Senate The World War I Thread

If you want lots of amazing first hand accounts just go out to abebooks.com or amazon.com and order every single Lyn MacDonald she is a master at giving you the up close feel of that war.
I have every one of her books and they are key cornerstones to have along with "THE GUNS OF AUGUST", DREADNOUGHT, CASTLES OF STEEL. Jutland 1916 is fabulous as well.

 

The Guns of August was an awesome read, completed that less than a week ago.

As an aside, has anyone here read any other of Barbara Tuchman's books?

 

Absolutely. I'm a latecomer to Carlin's website, but I've been listening to his Great War podcasts for a while. I'm caught up with his most recent update, but it sucks that he has such long gaps between posts.

 

So I dont forget Lyn MacDonald's book "To the Last Man" Spring 1918 is utterly terrific.
Every Major battle on the Western Front is well covered by historians from the UK, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and the USA.

When you pick up a book on say "The SOMME" it puts into perpective how little the US suffered in comparison. The British had 60,000 KIA (dead)
by noon the first day of the Battle. In Vietnam over about 12 years the USA lost 57,000 KIA total........think about it that is rough sledding.

I have read all of her books, she is fabulous.
Just keep in mind what a masterpiece "The Guns of August" is if I had two pick two books about the causes of WWI and its first month but
its easily The Guns of August and Dreadnought by Robert K Massie. Both books are literary icons amongst us military historians.
JFK said and this is a quote nearly word for word "Any Man Elected to Be President of the United States should be forced to read the Guns of August before he is sworn in. Obama (who I voted for clearly never read it nor did Bush Jr.)

Dont be put off by the massive size of the manuscript Dreadnought is utterly perfect. Robert K Massie has never written a book that was not a homerun.

Tuchman's other works are really great 1-10 scale Guns of August is a 10+ and all her other reads are 7s' in comparison. They don't have that perfect flow with just enough humanity in them the way Guns of August Does. I have easily 300 books on WWI perhaps as many as 500. My library
is 3500 books strong, all hardback first editions. Perhaps 300 books total are science fiction (all the DUNE books, every Star Wars Book, about 100 Star Trek Books. Then I have all the Clancy Books, every Clive Cussler book. Everything else is military history going back to Greek times.
Obviously my largest two areas are WWI and WWII which I have no question 2000 books.

I buy a lot from abebooks.com, sometimes amazon.com and from 1982 to about 1996 every book I purchased was at really great indy bookstores here in Southern California and a bunch when I was in College in Madison Wisconsin.

 

I'll have to check out Carlin's podcast...just downloaded some WWI lectures on iTunes from Cambridge U...one of the lectures talked about WWI being a 'just war'. Not sure I agree, but an interesting premise.

 

So there's going to be a three-part miniseries on the History Channel called The World Wars starting Memorial Day. As the name implies, it will cover both WWI and WWII. It'll probably suck and may contain jingoistic chest-thumping judging by the list of talking heads, but History can turn out something decent when they try so I'm going to give it a shot. I remember that awesome World War I in Color they aired about a decade or so ago... which was produced originally by the BBC.

 

Jutland:1916 is the essential heavy hitter 500 plus page breakdown of WWI's one major surface action of WWI.
For those of you who do not know the Imperial High Seas Fleet was more than a match for the British Fleet,
had they sortied to say the English Channel in 1914 when numbers were nearly identical it very well could have been
a total catastrophe' for the Allies. The Brits were able to run over the entire BEF unimpeded. Take even half those troops
out of the equation and Paris falls period.
Not to mention the British Navy stood at BEST a 50/50 chance of beating off the High Seas Fleet as they would have to be aggressive if
the Germans simply headed for the channel. Ship for ship the German Fleet was easily the finest in the world google photos of
the damage Battlecruisers like the SEYDLITZ took with her bow awash and some 26 hits from 12-15 inch shells and she survived.
British ships had a habit of blowing up if you take a look at Jutland. No self sealing armour going down to the powder room and magazines, lesser beam, weaker rangefinding, less armour, crews who spent more time cleaning than in gunnery practice.
People have no idea what a beast the Imperial High Seas Fleet was.

 

and because of the formatting on your post, now we never will

 

There was a decent BBC drama miniseries called 37 days aired in earlier this year, focusing on the British foreign office after Ferdinand got shot till the start of war. It stars Ian McDiarmid as Edward Grey.

 

This history channel World Wars miniseries is the most disappointing thing since Episode III.

 

Yeah, I saw the reviews and decided not to watch.

 

Good call; some things you missed:

1) WW2 era gas masks in WW1
2) Eastern Front don't real
3) The Ottoman Empire got sent to some negative zone where the history channel ignores it completely
4) France using 12 Pound Cannons
5) Cameo by John McCain

 

I've got it DVRed and the only thing I've seen so far is the completely over-the-top Hitlerstache origin scene. I am game - nay, all-in.

 

Now that I'm watching it, I think I have to slightly disagree with Vivec - I'd say the series' big flaw is that it's taking a naïve great men approach to history. The listed complaints are merely symptomatic of that - none of the future political leaders were at the Eastern front, so they ignore it (They give a bit of lip service to the October Revolution's impact on the war, though); we're viciously Eurocentric, so they ignore the Ottomans and Japan; etc. Their general thesis is sound - there's nothing terribly controversial about the assertion that the seeds of World War II were sewn in World War I (If not earlier) - but the methodology is deeply flawed. You're better off watching Between the Wars, I think, though if you're keen on over-the-top cheese the way I am, it's a good watch for that.

As for McCain, Rumsfeld, and Powell... eh, it makes sense given the neoconservative old fart target audience.

Edit: Also, real talk, the demonization of World War I era Germany is ****ing weird.

 

The show has its flaws, yes. Seems like the producers are leaning just a little too much on the formula used in America: The Story of Us.

Still, I find it gratifying that the History Channel is even producing a show AT ALL that utilizes unversity professors & professional historians giving their take on historical events. Nice to see that the channel hasn't been completely subsumed by the Pawn Stars/reality show snoozefests it keeps marathoning.

 

Was WWI the only war where mustard gas was used?

 

No. No. No.

Though generally the fear of retaliation in kind (especially during WWII) kept it from being used.

 

How is it weird? It's completely correct.

1) Kaiser Wilhelm II was aiming for a more aggressive German foreign policy before WWI even began.

2) The blank check to Austria-Hungary was allowed them to pursue war as a reaction to Serbia declining the ultimatum.
3) The Rape of Belgium occurred under Imperial Germany. The UK didn't enter the war willy nilly. German violation of Belgian neutrality caused them to declare war on Germany.
4) Unrestricted submarine warfare against civilian ships

This is common bad history that Germany wasn't a villain in this war. Sure, they weren't Nazis. But they, along with Austria-Hungary, hold the blame here.

A good read on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-E...d=1401225023&sr=8-1&keywords=catastrophe+1914

 

You cite unrestricted submarine warfare and decline to acknowledge the illegal British blockade of neutral merchant shipping to Germany? Just because the U.S. decided to ignore it doesn't mean it didn't violate international law. A blockade that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of German noncombatants-- and many because the blockade continued after the armistice.

 

Yes yes, we can do a war crimes olympics here (and I'm not even entirely convinced from my readings that the blockade can constitute as such), or we can realize that it doesn't actually change the fact that Germany gets the blame for the war and is (rightly) demonized. You're also going to have to put a source on it being "illegal."

I know it's common among American liberals to do the "Allies are just as bad as Central Powers/Axis/whatever" but come on, Even, I expect better from you here.

 

I can see Even's criticism of it extending past the Armistice, but that's literally all I'm going to give ground on here.

The greater point is combating this tit for tat that shows up every time either of the World Wars gets discussed. "How can you criticize the Nazis when the Allies bombed Dresden?" type arguments constantly get used. The idea that we need to create a list of every bad thing done by all sides and do a comparison and only then can we assign fault and blame. It's wrong. It's not how things are done, and I am genuinely surprised/saddened someone with Even's training veered into this territory.

 

I don't see how you can label Germany as an aggressor when contemporaries had already been describing Europe as a "powder keg" and war had nearly started at least a few times in the years prior for reasons that were not Germany's "fault." Belligerent, bloodthirsty politicians and aristocrats existed on both sides. World War I was the culmination of 19th-century nationalism and imperialism for which most of the participants and all of the major ones were very much to blame.

The Union blockade of the Confederacy was aimed at stopping Southern exports (especially cotton) and the importation of war materiel, namely arms. It was not aimed at literally starving the Confederacy into submission; the South produced plenty of food domestically, even after events such as Sherman's March to the Sea. (I can complain about Union conduct if you want me to! I'm not limiting my criticisms to just one war.) Also, the U.S. Civil War ended nearly 60 years before the start of WWI. A lot had changed. The London Declaration was one thing. Even though the British were not technically legally bound by it and both sides ignored it, the then-neutral United States insisted on it being recognized because of its interest in commerce with both sides. The British were violating traditional international standards by labelling not only war materiel as "contraband," but foodstuffs and fertilizers as well.

*Germany had the technical ability to feed itself especially after seizing the RE's Polish and Ukrainian territory, but for a variety of reasons it was not able to.

I won't say "blank check" because that's a far too simplistic reading of what both sides did, but Russia had a similar attitude with regards to Serbia, its last Balkan ally (which Russia valued highly due to its territorial ambitions) after the cluster**** of the first two Balkan Wars.

The British had a convenient excuse to enter the war; they were well aware that the Germans didn't really have a choice in violating Belgian's neutrality if they wanted to bypass French defenses. Due to its traditional stance of not interfering in "continental" squabbles, it could not intervene on the side of France and Russia just because its strategic interests aligned more closely with theirs. Sure, I guess the UK "cared" about Belgian neutrality because the "balance of power" was important to the island nation, but it cared far more about checking the power of its primary political and economic rival. The Schlieffen Plan was the only way Germany could have hoped to win a two-front war with France and Russia; it was a tactically sound and obvious move that any military commander would have made. It wasn't extraordinarily "villainous." The subsequent "Rape of Belgium" was heinous, yes, but it was fairly normal conduct for an occupying/colonial army of the time and I don't see why it puts Germany ahead of the Allies in villainy.