The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Guns of August
Book Review: An August Book
Summary: 5 Stars
While it's been a while since I read this, I clearly remember that it was superb. Tuchman's ability to bring history to life is unsurpassed.
I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone with the least interest in the subject of WWI. While just using the war's first full month, BT gives us a clear view of that world and its people who became involved in the incredible machine of death that was The Great War.
I would also suggest Keegan's "The First World War" for a fuller description of the war in its entirety.
Book Review: An Important History
Summary: 5 Stars
In this seminal work, Barbara Tuchman provides a clear and well written history of the events and currents of thought which led to the disastrous First World War. Starting with a description of the monarchical-familial ties of many of the leaders of the European states before the war, Tuchman also describes the philosophies of war and battle that drove the French and German warplanners. It was the plans these thinkers created -- the Schlieffen Plan for Germany, offensives in Alsace for the French -- that led directly to the later stalemates on the Western Front, and years of trench warfare. There are not many leaders who come out well in Tuchman's story. French, German, Russian and English military leaders all come off as barely competent or so self assured they are unable to see the folly in what they are doing. The book is also powerfully describes the suffering of civilians, especially Belgians, at the hands of the Germans. The British leadership, while well meaning, comes off as shrinking in the face of war.
Focusing on the first month of the conflict, August 1914, Tuchman's work is not a comprehensive history of the entire war years. But she does lay the groundwork for what was to come. This is a great place to start for those interested in learning about "The Great War." I highly recommend this book.
Book Review: As relevant now as the day it was published
Summary: 5 Stars
Every time I read a book by the late historian Barbara Tuchman, I marvel at her ability to combine scholarship with lively, compelling prose. This is a rare combination. In "The Guns of August," she recounts the events of the first month of World War I, which culminate in the first Battle of the Marne. I picked up the book after visiting the grave of my great uncle at the Oise-Aisne military cemetery in France; he was killed in the second Battle of the Marne, in 1918. "The Guns of August" is usually referred to as military history, and it is certainly that, with its vivid descriptions (and excellent maps) of the movement of armies. However, what Tuchman is really good at is conveying the personalities of the men who made the decisions that would shape the entire course of the war. There is the French general, Joffre, he of the punctual 10 p.m. bedtime and leisurely lunches, sitting alone under a tree contemplating the decisions which will surely determine the fate of France. There is Sir John French, the maddeningly reluctant British ally, yielding at long last to Joffre's plea for the British to take the offensive:
"Joffre's fist crashed down on the table. 'Monsieur le Marechal, the honor of England is at stake!' At these words, Sir John French, who had been listening with 'passionate attention,' suddenly reddened. Silence fell on the company.Slowly tears came into the eyes of the British Commander in Chief and rolled down his cheeks. He struggled to say something in French and gave up. 'Damn it, I can't explain. Tell him we will do all we possibly can.'" (434) And so they did, at a cost they could hardly foresee.
As a historian of what is now often referred to as "the fog of war," of decisions that must be made based on incomplete or mistaken or missing information, Tuchman has no peer. Also interesting is her assessment of the impact of the German violation of Belgian neutrality and the German Army's use of the techniques of terror on civilian populations. Almost a century has passed, but her descriptions of the deliberate targeting of civilians, of hostage-taking, and of the destruction of treasured monuments of civilization, like the library at Louvain, all have exact contemporary parallels. Outside the city of Compiege, an hour north of Paris, you can visit a reproduction of the railway car that sat where the armistice was signed that brought World War I to an end. (It is also a replica of the very car Hitler used to accept the surrender of France twenty-two years later, in 1940. ) The place, and the book, like the neatly kept crosses at Oise-Aisne, a short distance away, are monuments to terrible--but not unthinkable--folly.
Book Review: Blundering to The Trenches
Summary: 5 Stars
I doubt any writer has done better in capturing the almost bizarre alliances and events that threw the world into war in 1914 more brilliantly than Barbara Tuchman did in this lucid and very readable account. Her ability to focus on the decision makers and analyze their thinking brings into full relief the shared responsibility of both military and political leaders of both sides for the numerous miscalculations and blunders at the outset that led inevitably to the trenches and a long drawn out stalemate with it's well known horrifying consequences.
It struck me while reading this that WWI provides the some of the best examples of the long reaching consequences military decisions can have. So much of the 20th century might have turned out differently but for the events described so well in Tuchman's book. The convulsive events that brought old Europe with it's incestuous aristocracy into the modern era were set in motion as described in these pages and the obvious coda a generation later was to finish what was begun here.
Book Review: Bob Dylan should read this book
Summary: 5 Stars
In a song Bob Dylan wrote "The First World War it came and it went. The reason for fighting I never did get." I like Dylan, never understood how WWI grew out of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; then I read The Guns of August. This book is the story of the incredible stupidity, miscalculations, ignorance, and arrogance, that lead to the death of twenty million people, by the rulers and politicians of Europe. In effect it tells how you get from the assassination of one man in Sarajevo to everyone in Europe killing each other, in little more than a month. War may be to important to leave to the generals, but peace seems to suffer at the hands of politicians. Barbra Tuchman,won a well deserved Pulitzer Prize for this book; which is easy to read, thoroughly researched, and well documented. She has been criticized for favoring various nations and individuals, You as the reader can judge this for yourself, but remember critics don't usually reference and footnote their comments. Another criticism of the book, it is more literature than history, why can't history be well written and interesting?
This book covers an extremely complex period very well, it deserves more than five stars.