Modern Wars: The First World War (Paperback)

Holger H Herwig; Professor of the History of War and Fellow Director Oxford Program on the Changing Character of War Hew Strachan
Bloomsbury Academic
 9780340573488
0-340-57348-1

The Great War toppled four empires, cost the world 24 million dead, and sowed some of the seeds of another worldwide conflagration 20 years later. Yet, until now, there has been no comprehensive treatment.

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of how Germany and Austria-Hungary - two of the key belligerents - conducted the war and what defeat meant to them. Much of the writing on the war has hallowed the tactical and operational effectiveness of the German army. Yet Germany lost the conflict. In tackling this paradox, Herwig shows how greatly the Central Powers suffered from inadequate resources and an incapacity to manage effectively what they had. He also shows with clarity just how much of Germany's effort was expended in sustaining not only its own war effort but also that of its ally, without any corresponding subordination of Vienna to Berlin, as the economic and military realities required. But it is in his reassessment of Germany's military effectiveness that he offers the most fundamental corrective. For readers accustomed to criticisms of the various Allied commanders, Herwig's examination of the German military effort will have uncanny echoes. Even the famous German offensives of March 1918, regarded as a model of breakthrough operations by interwar theorists, are condemned not just for their lack of strategic objective but even for their tactical failings.