reader would need more background in order to truly gain the sense of America's wartime experience about which he writes.

In recent decades, social historians have strayed from the study of key historical figures and prominent events and instead focused their efforts on the common folk. Incorporating the methodologies of sociology and other disciplines within the social sciences, historians have made tremendous strides in promoting a better understanding of the masses. A few military historians have followed suit. Instead of writing solely about battles, campaigns, and the generals who plotted the strategies and won or lost, they turned their attention on who made up the rank and file. Edward M. Coffman dominates this breed of new military historian. His book _The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I_ is a scholarly and brilliantly written tour de force; his collective group study: the American citizen soldier.First published in 1968 at the height of America's involvement in Vietnam, Coffman set the president for this new style of military history. His work is now a classic. As the subtitle suggests, Coffman tells the story of the whole American experience beginning in the spring of 1917 up to the signing of the Armistice. Throughout the book, Coffman remains focused on the American soldier and the planning, administration, and organization of his primary fighting force; the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF).As a result, the political machinations of coalition warfare and high level strategic decisions receives only enough attention to place his subject in proper perspective.The creation of the AEF, the largest American armed force ever sent to fight on foreign soil up to that time, is a marvel in and of itself. Coffman covers all aspects of this tremendous achievement. General John J. Pershing sailed for France with what amounted to a understrengthed division: the 1st Division. The AEF grew to a corps sized force, and evntually the First and Second Armies. In April 1917, the AEF consisted of 200,000 soldiers. By November 1918, it contained nearly 4,000,000. In addition to discussions on the War Department in 1917, and the stateside expansion of the United States Army, the author also covers with clever succunctness other important topics. These subjects include: the meteoric sculpting of the massive AEF command and supply structure in France; the disagreements between the General Staff in Washington and Pershing's Headquarters in Chaumont, France. Coffman also includes separate chapters on the American Navy and the air war. Coffman ties these themes together with a flowing battle narrative of the major campaigns the AEF fought in France as well as, some of the lessor known battles. It is the topics relating to the social history of the American soldier, however, that Coffman excels. The author covers such topics as the draft, procurment of officers, the controversial amalgamation of Negro troops into French units early in the war (Pershing venomously fought attempts by the British and French to amalgamate American soldiers as canon fodder into Allied units. He said Americans will fight as Americans led by American officers. Not so, unfortunately, for Negro troops), and consciences objectors. From a social standpoint, Coffman also examines: the establishment of recreation facilities for the soldiers to discourage vice, liquor and prostitutes; venereal disease, and the culture clashes between the French and the newly arrived Americans. Coffman outlines the pros and cons of the American participation but, unlike some critics, is sympathetic to Pershing and the AEF. He is most sensitive to the role the fledgling American debut played in turning the tide and eventual victory for the Allies. Coffman makes every attempt to reveal the gratitude the French had for the American presence. Among the plethora of sources consulted, the author refers to numerous diaries and memoirs from the ordinary rank and file. An extensive "Essay on Sources" in which Coffman not only lists the archival material utilized, but also divulges how the information was applied to individual chapters, is a consolation for the lack of footnotes.The creation and deployment of the AEF in World War I is a watershed in American military history. If you want to learn not only how it was done, but also who made up its main body, this is the book to read. No one does the social history of the American army like Coffman.

Several sources recommended this book as the definitive overview of the American military in World War I. Overall I was impressed at its wide overview of many aspects of the war. It has chapters that examine the navy, air wing, Pershing's relationship with the French and English as well as the chapters you would expect about the major military campaigns. While the book focuses on the strategic side of things, it does give anecdotal stories of small unit actions. Overall, a good book that I will keep in my library as a great reference.

Excellant....very readable....best WWI I've read....author thorough....like to see him do one on Korean War...

Ray Hufnagel

I learned a great deal of the US involvement in World War 1 from this book. I have been trying to research my grandfather's service in WW 1 and found this book very useful. While it is somewhat drawn out in certain sections, it is very informative in other sections. From the information I had, I was able to piece together where my grandfather served and the battles he was involved in while there. I would reccomend this book only to those seriously looking at the US role in WW 1.

World War I is a difficult war to understand, and it's almost as if it gets even more and more difficult the more one reads about it. It's without a doubt my favorite war (because yes, of course one can have such a thing as a favorite war), but it's also the one war that I just cannot seem to come to terms with, really. Perhaps especially because of the way the war was fought; the freakishly large number of men who were sacrificed when they advanced over open terrain against vicious machinegun nests, got exposed to menacing gas attacks in their trenches, or were blown to bloody pieces during enormous artillery attacks often lasting several days in a row.

It was the first modern war, but it was often fought using old tactics, and thus the human losses became greater than in any other war fought up until then. And the bizarre slaughter of an entire generation lasted for four years! Small wonder it's so difficult to comprehend what was really going on. These days, the death of a mere twenty or so American soldiers in a single day in Baghdad make headlines all over the world, but during World War I it wasn't a rare occasion with tens of thousands of casualties in a single day. What does this mean? Were human lives simply not as valuable than as they are today? Because, and not to in any way promote the Iraqi cause or scorn U.S. casualties (since all fatalities caused by the madness of war are equally stupid), what is a mere twenty deaths compared to what war used to be like?

Anyhow, The War To End All Wars was originally published back in 1968, and in this edition some corrections have been made here and there. But, one thing that hasn't been changed or corrected is the language in which it was written, and in the today's politically correct society it's thus strange to see how Edward M. Coffman writes "Negroes" and "Indians" instead of "African Americans" and "Native Americans". As a white European I'm not particularly upset (not upset at all, actually), but I'm sure many others are.

And not only because of the way the book was written. As with any other well-researched book about war, The War To End All Wars contains a great deal of outrageous facts. For instance, the following about the recruiting of all the new soldiers needed for the enormous army that were hastily put together, when the government:

"... declared that 47,3 per cent of the whites and 89 per cent of the Negroes were below the mental age of thirteen and, according to the standards of the day, morons. Either this pioneering testing venture was invalid or most American men in their twenties were very stupid." (pg.61)

Or how about the following order that was issued after a great deal of men had either deserted or simply refused to continue on with the senseless butchering:

"When men run away in front of the enemy, officers should take summary action to stop it, even to the point of shooting men down who are caught in such disgraceful conduct. No orders need be published on the subject, but it should be made known to many young officers that they must do whatever is required to prevent it." (pg.333)

The book deals exclusively, as the title says, with the American involvement in World War I, but beware, if you're looking for eye-witness accounts or descriptions of what actually happened at the front, then you must first be prepared to read about 200 pages filled with politics and endless descriptions of all the preparatory work taking place before the first U.S. soldiers were shipped across the Atlantic. And the accounts that do feature in the text after 200 pages are not very graphic or thorough. Obviously the politics behind it all is worth knowing, but if you're looking for gory battle scenes you're in for a disappointment.

Just like the war in itself was a disappointment. In the end, it never was the war to end all wars, just another display of human madness and our inability to live peacefully side by side with our fellow man.

In the last few days of the war a letter from a woman to an unknown German soldier was found on his body. Her words are bound to be repeated again and again, until this world of ours is destroyed by our very own hands and human civilization as we know it ceases to exist:

"It seems apparent that the dawn of peace is drawing nearer, and we dare entertain more hopes that this the most hideous of all wars, this vile murdering, which scorns and derides all humanity; which places us, no matter how highly cultured we pretended to be, lower than the savages, will end sometime and we can feel that we are human beings again." (pg.336)

On the back of this book, Stephen Ambrose praises this work as a definitive work on the US involvement in World War I, I should have been suspicious of its content from that point on.
Coffman's book beyond the first couple chapters is immensely not readable, and at times absolutely confusing. The early part of the book rushes through how the US ultimately came to be involved in the war, and only mentions the Lusitania, the resumption of German unrestricted submarine warfare, the Zimmerman telegram and social factors inside the US among groups that thought war wouldn't be such a bad idea in order to gain premacy for their viewpoint, fleetingly. It also doesn't really discuss Wilson's rejected attempts at mediation of the conflict and his realization that in order to reshape Europe in the way he advocated, the US needed to be involved in the conflict and have "troops on the ground." Coffman also doesn't discuss how demonizing portrayals of Germany and German soldiers influenced American perception as well as the fact that due to the blockade of Germany and the cutting of the trans-atlantic cable by the British, Germany could not dispell any of these demonizing tales spread in the US of the German army killing civilians and bombarding religious and other historical places with reckless disreguard.
What Coffman does give us in this work is a monotonous tome about the organization of the AEF and American air corps. The majority of this book is focused on nothing more than logistics and how the Allied powers needed American force very badly and therefore wanted to hasten our entrance into the war and allow troops to be commanded by French or English commanders, and not seperately. He also drones on about the internal conflict between Pershing and the British and French generals over this and other aspects.
To compound this boring tome on logistics, Coffman jumps around in his story. He finally gets to combat done by American pilots, and then in his next chapter begins with an extensive biographical sketch of American armed forces leaders, completely confusing the reader. By the time Coffman gets to actual combat participated in to any large extent by American forces, he stuffs all of this information into one chapter, completely losing the reader.
Coffman's maps included in the text are also few and far between as well as horribly designed. The maps don't clearly show the advance of US forces on each day of the battle being discussed, and do not include where the German trenches are relative to the Americans.
In short, this may have been a good book thirty years ago, but now it's hopelessly outdated and confusing. There needs to be another scholar in the mode of Martin Gilbert write the story of the AEF and American air corps.