Chronicling the gruesome toll of the fighting at Cold Harbor Ulysses S. Grant’s offensive against Robert E. Lee’s entrenched Army of Northern Virginia at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, summons powerful images. Northern assaults that day stand alongside Ambrose E. Burnside’s attacks at Fredericksburg and John Bell Hood’s at Franklin as examples of seemingly pointless slaughter of brave but doomed soldiers. Even casual students of the Civil War know that Grant admitted as much in his memoirs when he confessed that he “always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.” Despite the well-known drama and gruesome butcher’s bill on June 3, historians have devoted relatively little attention to Cold Harbor. It served as the last major battle of the Overland campaign, greatly influenced morale behind the lines in the North, and set the stage for Grant’s brilliant crossing of the James River- all attributes that invite scrutiny. But historians have focused on the opening rather than the closing battles of the Overland campaign, writing several detailed studies of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. Perhaps the apparent simplicity of the action at Cold Harbor on June 3, with unimaginative and costly frontal attacks that ended in predictable failure, has discouraged potential investigators. Ernest B. Furgurson’s Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor 1864 offers the first full-scale treatment of the subject. Furgurson brings to his task skills that produced successful earlier books on the Chancellorsville campaign and Richmond’s wartime experience -careful research in an array of published sources and unpublished manuscripts, an engaging and sometimes eloquent writing style, awareness of the many ties between the battlefield and the home front, and a deft touch with brief biographical sketches.

The book emphasizes that the celebrated fighting on June 3 represented just one element of a much larger set of maneuvers and clashes near Cold Harbor between May 28 and June 11 that produced more than 15,000 Union and between 3,000 and 5,000 Confederate casualties. A pair of chapters set the stage with an overview of events from the battle of the Wilderness on May 5-6 through action along the North Anna River three weeks later. Subsequent chapters highlight the cavalry engagements at Haw’s Shop on May 28 and at Matadequin Creek on May 30, the armies’ jockeying for position and skirmishing along Totopotomoy Creek on May 28-31, fighting at Bethesda Church on May 30, and aggressive Confederate movements and Union responses at Cold Harbor on June 1-2. Furgurson allocates less than 10 percent of his narrative to the combat on June 3, moving on to a consideration of the battle’s aftermath, its impact on northern politics and Union and Confederate civilian morale, and the reshuffling of units that preceded Grant’s march to the James River. Furgurson introduces a good deal of analysis into his chronological narrative. Much of it centers on Grant, George G. Meade, and the Union high command. He argues that Grant’s decision to accompany the Army of the Potomac while leaving Meade as its titular head fueled tensions and prevented efficient application of superior northern manpower and resources. “Grant did not know the Army of the Potomac intimately enough to give detailed orders as if he were the only general in charge,” observes Furgurson, while “Meade did not feel deep personal responsibility for managing operations that Grant had broadly planned.” Dangerous misconceptions about both the rebel army and his own force contributed to Grant’s decision to launch the attacks on June 3. He believed the Confederates suffered from low morale after being hammered at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania but thought Union soldiers retained high spirits despite heavy casualties in attacks against entrenchments during the first three weeks of May. On June 3, he hoped his men would win a decisive success against a weakened foe. But “Grant badly misunderstood the enemy, from Robert E. Lee down to the leanest Alabama rifleman,” argues Furgurson. “He also misunderstood his own army, from George G. Meade down to the weariest Massachusetts private. That helps explain why the assault failed so miserably.” Furgurson further criticizes Grant for failing to admit defeat after June 3. The Federal commander allowed wounded Federals to lie helpless between the lines rather than raise the white flag in order to have them removed. Sending a formal request to Lee under a white flag of truce, Furgurson notes, for Grant would have “meant conceding what every soldier in both armies could see but had not yet been absorbed in Washington and beyond: that he had been decisively beaten in the climactic battle of the bloody spring offensive, his first campaign as general-in-chief.” Although indicating that Lee bore part of the blame for unnecessary delay in getting relief to the wounded Federals, Furgurson judges Grant much more harshly.

Grant insisted that Cold Harbor gave Confederates only a momentary lift and had no long-term negative effect on Union soldiers. Furgurson notes persuasively that nearly the reverse was true. The bungled Union attacks against Petersburg in mid-June underscored the pernicious influence of a “Cold Harbor syndrome” that rendered northern troops less effective than in previous battles. Cold Harbor also sent tremors through the North, contributing to a period of growing doubt about the outcome of the War. As for Grant, he admitted failure in his effort to defeat Lee’s army north of Richmond but blamed that failure “not on his own strategy, but on the Confederates’ unwillingness to abandon their trenches and fight on his terms.” Although generally well written and soundly argued, Furgurson’s narrative sometimes claims too much or relies on questionable evidence. For example, Furgurson asserts that Cold Harbor marked a tactical “turning point of the Civil War,” after which “the war of maneuver became a war of siege; stand-up attack and defense gave way to digging and trench warfare.” Yet as the opening section of Not War But Murder makes clear, digging and trench warfare had become standard features of the confrontation between Grant and Lee before Cold Harbor. Earlier campaigns of maneuver also had given way to sieges at Vicksburg and elsewhere. Similarly, Furgurson’s statement that no other major battle of the War was “so shamefully one-sided as that in the first week of June 1864, at the country crossroads of Cold Harbor, Virginia” certainly would provoke lively disagreement.

In terms of evidence, Furgurson falls into the trap of using postwar testimony to describe wartime events and attitudes. He suggests that on the evening of June 2 “every man in both armies knew the grand assault was next,” supporting this highly questionable assertion with an 1880s quotation from Confederate general Evander M. Law. Law claimed in retrospect, with the advantage of knowing what had transpired on June 3, that he was “as well satisfied that [the attack] would come at dawn the next morning as if I had seen General Meade’s order directing it.” Furgurson also accepts Joshua L. Chamberlain’s postwar avowal that for a time after Cold Harbor the Union army ceased to compile routine morning reports of unit strengths because “the country would not stand it, if they knew” about the heavy casualties. Elsewhere, Furgurson employs dramatic but questionable quotations, most notably the purported Union diary entry that read: “June 3, Cold Harbor. I was killed.” These weaknesses do little to diminish Furgurson’s accomplishment in writing a balanced, compelling study of an important part of the Overland campaign. After more than a century and a third, Cold Harbor finally has emerged from the shadows of Civil War literature.

Gary W. Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. His books include The Confederate War (1997) and Lee and His Generals in War and Memory (1998).

Why did Germany defeat France so easily in 1940? Conventional thinking has focused on three reasons. The first of these reasons that Germany had superior troop strength and more sophisticated weaponry has been shown to be false. The second, that the French troops were badly led, has also been discredited. Third, the charge that there was a “moral laxness” among the French soldiers does not hold up either. During the six weeks of fighting, France lost approximately 124,000 men with another 200,000 wounded, and reports indicate that most French units displayed gallantry.

What did or did not happen? Harvard historian Ernest May surveys a broad range of factors on both sides that led to the outcome in his absorbing diplomatic, political, and military history Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France. The author emphasizes the high level of confidence that prevailed in France before the German invasion in May and continued in certain places even after the Germans were on French soil. The arrogance of the French leaders they knew they had superiority in crucial areas and that Germany was aware of it was a crucial factor in their defeat. A second reason, to minimize the loss of life, was certainly understandable after such great losses in World War I. The Maginot Line was, the author says, “indicative neither of despair about defeating Germany nor of thought mired in the past. It was instead evidence of faith that technology could substitute for manpower.” The third factor he focuses on is the cumbersomeness of French, as well as British and Belgian, military bureaucracies. In a nutshell, “Germany’s strange victory occurred because the French and British failed to take advantage of their superiority.” May explores the interplay of domestic politics and foreign policy decisions over the years leading up to the German invasion. By the mid-1920s Hitler had become a masterful demagogue and laid out some of his basic beliefs in Mein Kampf. In 1937, he talked to his army generals and foreign minister about the need to use force to expand the nation to gain new resources and territory. May notes that Hitler did not trust official memoranda or other documents from diplomats. Instead he “assiduously read German translations of foreign newspapers and magazines . . . Hitler insisted on extracts, no summaries. He particularly demanded material on foreign leaders.” These sources helped Hitler predict how certain personalities would react to specific challenges. The author introduces the primary political figures in France, in particular Edouard Daladier, who was prime minister of France from April 1938 until the spring of 1940. Perhaps as important, he served as war minister and defense minister when he was named prime minister and continued in those positions as well. Although he insisted on significantly increasing France’s ground and air forces throughout the mid-’30s his grim experiences in the Great War made him very reluctant to send troops into battle.

May probes the importance of military intelligence for both the Allies and Germany. Though the Allies couldn’t possibly have predicted all that Germany planned to do, there were signals that should have alerted them to the danger. The author says their failure to recognize the extent of the German threat is attributable largely to “characteristics of their systems of collecting and analyzing intelligence and to their lack of system in relating this intelligence to their own decision-making.” May notes that most writings about the 1940 surprise have missed this point “in large part because their authors have been taken in by veterans of the French intelligence services who claimed to have perceived what the Germans were going to do, sounded loud warnings, and been ignored by dull-witted generals and politicians. But little or no evidence dating from the period itself supports this claim.” The author has written the only account that deals in depth with both Germany and France. Also, it is the only one that focuses on intelligence analysis as a key element. May sees contemporary relevance for what happened then. “The Western democracies today,” he notes, “exhibit many of the same characteristics that France and Britain did in 1938-40 arrogance, a strong disinclination to risk life in battle, heavy reliance on technology as a substitute, and governmental procedures poorly designed for anticipating or coping with ingenious challenges from the comparatively weak.” This dramatic story could have turned out differently. May enlightens and stimulates our thinking about decision making in times of crisis.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

What’s black and white and red all over? America 1950 What often comes back to me from the early 1950s is the word communist. I vividly recall, growing up on the gritty sidewalks of the north side of Binghamton, New York, one of my playmates becoming angry when his mother wouldn’t give him money so he could join me in going to the movies. He ranted and stormed and raved and, at the height of his frustration, he reached for the most wounding insult he could think of. You . . . you . . . COMMUNIST! he spat at her, and stormed out the door.

I do not know now if we ever got to the movies, or if my friend was punished for his audacious outburst. I do know that neither he nor I nor his mother could tell a communist from a coloratura, but we all knew communist was not a nice thing to be called.

Communism is one of two chief topics of Lisle A. Rose’s The Cold War Comes to Main Street: America in 1950. Rose is not concerned with the social and cultural aspects of an age in which eight- and nine-year-old boys could walk unescorted to and from the movies in perfect safety. His canvas is national and global in extent and portrays an impulsive, often absurd obsession with communism so pervasive that it provided a ready epithet for a witless boy in upstate New York.

1950 is critical, Rose says, because it is when our postwar mood turned sour and uncertain. In 1949, we still exuded a breezy, can-do confidence. One year later, he writes, the United States had become another country. His subtitle could as accurately be America Leading up to 1950, because he roams back in time at some length to explain how the United States got to this pass. Basically, Rose finds a crisis in the old order, the Main Street-Wall Street nexus of Republicans that had ruled the country for decades under the comfortable myth of the moral superiority of commerce.

An entire way of life seemed to be slipping away from Main Street, Rose writes, and the fact that he seems to argue from an old-fashioned liberal point of view in no way diminishes the force of his argument. Anti-communism held an appeal for these foes of the liberal establishment who saw what they believed to be a golden age disappearing.

The apex of anti-communism was, of course, McCarthyism, which to Rose was not merely a partisan attack on the Democratic administration but the first and most piercing middle American protest against all the real and apparent soullessness and incompetence of a large, distant, often unresponsive and, above all, liberal government. As a political and diplomatic history, The Cold War Comes to Main Street is briskly told and formidably documented, though the author is harder on Whittaker Chambers than the facts warrant. He makes him out to be a kind of up-market McCarthy, which is certainly not true, as Sam Tanenhaus showed in his recent biography of Chambers.

Rose’s other chief topic is a related one: the Korean War, which was the Cold War against communism grown hot. In four chapters, he captures its salient political and combat elements. There are, however, a couple of highly disputable assertions.

For instance, he says of the North Korean People’s Army invasion of the south in June 1950, the criminal slowness of the NKPA in advancing into South Korea would cost it the war. For one thing, many Korea historians would disagree with this assessment. For another, why criminal ? Would he prefer that the invaders had succeeded? On the other hand, he is quite right to condemn MacArthur’s vainglorious hot pursuit of the North Koreans right up to the Yalu River. If anything was criminal, it was that. It led to, among other things, the bitter campaign of November-December 1950 when U.

N. forces were overwhelmed by the Chinese and the cold. Through mining newspapers and other contemporary periodicals, Rose gives us a sense of how awful the campaign was for the combatants.

Finally, one of the malicious pleasures of reading a history such as this lies in discovering how wrong newspaper and other pundits of the day got things. For example, in 1950 Hans J. Morgenthau, a leading political scientist, intoned about the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, In comparison with it, all the great issues of the postwar period fade into insignificance. Well, actually, no. Remember that the next time Rush or Maureen tells you something of national or global importance.

Roger Miller is a freelance writer. He can be reached at roger@bookpage.com.

Soldiers’ stories In the years since the Second World War, historians have described and analyzed many of its battles, campaigns, and theaters. The Greatest War: Americans in Combat 1941-1945 offers a graphic timeline of the war from the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to the bombing of Nagasaki 45 months later. Historian Gerald Astor draws on the experiences and observations of more than 1,000 Americans who fought in the Pacific, Asia, and Europe in trenches, bombers, and landing craft. It is the story of many small and large unit actions some heroic victories, others sorry defeats. For the millions of Americans who fought overseas in World War II, the events recounted here defined the rest of their lives. The Greatest War is oral history at its very best and a reminder of the thin line that separates selfless heroism from senseless barbarism.

How did humanity develop? Why have some societies thrived for long periods and others disappeared quickly? What decisions or unexpected turns of events made the difference between survival or extinction? Is past experience a reliable guide to the future? Boston University historian David Fromkin explores the above and many other questions in The Way of the World, his superbly crafted historical analysis of the story of humanity and civilization. Fromkin focuses on change, from the beginning of the universe, as scientists presently understand it, to a look at how it could affect our future. He concentrates primarily on the way human beings have organized and governed themselves and dealt with the crucial issues of war, peace, and survival. But he also acknowledges the central influence of religion and art. The influence on history by the founders of the major religions, he notes, endured over the ages and eventually far exceeded that of even the most successful generals and politicians . . . 4 billion of the 5.5 billion people alive today remain adherents of one or another of the religions they founded. Art is viewed by Fromkin as a magical gift. We have a tendency to regard the arts as products of civilization rather than an innate impulse. The evidence instead seems to show that they are basic to our nature, for they flourished prior to civilization. They are among the first unique manifestations of humanity. In graceful prose Fromkin traces events from the development of the first city-state in Sumer to today’s world which, while it is the world America wanted, it is not a world that America made. He examines the works of Herodotus and Thucydides, the latter’s history of what we call the Peloponnesian Wars, the first book to provide moral criticism of history and politics. He discusses the rise and fall of Rome, particularly as interpreted by Edward Gibbon. Taking a long view, Fromkin writes: The wonder of ancient history was not that one civilization, that of Rome and the classical Mediterranean, failed, but that so many others succeeded, many of them brilliantly. Fromkin does not agree with those who say that Europe’s takeover of the rest of the world was deliberate or intended. Only afterwards could it be seen that Europe had conquered the world; and even then we might disagree as to why it happened. Fromkin has the rare ability to convey a lot of information, often on difficult or sophisticated subjects, with a few beautifully constructed sentences. He also helps us to understand some things differently. Fromkin asserts that the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are all misleading designations. He suggests that the Goths were looking for pastureland in Roman territory where they could settle, safe from the Huns. ( So far as historians can judge, it was not their original intention to put the empire or its cities to the torch. ) Fromkin also posits that the similar experimental approaches of Prince Henry the Navigator and Thomas Edison, in quite different areas, centuries apart, exemplified the rationalist frame of mind that took Europe out of medieval religion and into modern times. Fromkin demonstrates that irony is a major theme in history. He writes, Many if not most of the major happenings of the twentieth century took the world by surprise. Today, Science is said to be the faith of the modern world, it is the basis of our hopes for the future . . . As for the future, however, Fromkin is not optimistic about predictions, . . . yet many of us probably most of us either do not understand [science] or do not accept as true that which it tells us. Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

Due South: Dispatches from Down Home By R. Scott Brunner Villard, $19.95 ISBN 0375502556 Review by Taylor Cates Retrospectives of the 20th century note that developments such as television, the interstate system, the Great Migration, and the rise of the Sun Belt have virtually eliminated the distinctive characteristics of the South (capital S ). Indeed, reminiscences about the South these days seem to present two different yet equally distorted images: either a comedian’s portrayal of a backwards place festering in its own ignorance, or a nostalgic reverie of days gone by.

R. Scott Brunner, an Alabama native and commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, has compiled his radio essays about the region into Due South: Dispatches from Down Home. In doing so, he presents a picture of the South that includes aspects of both images, and yet captures some of the elements that continue to make the South a unique, elusive, and fascinating place.

Brunner’s topics range widely. Many of his essays are about the joys and aggravations of raising young children. He writes of his mixed feelings when he learned that his wife was carrying twins. He addresses the mystery of the contents of a baby’s diaper. These pieces are relevant whether the reader hails from Tennessee or from New York. Brunner hits his stride, however, when he focuses on the anachronisms and idiosyncrasies of his home state and its neighbors.

The best essays in the collection are those that record one event, one place, one memory. Brunner describes an unassuming barbecue restaurant and its patrons. He recalls a Bible quiz showdown at church camp. He relates a friend’s encounter with Eudora Welty. Like the best work of Lewis Grizzard, Brunner’s essays entertain by describing the familiar. Southern readers will nod their heads in recognition on every page. Readers from parts elsewhere will enjoy an authentic glimpse of Southern living.

Like Grizzard’s, Brunner’s work is funny. His analysis of Southern Provincial architecture, with its emphasis on lawn flamingos and See Rock City ads, is dead-on and hilarious. However, he falters with a few self-conscious attempts at humor. Bits on topics such as the Southern use of the phrase bless your heart read like forced Jeff Foxworthy.

The format of the book and Brunner’s origins in radio invite comparisons to Garrison Keillor. Brunner has Keillor’s skill in evoking a sense of community. Rather than focus on one town, however, Brunner casts a wider net, exploring topics such as language, food, and style that pervade the entire region. Due South is as engaging, as entertaining, and as charming as the South itself.

Taylor Cates is a reviewer in Memphis, Tennessee.

With obvious enthusiasm and fascination, Diana Preston spins exhaustive research into a tight narrative in The Boxer Rebellion. There are grand themes, evil villains, bumbling bureaucrats, sickening cowards, and dashing heroes competing to fill each page with tension, danger, and history.

The Boxer Rebellion focuses on peasant unrest in China, primarily in the summer of 1900. Spreading like wildfire, the Boxer way of life attracted peasants from throughout the country. (Boxers were so named because their Chinese boxing was alleged to bestow magical powers.) The Boxers soon grew so powerful that the confused, outmoded Manchu government believed it could win a genocidal war against foreigners by sanctioning Boxer activities. In this setting, Preston weaves a fact-based story of people, perseverance, accomplishments, and shortcomings during a dreadful eight-week siege of Beijing’s diplomatic quarter and all foreign settlements throughout China. The characters, from glamorous Tzu Hsi, last empress of China, to na•ve American soldier Oscar Upham, are realistically depicted, providing needed personal perspective. One of the few disappointments was the absence of a consistent Boxer voice. Then, as now, the winners write the history books, and there is little genuine Chinese perspective. The reader will come away with the overwhelming sense of slipping into a story far larger than anticipated. The Rebellion initiated major changes in global politics, the results of which are still felt today, most obviously in the prevalence of multinational peace-keeping forces, the first of which occurred during the Boxer uprising. Subtly, Preston points to the key issues troubling the rescue army, helping to point out how many of these issues still divide modern nations.

Providing a needed perspective on history, couched in an accessible, thorough narrative, The Boxer Rebellion succeeds in painting intriguing history with modern colors. If you are willing to learn about the world we live in on a sociological, historical, governmental, or political level this is a great place, and a fascinating era, in which to begin.

Andrew Lis writes from New York.

Patient readers will be richly rewarded once they get the hang of how Modris Eksteins, author of this combined history and autobiography, shies away from straightforward chronology. He moves backwards and forward through the years, presenting episodes that provide a history of Latvia, his birthplace, and of Eastern Europe and World War II. The events he describes so thoroughly are interspersed with his own life story and that of his family. The highly successful outcome of Eksteins’s roving through time is a remarkable depiction of reaching 1945, when the war in Europe ended and 30 to 40 million people were homeless. He converges on 1945 as the climactic year from two vantage points: his current position as a history professor at the University of Toronto, and Russia and the Baltic States in the 1850s.

The autobiography moves in reverse to Eksteins’s years as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in history; his experiences at Upper Canada College, Toronto’s elite private secondary school; his family’s 1949 arrival in Canada as Displaced Persons after the Canadian government overturned its negative attitude toward newcomers; and their horrible war experiences, battered by both the Germans and the Russians, after he was born in 1943. The vivid narrative includes his great-grandmother, born in 1834; his father, a Baptist minister; and his mother, who was the key to our survival. This is a story of achievement and triumph.

The historical sections emphasize World War II, when Latvia was made a part of the Soviet Union in 1940, liberated by Germany in 1941, and re-captured by Russia in 1944. The terror of those years is detailed with shocking figures regarding the fate of Latvian Jews and Western Jews sent to Latvia. Their slaughter was the highest percentage of eradication in all of Europe. Eksteins’s stress on the devastation of World War II, with its unprecedented number of deaths, contrasts with the contemporary characterization of World War II as a good war. This powerful book demonstrates that there is no such thing. ¦ Dr. Morton I. Teicher is a freelance writer who is on the faculty of Walden University.

My teenage son is of the opinion that because I watch the History Channel, I have embarked upon the path of middle-aged dorkdom. I refuse to believe this. The quest for knowledge is an itch that needs to be scratched, regardless of age. At some 700 pages of relatively small print, Ancient Mysteries isn’t for your average television clicker cowboy. Instead, it is a wide-ranging and richly detailed look at parts of our past that grab the imagination. Some are comfortable and familiar trails; others take a well-known story up a new road; still others are dark and overgrown paths that you never even knew existed.

James and Thorpe tackle the theories you’d expect myths of modern culture such as Atlantis and they deconstruct them, not without a certain amount of glee. They also consider some of the more obscure mysteries, such as the Dogon tribe, the Orion pyramid alignment, and the Piri Reis map. Lest you think the two authors are nothing more than professional skeptics, consider this: They’re also not afraid to postulate their own unconventional theories. In their earlier work, Centuries of Darkness, they challenged decades of conventional wisdom about the supposed dates of events in early Mediterranean civilization. The biggest surprises are those legends that have a basis in fact, such as the labyrinth of the Minotaur, those women warriors called Amazons, and King Arthur. The king of Camelot is particularly compelling because of the sheer number of archeological puzzles that revolve around his legend and the names and places linked to it.

The layout of this book is excellent; you can read it front to back, as I did, or pick your way through its thoroughly cross-referenced pages, with one subject serendipitously leading to another. Sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure book for adults.

Whether the subject is a comet (possibly Halley’s) over Bethlehem 2000 years ago or a comet striking the earth 65 million years ago, Ancient Mysteries will give you endless enjoyment.

James Neal Webb writes from Nashville, Tennessee.

In the words of noted military historian John Keegan, World War I was a tragic and unnecessary conflict. In the summer of 1914, Europe enjoyed peace and prosperity that depended to a great extent on international cooperation in the commercial, intellectual, philanthropic, and religious spheres. Keegan notes that a belief in the impossibility of general war seemed the most conventional of wisdoms. Yet, in a short time, the states of Europe proceeded, as if in a dead march and a dialogue of the deaf, to the destruction of their continent and its civilization. Keegan concedes that the origins of the war and the course it took are mysteries. Why did diplomatic efforts fail? Why were certain strategies and tactics employed that, in hindsight, appear unrealistic, even futile? Keegan, the author of twelve previous books including The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, and The History of Warfare, helps us gain a much better understanding of personalities, decisions, and events in his authoritative and eminently readable overview, The First World War.

The author recreates the environment in which diplomats, without the benefit of modern means of communication, were unable to defuse the powder keg. At the time many countries in Europe required young men to receive military training, with the result that there were large armies of serving and potential soldiers. Keegan relates that All European armies . . . had long-laid military plans, notable in most cases for their inflexibility. The most important of these was the Schlieffen Plan in Germany, which Keegan considers to be the most important document written in any country in the first decade of the twentieth century, perhaps even the most important official document of the last hundred years. It was a plan for quick victory in a short war. Although it did not start the war, once this plan was adopted it determined where the war’s focus would lie, and its flaws and uncertainties led to the widening conflict. But, Keegan emphasizes, even Germany had not wanted war. Although by 1915 there was a line of earthworks for 1,300 miles, the author points out that there was no standard trench system. Keegan details the differences in approach taken by different armies, depending on a wide range of factors. He disagrees with younger military historians who think that, as terrible as the early offensive was, it was part of a learning process that eventually led to the victories in 1918. The simple truth of 1914-1918 trench warfare is that the massing of large numbers of soldiers unprotected by anything but cloth uniforms, however they were trained, however equipped, against large masses of other soldiers, protected by earthworks and barbed wire and rapid-fire weapons, was bound to result in very heavy casualties among the attackers. The development of the tank and its effective use were significant assets to the Allies.

Keegan paints vivid portraits of the generals and the foot soldiers in the conflict. Of the former, Joffre Haig, Foch, Hindenberg, and others were widely regarded as great men in their time. As the memoirs and novels of the war were published, they seemed much less so. Technology that was adequate for mass destruction of life was inadequate to give the generals the flexibility that would have kept that destruction within bearable limits. The book includes major battle-by-battle accounts on both land and sea. Keegan also discusses wartime activity in Africa and the Middle East. The reader is assisted greatly by numerous maps.

This outstanding account of the war deserves a wide readership.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.