#17

America's Deadliest Battle, Meuse-Argonne, 1918; Robert H. Ferrell; University Press of Kansas; 2007; 156 pages; photos, index; ISBN 13: 978-0-7006-1499-8; $29.95; Hardcover

September of this year will mark the 90th anniversary of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest and costliest battle ever fought by the U.S. Army (1.2 million soldiers participating, and 26,277 killed, 95,786 wounded). To compare, U.S. forces suffered about 19,000 killed at the Battle of the Bulge, and 12,500 on Okinawa.

America's Deadliest Battle, at 156 pages, is short survey of the Meuse-Argonne campaign, written by Robert H. Ferrell, a dean of American Historians. He presents a very complete critique of the battle and the factors that caused the AEF to pay such large bill in casualties this 47-day fight.

According to Ferrell, the American war effort was flawed from the top down. President Wilson and Secretary of War Baker were not equipped to manage the American industrial and military mobilization. Training was inadequate, and based on flawed doctrines of battle. Pershing's impulsive willingness to fight on the Meuse-Argonne sector led to an ill equipped and inexperienced army attacking one of the most heavily defended parts of the Western Front.

First efforts were costly and progress very slow. In fact, the initial American effort basically broke down. American soldiers fought bravely, but paid dearly for their lack of skill and poor generalship. It was not until several weeks into the battle, when the American front was reorganized under better leadership that American forces were effective in breaking through the German defenses.

This is a high level account of the battle, which does not devote much time to the more famous incidents such as the Lost Battalion, and the exploits of Alvin York. It is however a highly readable account of the flow of the campaign and the issues that the young A.E.F. had to cope with in its most severe test of the war.

#16

World War I; W.P. Willmott; DK Publishing; 2007; 310 pages; photos; index; ISBN 978-0-7566-2967-0; $19.95; paperback

What could a new survey of the Great War offer? The answer is, in the case of this book, a wealth of visual data, including maps, photos and illustrations on each and every page. Of most interest to this reader was the great number of photos of equipment and artifacts from the war ranging from the Princess Mary Gift box given to British troops for Christmas, 1914, to French mess kits, to cut-a-ways of artillery shells and hand grenades (ever seen cordite?). Uniforms and larger equipment are not neglected, and interesting photos abound of tanks, airplanes, artillery and machine guns. This book is visually overwhelming.

The author does a very good job of detailing the various campaigns and battles in a concise manner, and he covers the entire range of theaters, including the Balkans, Africa, and the Far East, as well as the two main European fronts. Willmott also covers the impact of the war on the home fronts.

In short, this book is a good place to start as an introduction to the Great War, but it also contains information that more advanced students will find interesting

#15

The Starvation Blockades, Naval Blockades of WW1; Nigel Hawkins; Pen & Sword Books; 2002; 247 pages; photos; index; ISBN 0-85052-908-5; $33.95; hardcover.

While their armies tried to break the stalemate in the trenches in France, the navies of Britain and Germany were locked in a struggle to win the war by destroying each other's commerce and starving their opponent into submission.

Britain was quickly able to sweep Germany's cruisers from the world's oceans and thwart her plans to conduct a surface campaign against British shipping. In turn, Britain clamped an ever-tightening blockade on Germany. Britain was able to effectively stop Germany's trade outside of Europe using the traditional methods of search and seizure. The British blockade slowly but surely took its toll on the German economy and war effort, inflicting privation on her people, and severely impacting their health and morale.

Germany turned to the new technology of the submarine to attempt a retaliatory blockade of Britain. Germany's final gamble on unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 quickly took a desperate toll on British shipping and appeared capable of inflicting defeat on the Allies even after the U.S. entered the war. But the U.S. Navy quickly reinforced the British fleet, providing needed vessels for convoy escort and the strengthening of the blockade. The convoy system defeated the U-boat and allowed the A.E.F. to arrive in Europe.

In The Starvation Blockades, Nigel Hawkins re-tells the standard account of the naval war; focusing on how the strategy of blockade was an overriding concern guiding the policies of both Britain and Germany. Mr. Hawkins presents a very clear and readable account of the bravery, cleverness and sometimes foolishness of both sides in this struggle.

#14

Pyrrhic Victory, French Strategy and Operations in the Great War; Robert A. Doughty; The Belknap Press of Harvard University; 2005; 516 pages; ISBN 0-674-01880-X; $39.95; hardcover



Lately France's martial reputation has become the subject of many jokes, especially among Americans who resent France's very independent and often anti-American foreign policy.

During the Great War on the Western Front, the French fought heroically, raising the largest Allied army, manning the greatest part of the front, and suffering the most Allied casualties during the 4 years of the struggle in the West. Often the French war effort has been portrayed as a number of very brave, but often impulsive and irrational campaigns that usually ended in costly failure.

Brigadier General (Ret.) Robert Doughty paints quite a different picture in Pyrrhic Victory. He contends that the French carried out a logical strategy of forcing a multi-front war on Germany and her allies, and that the French military carried out coordinated and carefully considered operations to support that strategy. In many cases these operations failed, but then so did most of the operations carried out by the other participants in the war as well.
General Doughty correctly points out that a succession of French generals, starting with Joffre and ending with Foch directed the activities of the Allied Armies in the West and attempted to coordinate their efforts with the Russians, Italians and Serbs.

This book does not present detailed accounts of French fighting in the Great War, but rather concentrates on the development and implementation of French and Allied strategy. A key feature of the book is its focus on three relationships; first, that between the French government and French military leaders, the second between the French generals and their allies, and finally, the relationship between the leading French generals.

Pyrrhic Victory was the 2006 winner of the Norman B. Tomlinson Prize, awarded by the U.S. Branch of Western Front Association for the best work of history, in English on the World War I era. General Doughty served as the Head of the Department of History at the United States Military Academy from 1985 to 2005. It is an outstanding book.

#13

The German Army on the Somme 1914-1916, Jack Sheldon, Pen & Sword Books, Ltd., 2005, 400, photos, index, ISBN 1-84415-269-3, $ 50, Hardcover

There have been a large number of books written on the Somme battle, most of which focus on the British. The German Army on the Somme is unique in that its focus is exclusively on the German side, from the beginning of the war through the end of the Battle of the Somme in the winter of 1916. Much archival material from the German side was destroyed during World War II, but the author has combed through the surviving German records to find regimental histories and first hand accounts of survivors of the battle. He has woven together a riveting story of incredible bravery and endurance in a brutal battle. Many of the accounts used are very graphic. This book reads like a non-fiction retelling of All Quiet on the Western Front.

It is well illustrated with maps, and the author uses number to illustrate where individuals fought during the battle. This book puts a very human face on the German soldiers fighting in the Great War.

#12

The Battlefields of the First World War The Unseen Panoramas of the Western Front, Peter Barton, Constable, 2005, 363, photos, index, ISBN 1-84119-745-9, $80.00, Hardcover.

#11

Lusitania, An Epic Tragedy; Diana Preston; Berkley Publishing Group; 2002; 511 pages; photos; ISBN 0-425-189998-8; $15.00; paperback

This book is a very straight forward and a highly readable account of the sinking of the Lusitania. The author deftly weaves together a chronicle that includes the development of the great liners, the submarine, and the politics and policies that led to the Great War and the fateful encounter of the Lusitania and the u-boat I-20 on May 15, 1915. She also does a great job telling the personal side of the tragedy, using the accounts of survivors of the tragedy.

Mrs. Preston has no axe to grind or conspiracy to prove. She benefits from the efforts of divers who have explored the wreck in the past few years to puts to rest many of the myths and conspiracy theories presented in other accounts. Several of these are as follows:

1. The ship was carrying contraband cargo that exploded when the vessel was torpedoed, and caused the vessel to quickly sink, accounting for the great loss of life. The ship's manifest listed rifle bullets, 3.3 inch shrapnel shells and percussion fuses. The latter two items contained no explosives. Material recovered from the wreck match the manifest description exactly. The author credits steam line explosions as the so called secondary explosions, and the ship sank so quickly because she had not been designed to survive being hit by a torpedo.

2. The Lusitania was armed - the author finds no evidence to support this.

3. The Admiralty knowingly left the ship unescorted in order to provoke a confrontation between the U.S. and Germany. Rather than the result of machinations by Churchill and others, the Lusitania was a victim of neglect, as the key figures in the admiralty had their attention focused on far away Gallipoli rather than the Irish Sea.

#10

Last Post, The Final Word From Our First World War Soldiers; Max Arthur; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 2005; 268 pages; photos; index; ISBN 0-297-84644-2; $32.95; Hardcover

In this, the latest of Max Arthur's compilations of veteran's reminisces; he has interviewed the last of Britain's World War I survivors. These men, who in 2004 were between the ages of 104 and 109, are the last living relics of Britain's war effort.

While there is not much new here in terms of information about the war, these accounts are nonetheless interesting, as these old gents relate their feelings about the war and what they have done with the rest of their long lives. Common threads are the loss of friends and relatives in the war, and the terrible conditions they endured in the trenches.

We will soon be witnessing the death of the last survivor of the war. For a BBC project and a book to be published on the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, Richard van Emden and Steven Humphries found 120 living British veterans in 1996. Eight years later, Max Arthur found the number had dwindled to 21. Unfortunately, by the time this book was published a year later, the number was down to 9. The latest count is down to 7.

#9

The Bonus Army, An American Epic; Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen; Walker and Co.; 2004; 277 pages; photos; index; ISBN 10: 0-8027-7738-4; $13.95; paperback



Soon after the Great War ended, Congress recognized the financial sacrifice many veterans had made when they left higher paying jobs to serve their country. A veteran's bonus was passed, to be paid in 1945, but as the 1920's drew to a close, each year, veterans and their supporters in Congress tried without success to pull ahead the bonus payment. By 1930, the United States was gripped by a terrible depression, leaving many veterans without work. The economic hard times increased the call to pull ahead the payment of veteran's bonus. In the Spring of 1932, this grass roots movement picked up momentum when groups of veterans headed to Washington to put pressure on Congress. Soon, several camps were established in and around Washington housing as many as 45,000 veterans and their families, from every area of the country. As the summer went on, the Hoover administration became increasingly concerned that the Bonus Army was becoming a threat to the government. Eventually, the order was given and the army cleared and burned the camps.

The two authors have written a very readable account of the plight of Bonus Army, highlighting the personal stories of many of the participants. The two main heroes of this story are Wright Patman, a Texas Congressman who led the fight in Congress to advance the bonus payment, and Pelham Glassford, a Brigadier General in World War I and the Chief of Police in Washington D.C. at the time of the Bonus March. Chief Glassford handled the veterans with firm compassion, often paying out of his own pocket to provide food to the camps. He had to walk a fine line between accommodating the men he had served with in France, and making sure that order was kept in the camps and in the city.

The two main villains were Herbert Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur. They viewed the Bonus Army as a tool of radicals and a threat. The most embarrassing moment in the story happened to Major George Patton. During the war, Private Joe Angelo was an orderly to Patton. Patton was wounded during the Saint-Mihiel offensive, and Pvt. Angelo pulled the wounded Patton into a shell hole and bandaged the wound. He stayed with Patton and helped him until Patton was safely in a hospital. Fourteen years later, Major Patton enthusiastically helped drive the Bonus Army out of its camps. One of the Bonus Marchers, the same Pvt. Angelo tried to speak to Patton, who refused to be meet with him.

Most enlightened moment occurred on June 22, 1944, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the G.I Bill of Rights, providing funds to help the veterans of World War II get an education and job training, and loans to buy houses.

#8

Unknown Soldiers, The Story of the Missing of the First World War, Neil Hanson, Alfred A Knopf, 2006, 455 pages, photos, index, ISBN 0-307-26370-3, $28.95, Hardcover

One of the unique legacies of the Western Front was that so many of those who died there were killed in a manner that made it later impossible to identify them. Others, identified and buried were fated to have their graves lost or destroyed in subsequent fighting so that after the war, many families were denied the closure knowing the final resting place of their lost loved ones.

Neil Hanson has written a very readable and very moving book on this aspect of the war. It is written in two parts, the first being a masterly weaving of first hand accounts, that put together, create a realistic picture of life in the trenches of the Western Front. Taken from a number of accounts, this picture is brought into a personal focus using the eyes and words of three participants, a Britain, a German and an American. The only thing all three have in common is that they were killed in the war, and they each became one of the legions of missing.

The second part of the book relates how Britain, France and the United States each found their own way to honor their missing dead: in Britain, the building of the Cenotaph and the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, in France and the United States, the burial of Unknown Soldiers.

This is an excellent book. In the first part, the author has written an account very reminiscent of the fatalism of Alls Quiet on The Western Front. In the second section, he very capably relates the sadness and despair of the families and nations struggling to cope with the losses of the Great War.

#7

Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution; Nicholas Lambert; University of South Carolina; 1999; 406 pages; photos; index; ISBN 1-57003-492-3; $24.95; paperback

In the first decade of the 20th Century, Great Britain faced a great dilemma. At the very time that her lead as an industrial power was waning, her imperial commitments were at their peak. Short of money and manpower, British politicians struggled with the question of how to maintain Britain's naval supremacy. Admiral Sir John Fisher became Britain's First Sea Lord in 1904, committed both to reducing naval estimates, and to maintaining an effective naval force. The author, Nicholas Lambert deftly outlines how Jackie dealt with the many conflicting demands and objectives that often made a muddle of British naval policy. He not only had to fight his political bosses, and his opposites in the Army for funding, he was continually challenged by many of his own naval colleagues who had differing views on strategy. At the same time, he had to feed the British version of the military/industrial complex to continue to fund research and development as well as keep strategically important production lines turning out ever more larger, expensive and complex equipment.

It is ironic that while Fisher's name has been forever linked with the development of the dreadnaught and the naval race against Germany, the author points out that Fisher was not really that keen on battleships. Lambert makes a convincing case that Fisher wanted instead to develop a diversified navy, based on a class of cheaper, all-purpose ships, the battle cruisers. Built for speed to be able to move quickly to any part of the empire and with the capability of catching and killing commerce raiders, Fisher wanted more of the battle cruisers and fewer battleships. Always interested in new technical developments, he also supported development of the torpedo boat and submarine as a less expensive way to protect Britain and her overseas bases. His efforts to change to a "flotilla" defense were thwarted by traditionalists who continued to think of naval power strictly in terms of battleships.

By the time of his first retirement in 1910, Britain had become involved in an all out naval race with Germany, and the focus remained on building battleships. Many of the changes Fisher tried to enact to build a more flexible force were abandoned. As a result, Britain went to war in 1914 with a ponderous fleet lacking the vessels needed to combat the growing menace of the submarine.

This is an award-winning book, having won The 2000 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History, and the Tomlinson Prize in 2000 from the U.S. Branch of the Western Front Association.

#6

Intimate Voices from The First World War; Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, ed.; Simon and Schuster UK Ltd.; 2004; 375 pages; photos; ISBN 0-06-058259-6; $14.95; paperback

Intimate Voices From the First World War is one of many current books that are compilations of the experiences of people who lived through the Great War. Intimate Voices consists of the personal war experiences of 28 people, both civilian and military. Included are accounts from several of the war's theaters, including the Eastern Front, Africa, Italy, and the Middle East. The selection of contributors range from one of the original Bosnian assassins, a German teenage girl, a French school boy, as well as soldiers from all the major combatants, including Rudolf Hess.

Many of the accounts are touching and poignant. A young German girl becomes a teenager during the war and has her heart broken when the young German pilot she has a crush on is killed. Yves Conger is a young French child who endures four years of the occupation of his home in Sedan by the Germans. Paul Hub is a German soldier who postpones marriage to his sweetheart for almost four years, as he does not want to make her a widow. He finally marries Maria in 1918 and is killed in August of that year. He is the third of four brothers to die in the war. Stories from Turkish, Austrian and Russian soldiers give a personal feel to many of the theaters of war that are often overlook in other books. At the end, the editors relate what later happened in later life to those participants who survived the war.

In all, the editors have done a very good job of using these accounts to give a panoramic view of a truly world wide conflict. At the same time, they present a very personal and intimate view of the war.

#5

Forgotten Voices of the Great War; Max Arthur; The Lyons Press; 2002; 313 pages; photos; index; ISBN 1-59228-570-8; $24.95; hardcover

If you are looking for a new interpretation of the origin of the Great War or a brilliant analysis of its battles or campaigns, you will not find them in this book. If instead, you are looking for a very readable collection of first hand accounts of what it was like to live and serve in the trenches of the Western Front, then this is a work you will enjoy. Max Arthur has complied these accounts exclusively from the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum. These oral histories are organized by year and by battle or campaign. Included are some testimonies from civilians, as well as French, American and German soldiers, but the majority of the contributors are veterans of the British and Empire armed forces, giving the book a very British flavor.

In places, this is a very raw book, revealing the horrific side of trench life, the shelling, the mud, lice, rats and of course the dead who so often had to remain where they fell. History is fortunate that these experiences were recorded, as these personal accounts contain many small details of life and death on the Western Front that would have otherwise been lost as the Great War generation passed on.

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