John Keegan

What If?

marzaat1 Comment

The alternate history continues with a collection of essays from various historians and popular writers, a modern sequel of sorts to If It Had Happened Otherwise.

There was a follow up volume I have not read.

Raw Feed (2004): What If?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley, 2000.what-if

“Introduction”, Robert Cowley — A cursory look at the current state of academic “counterfactual” writing, teasers for the essays in the collection, and a brief discussion of their genesis in the special tenth anniversary edition of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

“Infectious Alternatives: The Plague That Saved Jerusalem, 701 B.C.”, William H. McNeill — Not surprisingly McNeill, the historian who really first put forth the idea that disease epidemics affected many events in history, chooses a plague as his turning point. We don’t really know why the Assyrian king Sennacherib abandoned his investment of Jerusalem. We know his army suffered severe losses, and it is probable that it was due to disease. McNeill briefly sketches, in cultural and religious terms, the consequences of the Assyrians taking Jerusalem and, thereby, killing Judaism as a cultural force for good. (It really isn’t that much of a stretch. The splinter kingdom of Israel had abandoned Judaism and disappeared in 722 B.C. Several cities in Judah were taken, and the King of Judea ended up paying tribute to the Assyrians.) McNeill sees the main effect of Jerusalem being taken is that the Jewish faith looses further confidence. The unique universal monotheism of Judaism is weakened. When the Jews are taken off in the Babylonian captivity, they become just another locally centered, ethnically based faith and exert no influence on the following centuries.

“A Good Night’s Sleep Can Do Wonders“, Barbara N. Porter — A very brief alternate history that imagines the possible consequences (actually, it spends most of its time recounting the historical record and not imagining alternative outcomes) of the Lydian King Gyges not getting a good night’s sleep and impatiently attacking the Cimmerians before he was ready. The Lydians don’t form an alliance with Assyria and, years later, nascent Greek culture is overwhelmed by the expanding Cimmerians. Continue reading →

History’s Greatest War

marzaatLeave a comment

This is certainly the oldest of the World War One histories I have, and it was around the house the longest. And when I say house, I mean growing up.

It was my maternal great-grandfather’s and seemingly purchased about 1920 by him.  I looked at it once or twice as a child but never read it though I did read some massive picture book about the war, probably by Reader’s Digest or American Heritage.

As an adult, though, I only started to become seriously interested in the war in 2002.

This book was reprinted in 2012, but I’ve linked to the original edition since the reprint doesn’t seem to have pictures — one of the selling points of the original.

As to the American Legion, let me emphasize that the American Legion is a fine organization. In my youth, I participated in Boys’ State and their speech contests. However, like many institutions and people in America during the 1930s, they expressed admiration for Mussolini. Fascism, of course, wasn’t then associated so much with violence or racism. (Italian Fascism never seemed to have a racial element.)

From what little I know, I suspect the Legion admired the social unity of Fascism if not its other explicit core idea, the unity of political and economic interests through governmental control, if not ownership, of businesses.

However, unlike many organizations, the Legion seems to have improved with age.

I’m also more skeptical now of my assertion that it was written specifically for the American Legion. Instead, I think it was intended for a general American and Canadian readership. Across from the title page, is a place to post a “Soldier’s Photograph” below the “Roll of Honor”. On the sides of that space are a star and maple leaf, seemingly American and Canadian symbols.

From December 13, 2009 …

Review: History’s Greatest War: A Pictorial Narrative, S. J. Duncan-Clark, 1919.img192

As history, this book leaves something to be desired. The opening chapter – “The Red Trail of Prussia” – seeks to blame World War One solely on Prussian ambition. The German people were the “docile tools of the Prussian dynasty”, a dynasty that only knew force to realize its ambitions. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not, according to this book, the work of the Serbian Black Hand but a Prussian plot. Likewise, the resolve of the Russian court was weakened, allegedly, by pro-German sympathies. (And in the failed prophecy department, we are assured that Russian will soon take its place among the democratic nations of the world.)

Seemingly written for the new American Legion and published shortly after the final peace treaty was signed on June 28, 1919, this book emphasizes America’s role in the war. Thus, we get almost nothing on the sub-Saharan Africa theatre of the war or its casualties. The book emphasizes heavily the brief time America fought in the war. Only 157 out of 384 pages cover the war before America entered it – though Canadian involvement is also emphasized. The organization is puzzling. “The Aftermath of the Armistice” and “The Price of Victory” chapters are before the “How the Central Powers Fell” chapter. (I suspect the type was set before a last minute expansion of the book.) Sometimes, the prose repeats itself. Continue reading →

1914

marzaat3 Comments

As I work on a new review of another World War One history, you get a retro review of another one, this time from November 15, 2013.

Review: 1914: The Year the World Ended, Paul Ham, 2013.1914

How useful and pleasant it is for you to read this book depends on where you are in your studies of World War One, and, specifically, how interested you are in its origins.

Novices in either study will be better served by any of the three general histories of the war I’m familiar with: John Keegan’s An Illustrated History of the First World War, Hew Strachan’s The First World War, Volume 1: To Arms, or Peter Hart’s The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War. As the title hints, this is not even a history of the whole war.

However, for the intermediate student, this book is valuable. Displaying optimism and naiveté (at least in regard to American education), Ham says “every schoolchild knows the Great War was fought over … colonies, economic hegemony, nationalism, Alsace-Lorraine, Franz Ferdinand’s death and naval supremacy”, and he’s going to get us closer to a real understanding of the war’s causes. While Strachan’s book may tell you the interest rate of the third issue of Bulgarian war bonds, even he does not go into Ham’s level of detail about the Agadir and Fashoda crises and many other events and personalities. Others may talk about Germany’s infamous “blank check” to the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the latter’s ultimatum to Serbia. Ham gives you the whole documents. It may be a cliché among historians of the First World War to say it was the most complicated man-made disaster in history, but Ham makes a good case for it being true.

Ham starts in 1870 and over half the book is over before shots ring out in Belgium. He covers all the bases of war causes: imperialism, the erratic character of the Kaiser, developing technology, Germany’s fear of a strengthening Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s fear of decay, the vacillation of British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, social Darwinism, the swirling and shifting European power alliances post-Bismarck, and a whole lot more.

Ham is having none of the argument that the war was inevitable or the result of impersonal forces. Disasters don’t just happen. They are a series of events and choices, and Ham details those events and choices and who made them. Ham is out to show the responsibility of specific individuals. Two chapters in particular could stand in for the whole process. “Smash Your Telephone: Russia Mobilises” is a timetable of Russian mobilization and German responses with laziness and inattention and vagueness contributing to the disaster. Even delays of five minutes mattered. To read it is a bit like getting caught up in the Pearl Harbor movie Tora! Tora! Tora! – inevitable and inescapable doom played out in detail. The other chapter is simply an exchange amongst family members unable to stop their countries from going to war – family members who just happen to be King George V, the Kaiser, and the Tsar. Ultimately, he places blame, in descending order of culpability, on Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain, and France.

Ham is an impassioned writer not shy about making judgements. There’s nothing wrong with reminding readers that we are talking about the suffering and death of millions by highlighting some specific individuals. And there’s nothing wrong with seeking useful lessons from these events, even if just to trace an historical development back to the Great War.

It’s just that I question some of his claims on the significance of pre-war avante-garde art and that, after the war, the implicit claim that it was embraced by the public at large because it prematurely revealed truths they learned only in war or that German brutality in Belgium was a direct model for American conduct in Vietnam. And I could have done without the barely concealed sneer at the Edwardian values of “God, King and Country”. The war provided, before, during, and after, meaning in the lives of some. Some modern Westerners, besotted by the cant of international brotherhood and the disdain of nationhood, can barely conceive of a fight for blood and soil and revenge or that many more will fight for those than a secular welfare state. Indeed, socialists in Europe made that very decision on the eve of war.

Those looking for a combat history even of 1914 will probably be disappointed in this book. Ham cheerfully refers readers to other books to get the details on the Marne or Tannenberg though he does provide rough outlines. What he does capture in the combat sections, as well as the other sections, is the emotions of the time and his characters. A chapter on the rape of Belgium – including an answering of the charge it was greatly exaggerated – is well done. His use of quotes from soldiers’ letters and diaries effectively gives the feel of the war before the trenches of the Western Front are dug and the book ends. In a coda, Ham talks about the unknown soldiers, to whom the book is dedicated, of the war. Three million soldiers were listed as missing in the war, their bodies never found. But, since 2006, some remains have been identified with DNA work.

So, those seeking greater detail on the origins of the war will find this book worthwhile. Those looking for a quick, general history of the war’s beginnings and the battles of 1914 will want to look elsewhere.

I do have to comment on the pros and cons of the Kindle edition. Ham includes a lot of nicely detailed maps covering the Balkans, the phases of the Battle of the Marne, the Schlieffen Plan, Tannenberg, and the Western Front after trench warfare begun. However, on a regular size Kindle, some are just too small to be legible. I did not look at them on a larger Kindle or laptop, but I suspect they are legible at that size. Ham has several photos at the back of the book including of less common subjects like Schlieffen or Gavrilo Princep being hustled away after shooting the Archduke. The book also has a nice section of “searchable terms”. Since the Kindle edition has no page numbers, you simply highlight the terms you want and select the search this book option to find them in the book. (Though you can’t really use the format of names like “Asquith, Violet” as search terms.) There are also enabled links to digital archives.

 

More books on World War One are reviewed at the World War One page.

The Great War

marzaat2 Comments

I’m working on a review of Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers. That means you get an old review that, in retrospect, has a clunky first sentence.

This will be the first of three retro reviews on World War One histories in order to provide some context for The Sleepwalkers.

From May 12, 2013 …

Review: The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War, Peter Hart, 2013.Great War

A concise yet emotional general history of WWI, an event, as Hart justifiably says, that was the most important event in the 20th century.

Hart does not attempt the comprehensiveness of volume one of Hew Strachan’s The First World War: Volume I: To Arms or even John Keegan’s An Illustrated History of the First World War. Hart explicitly confines himself to just the main theaters of the war thus there is no coverage of sub-Saharan operations or events in China, and he concentrates on the Western Front because it is there, he argues, that the war was ultimately decided and mostly by British efforts.

Thus one of the three things Hart particularly emphasizes is the folly of the “easterners”, generals and politicians, particularly David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, who wasted resources on pursuing illusive victory in other areas. That includes not only the notorious Gallipoli campaign but the mission creep of operations in Mesopotamia and Palestine after the vital assets of oil fields and the Suez Canal were secured. Continue reading →

The Mask of Command

marzaatLeave a comment

A retro-review from November 25, 2003.

I think it’s still considered a classic of military history.

Review: The Mask of Command: Alexander the Great, Wellington, Ulysses S. Grant, Hitler, and the Nature of Leadership, John Keegan, 1988.Mask of Command

Its title comes from a theatrical metaphor, Keegan examining what a commander chooses to reveal of himself to his troops, what he conceals, and what he sometimes invents.

But the book is much more than that. Through an examination of the armies, times, and personalties of four commanders — Alexander the Great, Wellington, Grant, and Hitler (with a brief look at the command style of John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missle Crisis) — he shows us how command tactics and theatrics have evolved from Alexander’s leading by example in the thick of battle, an heroic example, to the decidely unheroic and distant Hitler and Kennedy.

You’d expect, in a book like this, some look at the politics, military structure, and arms surrounding each leader. And that’s present as well as a look at the mechanics of battlefield communication. We’re also shown how each of the above leaders personifies some leadership style. Continue reading →

The Gestapo

marzaatLeave a comment

019966921X_01__SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_

I’m not much interested in World War Two.

Or, to be precise, I’m not really all that interested in reading about World War Two.

Now part of that is, in grade school, I read all 33 volumes of Colonel Dewey’s “Young People’s History of World War II”. At least that’s what my memory says it was called. I’ve never been able to actually find any reference to such a series. [Update: I discovered, in a bookstore last week, that this series was not by Colonel Dewey but Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy. It was the 18 volume Military History of World War II and not intended for just juvenile readers. What does it say about my memory that 18 books became 33?]

In high school, I read some of Time-Life’s series on World War Two.

As an adult, though, I can’t remember any books I’ve read solely on World War Two. The books I’ve read that touch on the subject deal mostly with espionage: John Keegan’s Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda, various biographies of Kim Philby, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew.

Part of my disinterest in reading about the subject is that American culture has a lot of information about the war that can be absorbed casually via tv documentaries, magazines, and even movies.

Part of my disinterest is that I simply don’t come from a family with a large military tradition. Continue reading →