There is an over abundance of battle information and detail, to the point that it can become a blur of too many details and focus on particular battle details.
Perhaps taking a step back and helping us gain more clarity on the overall thrust of the story and bigger picture would be more helpful? The sum total of these battle stories does, however, give a clear impression of the futility of much of the fighting which took place in the Great War. How misguided leaders can treat so many of our best and brightest as fodder for their failed political visions is mystifying. Millions upon millions of lives were ground up in horrific trench warfare and all that came of it was to set the tensions in place to make it possible to repeat and rinse and do it all over again in WWII, but on a larger, more bloody scale.

The sheer magnitude of the carnage of World War I is what gets to me. I'm used to reading about Civil War battles -- 23,000 casualties at Antietam, 51,000 at Gettysburg. But with World War I, I find myself reading about battles that inflicted 300,000 casualties, or 500,000, and resulted in nothing more than a slight change in the battle lines. In The First World War, John Keegan does a superb job of capturing the complexity and the tragedy of the 1914-18 war that decimated a generation of young Britons and Frenchmen and Germans. Among Keegan's conclusions: World War I effectively killed the Enlightenment in Europe -- blighting the continent's optimism and its faith in liberal democracy, establishing ideal conditions for the totalitarian dictatorships that would start World War II. Indeed, Keegan holds that "The Second World War, when it came in 1939, was unquestionably the outcome of the First, and in large measure its continuation" (p. 9). A war that killed 40 million people and did nothing more than to lay the groundwork for a new and more terrible war twenty years later -- it is a grim thing to contemplate. So is the idea that there may have been, in effect, just one World War, with a twenty-year "halftime."

Some of the things that Keegan reveals about World War I may surprise you. He acknowledges the aerial excellence of Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron" whose eighty combat victories make him "the highest ranking pilot ace in any of the war's air forces"; but then reminds the reader that "Air operations were...marginal to the issue of defeat or victory even in 1918" (p. 406). And the program of unrestricted submarine warfare carried out by the dreaded German U-boats belied a stubborn reality: "The geography of the German-speaking lands, however configured into states, denies the Germans maritime power" (p. 265).

Amid the vastness of the larger picture, Keegan makes sure to provide the telling details that bring the war to life. I was struck by Keegan's account of the disastrous Russian defeat at Tannenberg -- a German "encirclement" victory in which the Russians lost 50,000 killed and wounded, plus 92,000 taken prisoner. The defeated Russian commander Samsonov "repeatedly expressed despair: 'The Emperor trusted me. How can I face him again?' Finding a means to be alone for a few minutes, he shot himself" (p. 150).

Australian and New Zealand readers will find particularly compelling Keegan's account of the campaign and battle of Gallipoli. As Keegan makes clear, British commanding general Sir Ian Hamilton's plan for success on that sandy Turkish peninsula "could not work, nor could any other have done with the size of the force made available to him" (p. 241). Yet the ANZAC troops immortalized themselves by the depth of their sacrifice against impossible odds, and to this day the ANZACs' "grandchildren and great-grandchildren often bring [their] medals back with them to Gallipoli on...pilgrimage, as if to reconsecrate the symbols of the ANZAC spirit, a metaphor for that of the nation itself, on sacred soil" (p. 249).

Fans of Ernest Hemingway will be reminded of A Farewell to Arms when they read about the battle of Caporetto -- a disaster for Allied Italy, in response to which, during the long and agonizing Italian retreat, the Italian commander Cadorna "did his best to increase the number [of dead] by a ruthless and characteristic...execution of stragglers", a brutal episode of "judicial savagery [that] could not halt the rout nor did it save [Cadorna's] neck" (p. 349).

And because I had the good fortune to watch the United States Marine Corps' Silent Drill Platoon perform at Belleau Wood, the site where the Marines saved Paris from capture during the last major German offensive of the war, I was particularly moved by Keegan's recounting of Belleau Wood. The Germans' "Big Bertha," a gun with a 75-mile range, was in position to fire upon Paris; and as Keegan tells it, "At an early stage of the battle in their sector it was suggested to a Marine officer by French troops retreating through their positions that he and his men should retreat also. 'Retreat?' answered Captain Lloyd Williams, in words which were to enter the mythology of the Corps, 'Hell, we just got here'" (p. 407).

These were the stories that stood out for me; perhaps other stories will stand out for you. Keegan writes well and makes the war understandable, and he consistently remembers the importance of emphasizing the human dimension of war. With helpful photographs and maps, this is truly a magisterial history of World War I.

The book offers a good general overview of the Great War with much detail of the buildups and numerous engagements on the opposing sides. However, discussion of events in 1918, the final year of the war, was presented with much less depth than prior years. There was really no mention of accounts on the final day of the war, November 11, 1918 Armistice Day, a day so historical that author Joseph Persico wrote an entire book about it.

Keegan does tend to concentrate a bit more on the British Expeditionary Forces, but they were certainly in the thick of much of the fighting. I do take exception to his comment regarding the American Expeditionary Forces “It is immaterial whether the doughboys fought well or not. Though the professional opinion of the French and British officers that they were enthusiastic rather than efficient was correct…” is well off the mark. The German opposition opinion of the AEF ought to carry the most weight. The German’s were within a three day march of taking Paris and in no mood for retreat until they came in contact with Pershing’s AEF. It did not take long for the German Forces to fear the well trained AEF divisions including the 1st Division known as the “Big Red One” and particularly the elite 2nd Division led by General John A. Lejeune USMC towards the end of the war that was comprised of a brigade of Marines. The Marines were so tenacious moving forward that the German’s called them “Devil Dogs”. Not only were they fearless, but classified as Marksman, Sharpshooter and Expert, they were the most proficient individuals at firing a rifle killing German’s at up to 800 yards away. These talents and skills of the AEF members were further recorded during the Occupation of Germany events with the Pershing Games.

It is not an easy task to compile the First World War into one binding and this book chronicles an important piece of history.

A friend reminded me that this year was the 100th Anniversary of the beginning of WWI and suggested I do some reading about The Great War.

So I started with this overview. For those of you who did as well as I did in Geography, I would suggest that you print out a map of Europe. It really helped in understand what Keegan was describing in terms of troop movements, battles, and war plans.

I was staggered by numbers. Large numbers like 300,000 and 700,000 dead, wounded, prisoners, needed to replace the dead, wounded, and prisoners. I knew that WWI involved trench warfare with both sides fighting to control 5 football fields of land. I remembered reading before about the gas used (tear gas, chlorine, mustard).

What came as a shock was the attitude that life was cheap. A commitment to offensives where the commander knew there would be a substantial loss of his men. At the end of the book, I had the sense that WWI would never have ended if Germany could have conscripted the Chinese to fill their withered ranks. If Americans had not joined the Allies, the result could have been much different.

I learned how important tanks were. The Germans did not invest much time, ingenuity, or resources to develop tanks. But the British and French did. The better built British Mark IV and Mark V really helped the Allies in some of the battles.

Communication. At the beginning of the book, I got a sense that perhaps this war could have been prevented if the major players (Germans, Austrians, Serbs, French, British, and Russian) could have just gotten on a conference call a worked something out. But communications in 1914 were not at all what we have today. When the Tsar is on his yacht in the Black Sea, it is very difficult to converse with him.
Also Battlefield communications were mostly nil. Radio batteries were so big it took several men to carry a radio. Telephone lines cut, blown, up or broken. Hours to get orders from commanders to troops. The artillery firing by guesswork.

At the end of the book, Keegan discusses the large numbers of soldiers who were killed but whose bodies were never found. He describes the burial grounds built in the style of the Allies to remember their dead. He uses two moving quotes from Kipling. He describes the contrast on the German side. He describes their anger at the sanctions imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles.

Finally, having seen Lawrence of Arabia, I thought there would be a large section in the book on his work with the Arab tribes. He gets a one page mention near the end. The book does spend quite a few pages on the disaster of Gallipoli. It made me glad I had never seen the film.

I am not sure where my WWI reading will take me next. Probably, I will read more about the beginning of the war.