Wow, what a debacle of human folly. The book was a recommendation from a magazine...maybe The Economist. I hadn't been interested in the topic, but the review made it sound like a work of art irrespective (or in spite of) the topic, and I wanted to evolve the very fuzzy painting I had of Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Turns out this is a book I had a hard time pulling myself away from just to execute the basics of life - meals, sleep, work, kids. I have a very poor memory for names and can't think of a book I've read with more names and titles, so I wasn't able to track more than perhaps one tenth of the characters, but I don't think it made much difference to my overall comprehension of the events and dynamics.
Turns out WWI was just a giant wallow in senseless pride and destruction and slaughter. I didn't jump in thinking it was glorious or extremely strategic, but I would never have guessed how much it reflected the petulance, irritability, self-glorification, enmity, spite, pride, aggressiveness, and hunger for power of a microscopically small number of national leaders and royalty. At least by Tuchman's telling, there wasn't really a well-crafted plan among all the participants, belligerents or collateral damage countries. The King of Belgium is clearly the most admirable character and the one with the most military savvy - now there's a dark horse bet - albeit the simplest military strategy to execute. The entire escapade is rife with ineptitude, endless bickering among generals, confirmation bias, throwing good money after bad, and examples of failure of cohesion and leadership. Pity the poor souls thrown into this pit of doom.
I can't recommend this book more highly as a source of leadership training. One has a real-world example of the most complex organizations, a huge threat landscape, leadership impact, and esprit de corps challenges. One sees the outcome of all these dynamics and the underpinnings of successes and failures. The gravity of a lack of teamwork, suppression of inconvenient information, failures of imagination, communication breakdowns, and human emotions are all obvious and easy to learn from. I would expect this is required reading within every military academy the world over, and probably within many top leadership schools. I've read many business leadership books - I can still recall cracking 'In Search of Excellence' back in the 80s or 90s - and this one has them all beat by light years.
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About the author
Critical First Month of WWI
Author Barbara W. Tuchman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1963 for The Guns of August. Fifty-five years later her book remains one of the best sources for understanding the prelude and first thirty days of what would become known as the Great War.We are all familiar with the horrors of World War I - trench warfare, the ebb and flow of Allied and German advances across no man's land using outdated tactics in the face of barbed wire, withering fire from machine guns and heavy artillery, and the inhuman use of mustard gas. Combat related casualty figures were a staggering 8.5 million killed and 21 million wounded. Civilian casualties exceeded six million from food shortages, malnutrition, and disease. The ensuing influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 even exceeded these figures with an estimated fifty million deaths worldwide.How this conflagration began is the subject of Tuchman's book. It suspends what the reader already knows about the war to focus on its genesis. Historians point to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as the event that lead to four years of slaughter, but this was but the excuse to launch the German Army (700,000 men) through neutral Belgium toward Paris. The Germans had put together a timetable for victory known as the Shclieffen plan that they began executing August 4, 1914. The two front battle plan had been developed and proposed by the chief of the German general staff as far back as 1905.The French also had developed a plan to counter the German attack which was known as Plan XVII. Rather than rely on defense it envisioned a bold strike into the heart of Germany to recapture the territories of Alsace and Lorraine that had been lost in the Franco-Prussian War. It relied heavily on French courage rather than sound tactics. Mounted cavalry attacks and bayonet charges failed to take into account how warfare had changed.The first twelve days of the war came to be known as the Battle of the Frontier. During this period it was all but certain that Germany would prevail. The next eighteen days would become known as the Miracle on the Marne with retreating allied forces regrouping and turning the tide. However, German forces had penetrated so deeply toward Paris that the war would drag on for four more years.Tuchman recounts the momentous decisions that lead to the stalemate and the military commanders behind them. It is a testament to her ability to fully humanize these historical persons that we find ourselves fully immersed in the times and events, and learn what really happened as well as what it felt like for the people involved.This is a great read for any historian or reader who seeks to understand history!
