A very interesting book - however, as most non-fiction books, it is a hard read - one paragraph per page. I never understand why they have to make them so hard to read when they are filled with great information!

Even though this book runs some 700 pages, the author’s treatment of the subject matter is far too involved, leaving the reader with a tome that is very dense, and at times difficult to read. A person who is interested in the First World War would be better off elsewhere.

Strongest in the description of the events leading up to the war the authors seems to have wanted to hurry up and finish the book and provides less details and description as the end of the war approached, leading to very little overall description to the end of the war in comparison to the beginning. Would have also helped to have more and or clearer maps.

Keegan does a commendable job of covering the key events of the 4 year war in a little less than 500 pages. While the attention to detail will always be less than expected in such an effort, Keegan's lack of mastery over English was evident through out the book. Great historical works are remembered not for the facts and statistics they contain but for the manner in which they convey the happenings of the past. Apart from a handful of memorable passages, Keegan disappointed on that count.

But in spite of this, "The First World War" is an accessible piece of work that demystifies the main battles of the war. Marne, Somme, Jutland, Ypres, Tannenberg, Gallipoli, Passchendaele etc will no longer be unknown geographic locations for me. The last sections of the book dealing with the Russian revolution, the Civil War and the collapse of the Eastern front bringing in its wake a number of young republics were quite memorable and should have deserved a bit more space.

My resolution to read up more on the First War has got off to a good start.

There are not many books out there about the First World War, and there are even fewer good one-volume popularizations. This might be because the Great War lacks the pathos and the apparent aspects of heroism of its sequel European tragedy. There are no big names that stand out, neither are there many spectacular and critical battles. Nor are there retrospectively clear “good guys” and “bad guys”. The whole thing has the feeling of a mistake, a muddy, avoidable, immense waste of life in which millions of men were sacrificed along fronts that hardly budged, a pointless conflict which saw the dismemberment of three empires: the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian.

I’ve mentioned before that the Great War seemed to be prowling in the background of several books I had read recently: The Remains of the Day, Wittgenstein’s biography, and Logicomix. The truth was that I had plenty of general knowledge about the War but very little specific information. It knew it as an event that set the groundwork for the Second World War, but the actual waging of the war, its antecedents and its outcomes, were pretty vague in my mind. If that’s the case for you as well, Keegan’s book is the antidote.

Keegan’s The Great War is a straightforward narrative of the conflict, beginning with a brief cultural and political survey of Europe at the outbreak of war and ending with an explanation of how the outcome and terms imposed on Germany as well as the way national boundaries were re-drawn in its wake from the ruins of empires set the stage for the Second World War, which Keegan understands as a natural progression of the First. Both these topics-- the causes and the results of the war-- merit books of their own (which have likely been written), but they show the comprehensive ease that Keegan brings to his topic: treating cultural, political, economic, and technological aspects with enough depth as to be meaningful but never moving beyond the scope of a single-volume treatment.

Between these two chronological bookends, the narrative is that of the progress of the Great War itself, as divided and shifting as the scope of the conflict itself. Most chapters deal with progress (or lack thereof) on the Western Front and the details of the trench warfare involved. Keegan puts in a bit of biography, so that the many commanders involved become at least a bit multidimensional, as well as frequent quotes from letters and accounts of troops on the front. This is one of his great accomplishments of the work: humanizing those who fought, on both sides.

The work is slightly Eurocentric because those are the conflicts for which we have the most detailed sources and accounts, and Keegan draws on them to paint each pointless back and forth with specific details. He is careful to show, however, that the conflict was indeed worldwide. There is plenty of discussion of what was happening on the Eastern front as well, including the ultimate collapse of the Russian armies, and around the world. For example, the conflict in the Middle East, the assault on Germany’s African colonial holdings, and the naval battles of the North Sea are all chronicled. One of the interesting points that Keegan makes and that shapes subsequent narratives of the war is the contrast between the education and background of soldiers on the Eastern versus the Western front: the Eastern front soldiers were often illiterate peasants, so besides a very few surviving accounts such as those by Wittgenstein, our knowledge of the conflicts in the East is much more tenuous, acerbated by the fact that the antagonists in those regions-- Russia and the Hapsburg Empire-- disintegrated by the war’s end. The conflict there did not “set” in the cultural and literary imagination like the war in the West.

There is history of technology in this treatment as well, though not in detail and not in abundance (which is just about right for a general treatment). Specifically, Keegan discusses the construction of the dreadnought class of warship and their role in the conflict, as well as the coming of tanks used alongside infantry. In his discussion of tactics on the battlefield, he highlights the dawning strategy of armies being considered moveable fortresses and the difficulty in the essential coordination of artillary assault with ground attack. Artillary and massed armies-- these were the primary format of the conflict.

The entire treatment is accessible, and the narrative momentum does not bog even when the conflict itself does. Keegan captures both the drama and tragedy of the entire war without simplifying or villainizing either side. Indeed, it is the courtesy and camaraderie often showed across lines even in the face of unmitigated slaughter that seems to strike Keegan most about life in the trenches. Empires died in the Great War, and millions of soldiers, for no clear reason. Yet to treat the whole thing as senseless mistake and therefore ignore it would also be a tragedy. Keegan accomplishes the very difficult by telling the story of the Great War without glorifying or dismissing it.

Keegan acknowledges at the outset of his work, that World War I was a tragedy. He rightly states that World War II "was the direct outcome of the first." Early on, the book develops slowly, while he lays out the situation and the armies move into position. The book really picks up in the middle once the "stalemate", as he calls it, takes hold.

Most of Keegan's attention is given to the European battles. Ample attention is also given to the war in Africa, Asia, and the Atlantic Ocean. We can easily forget that the European nations fought each other throughout their colonial holdings, but this was a big part of the war, particularly in the first few years.

Keegan has clearly done his research, with twenty pages of notes, and several pages of bibliography. His writing is very good in many parts of the book, but I found the first third of the book very slow. When he takes the time to comment at length, he has an ability to be very direct and articulate. The last chapter was a highlight for this reason.

The war itself, is described well as a debacle, as Keegan acknowledges. The European powers suffered from a kind of delirium. The European states were infected with pride, envy, and militarism. As the war began, those already in the fight sought to drag neighbors into the conflict in an effort to bring more firepower to bear upon their enemy. This was tragic for many nations, as they had nothing to gain by fighting, in the end. Every nation in the war, with the exception of America, lost far more than they could have ever gained. This was not a part of the decision for war, however, at least not in any meaningful sense.

Keegan eloquently asks, at the end of the book, "Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict? Why, when the hope of bringing the conflict to a quick and decisive conclusion was everywhere dashed to the ground within months of its outbreak, did the combatants decide nevertheless to persist in their military effort, to mobilise for total war and eventually to commit the totality of their young manhood to mutual and existentially pointless slaughter?"

I think Keegan is at least partially wrong here, at least when he says that Europe was at "one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement." This simply wasn't the case any longer. Europe was infected with socialism and had already largely abandoned Christianity by the turn of the 20th century. The war was the manifestation of this apostasy.

In addition to the outbreak of war as a symbol of the European apostasy, the war itself was conducted with moral abandon. Germany committed atrocities across the continent as an expression of its national policy. They also introduced chemical weapons, which the allies began using themselves. Their U-Boat campaign was also an atrocious example of moral bankruptcy.

The Axis powers were not the only ones who violated moral principles. The Allies starved the Germans into submission and their peace demands extended the war and then paved the way for German resentment and retaliation.

Keegan does a great job bringing the war itself into focus. I found "The Guns of August" and "Europe's Last Summer" to be much more satisfying (and naturally longer) accounts of the beginning of the war. But this is a great book to take the battles themselves in, in a single volume.

I wanted to read a detailed account about the first world war especially in terms of what the situation was around Europe leading up to the War and the way it began. This book brilliantly gives all the details of how all the countries came together to fight a war that took so many lives. Gives amazing historical accounts of major battles and how technology and strategy impacted the eventual loss of the central powers and victory for the allies. A must read for anyone who wants to know more about WWI.

This book is an excellent overview of the First World War. It is a military history, largely unconcerned with civilian realities, but takes care to address all fighting fronts (not just the Western, as so many English language histories do). As a result, in can never go as in depth as a more studied reader may wish. However it is still compelling, well-researched, and (most importantly) not dry. If you were never really taught about World War I and like decently sized histories, I would recommend this to you.

An extremely dense but thorough overview of WWI. One can easily get lost in the minutia of detail but is a good read for those looking for a general understanding of the conflict.

Recommended as a good way of filling in the gaps in one’s World War One knowledge including the distinction between the three battles of Ypres, the over emphasized importance of the airborne conflict and the myriad of lesser known campaigns including ones that took place in Tanzania and the Caucasus. It is, however, a little too attendant to the details of battle formations and I’d have liked more on the political context.

That is, of course, because the reasons for the war are still so utterly inconsequential beyond the fact that all sides were simply spoiling for a fight. Unlike other conflicts, economics plays only a secondary role to pure unadulterated self-aggrandisement and how the killing of Franz Ferdinand led to the Somme is a still a cause for bafflement. Add to that the fact it was close – the Germans over extended themselves and had a few details been different, might have considered themselves the victors.

Overall, General Haig, Kitchener and others are painted as they should be – appalling perpetrators of crimes against humanity and no amount of historical revisionism should change that.

DNF at 12%

He may be a fantastic historian, but his turn of phrase leaves much to be desired :( Some phrases need to be read more than twice, to make any meaning out of them, and I can see from the reviews that I'm not the only one to think so.

Monumentale, in particolare riguardo ai movimenti tattici. Tuttavia la parte istituzionale è piuttosto frammentaria e secondo me il sottotitolo "una storia politico-militare" lascia qualcosa da ridire.
Dal punto di vista della purissima storia militare è sicuramente uno dei migliori testi sulla WW1 scritti.