That book review was published last April. I'm reading it today, because I wrote a post that got me researching the phrase "happy warrior."
Here's the book "Muse of Fire" (commission earned). From the book review:
It is chillingly plain that the young, fashionable English poet Rupert Brooke had romanticized the great bloodletting that was about to happen. “Come and die,” he wrote to a friend in 1915, during the first winter of World War I. “It will be great fun.”...
At the start of the war, Brooke seemed exactly the sort of nationalist martyr Britain needed. A great many young people would have to die, so it came in handy to have a national poet who could glorify youthful death with such stirring and eternal lines as “If I should die, think only this of me:/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England.”...
Isaac Rosenberg appears as a breath of fresh air after all these upper-class happy warrior types. Rosenberg was Jewish, the son of a Russian immigrant who became a traveling peddler (“only one step above a tramp,” Korda writes)...
Rosenberg’s poetry shows a resigned acceptance of discomfort in the trenches: “The wheels lurched over sprawled dead/But pained them not, though their bones crunched.”...
Posts
82 comments:
To be clear, Korda's book was just published, not Grenfell's poem. Grenfell died of a brain infection after an exploding shell fractured his skull.
Years ago, the crotchety libertarian Murray Rothbard wrote a piece for a 1986 conference on Robert Higgs Crisis and Leviathan, "World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals". Lots of smart "opinion leaders" looked forward to war as a way of changing their societies for the better.
"I adore war. It is like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I’ve never been so well or so happy."
Never let anyone who writes such things within 100 miles of a line-of-departure, and for the love of all that's holy never give them a weapon.
If many men didn't enjoy war to some degree, and other men didn't love it more than life, there would be fewer wars.
"Into Battle" was part of a reading assignment I had in Western Civ course when I was a freshman in college 40 years ago. I hadn't thought about it in 40 years until this morning. Of course, another part of the same reading assignment was All Quiet on the Western Front.
Do college students read these any longer?
Better to read Kipling's IF
Martin Gilbert's book The Somme is filled with the poetry of men soon to die. The desire to record life and death in verse, and to perhaps thereby be remembered, was intense in that generation.
Well, goodbye to all that eh.
Recommend Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory" and its focus on WWI poets.
I don't think he wrote poetry, but Ernst Junger wrote poetically about his war experiences.
WW1 did for Europe what the Civil War did for the US: it broke the romance of war and destroyed most of the intellectual fashions.
CS Lewis and Tolkien are likely the most influential (pop culture) of WW1 veterans whose poetry was shaped by war but also shaped by the evils they saw.
Robert E. Lee likely summed up the perspective the best when he said "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."
It brings out the best and the worst of humanity, hence the draw to the best and most alive many have ever felt, especially if they came from privileged. But the worst of humanity is horrific beyond imagination. Bless those who have had to wade into it and curse those who glorify and idealize it.
Never let anyone who writes such things within 100 miles of a line-of-departure, and for the love of all that's holy never give them a weapon.
Actually, give them a weapon and drop them right in the middle of a war - right smack in the middle of the enemy.
War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
there's your War quotes
Probably no where near on the radar of those who celebrate the wanton side of things but I think the most evocative comes from Geoffrey Studdard Kennedy, Woodbine Willie, the WW1 British chaplain. He spoke out of the trenches.
"To be clear, Korda's book was just published, not Grenfell's poem."
Thanks. I tweaked the writing so no one could be confused.
"The Sorrow of God" by Studdert Kennedy
Gilbert,
Agree about Fussells book.
I recommend any of Fussells other books as well.
John Henry
The original version (I didn't realized my earlier link "cleaned" it up) "The Sorrow of God" by Studdert Kennedy.
And I highly recommend After War: Is Faith Possible? I used to require it for my seminary students in my class on Modern Global Theology. I was led to his work by Jurgen Moltmann, who was a WW2 German soldier, captured and found Christ while in a Scottish prisoner of war camp. He was a strong pacifist, for the most part, because of the horrors of war, but he said that if he had the chance to kill a tyrant, like Hitler, he would. It's the tyrants who lead so many to death and devastation for the sake of their own egos, making war both possible to start and necessary to stop them.
It wasn't the war to end all wars, but it was the war to end all martial glory. The majority of WWI casualties came in artillery barrages. Many of them were just vaporized. Not much glory in that, but it probably beats having the remnants of your body eaten by rats.....I read Goodbye To All That. Robert Service details how Sassoon wanted to lead an anti-war protest. Service told him that it would be just as well if someone not named Siegfried became the lead figure. Service himself was half German, and caught a lot of flak for that.....Wars of movement offer more opportunities for glory. There were no calvary charges to speak of, but there were aviators. The aviators got all the glory and clean, quick deaths. So far as I know, none of them became war poets.
My father was a platoon leader in the 2nd Ranger Bttn in WWII, having enlisted in the Army at the age of 19 in December of 1940. I think he was bored of farm life in Papillion, NE.
Needless to say he was in some very intense battles and was wounded in the Normandy invasion. He was awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in action at what is called the battle of hill 400, in the Huertgen forest. He made the Army a career and fought in Korea and eventually Vietnam. He retired in 1968 and eventually passed away on Veteran's day (how appropriate) in 1995. He loved his country and he loved serving in the Army.
I never heard him say one word about his experiences when I was growing up. I never pumped him for any details, which I somewhat regret, but I could tell he did not want to talk about it. Eventually, before his death, he told me of something that happened towards the end of WWII that had affected him greatly. I was appalled, and understood then why he never talked about war.
Maybe this is what Trump tapped into, post shooting.
His comments about a picnic remind me of the atmosphere before Bull Run near the beginning the Civil War.
Many civilians and others thought it would be just like a picnic and came to watch the martial festivities with baskets amd treats. They were soon disabused of the notion.
Have to agree wholeheartedly with Ride-Space- Mountain"s 0919 comment. Clearly the part of the poem you quote was written well before he entered the front lines.
Uhh, William.
Robert Graves, not Service. Cavalry, not calvary. And I for one would not consider crashing to earth with your plane and body on fire a quick and clean death.
Michael Korda has a problem with irony.
@ gilbar Sherman had it right - and he was one of the great warriors of all time!
We grew up when most of the fathers of our friends were suffering PTSD. Many were high functioning alcoholics. I especially I remember the man next door who liked to talk to us kids showing off his latest new car every year. He was a traveling sales rep for Davol Rubber Co for medical stuff.
Anyway John Alexander warned us one day that war was a death trap. He drove Sherman tanks in Normandy . His government supplied tanks that blew up and burned the crew from one shot from a German 88 on their tanks while our tank shots just bounced off, we relied on numbers and P-47s.!
And 10 years later in Viet Nam our high school friends proved John right. War is a death trap.
That's unusual sentiment for a World War I poet, but depending on what his service was like, it may not be far off the mark.
My dad said that World War II was the most exciting time of his life by far. He was flying P-51 Mustangs in a front-line fighter squadron that saw frequent combat until the very end of the war in Europe. While the ground-pounders were sleeping in freezing foxholes, he was back in England or France, going out drinking and flirting with the local girls before returning to his quarters to sleep in a warm bed. He saw friends shot down before his eyes, but that just meant another round of drinks in their memory that evening at the pub, and the next day they got up and did it all again.
He relished each mission, and said he felt no fear at all, except for fear of being thought a coward by his comrades. Apparently Churchill was right about how thrilling it is to be shot at without result.
"Lots of smart 'opinion leaders' looked forward to war as a way of changing their societies for the better."
Do not forget the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Slovenians, the Croats, the Ruthenians, the Magyars, and a dozen other ethnicities submerged in the Hapsburg empire who longed for the kind of reordering of Europe that only a general war could bring. The fashionable view of the Great War as a pointlessly insane waste of lives and treasure is not universal. To a Pole or a Magyar, it was liberation.
The great tragedy was the stupid and pointless Franco-Russian alliance that compelled the Germans to adopt the Von Schlieffen Plan. The conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was a matter of general indifference in both France and Great Britain in July 1914. Parisians were much more interested in sex and shootings than anything involving Belgrade. Nor were the French (or the English) particularly enamored with war as a catalyst for political or philosophical revolution. Who did the average Frenchman despise more in 1914, the Germans or the Dreyfusards? That's a question with no clear answer. Nor did the Hapsburgs or their courtiers long for a disruptive war -- no, far from it. They wanted Serbia spayed and shackled, but that was the extent of their warlike desires. Nor did the Romanovs or their dependent aristocracy. The war with Japan had almost toppled the Tsarist state in 1905. To flirt with aggressive war was to pulverize the foundations of Romanov autocracy.
So where did this war-lust come from, if not the ruling elite? It had three centers -- in the conclaves of Russian socialism, in Germanic Völkisch/existentialist periodicals, and in Irish republicanism. All of these movements hoped for an apocalypse that would upend the existing power structures.
@Narr: Thanks for your correction. It was a grave error on my part.....I do, however, stand by my position that as WWI deaths go, the aviators of WWI had the better deal although in absolute terms it was pretty horrible. The only thing worse than being vaporized in an artillery barrage was to partially survive an artillery barrage or to partially survive a gas attack.
Gilbert's right: Paul Fussell. I would combine it with the Hardcore History podcast describing WWI versus all the pre-modern wars preceding it, and that would be a good History and Literature course. Add in a coda of the WWII poets struggling with the Civil War -- Dickey, Hugo, etc. for contrast. In fact, I did once.
But I'm banned from academia for my politics, so I can't teach poetry, my speciality, because nobody with power in academia is ethical.
By a misapprehension my vitae, I was asked by an interdisciplinary administrator at University of North Georgia to put together and teach an interdisciplinary syllabus. I proposed the Cartography and English Departments (they train Rangers -- it's the military college, thus cartography), using the poetry of James Dickey, Pacific P-61 pilot, and the poems he wrote about North Georgia rambols after returning from hard war service; his Civil War references on the same area, to be identified through cartography, plus the WWI material.
I did a lot of work. But at the first meeting, the administrator told me how hard it must be for me to live among all these North Georgia "insane conservatives." I had to be honest. I said I was the VP of the county GOP.
She stood up, enraged, trembling, and stormed out of the room. She loved the idea until she learned of my politics, at her behest.
Anyone want a really good, free, war poets, poetry, and cartography syllabus, maps and readings included?
Academic freedom is only for leftist pigs with no manners.
"The older generation had certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing it on to us," wrote one of them (John F. Carter in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1920), expressing accurately the sentiments of innumerable contemporaries. "They give us this thing, knocked to pieces, leaky, red-hot, threatening to blow up; and then they are surprised that we don't accept it with the same attitude of pretty, decorous enthusiasm with which they received it, way back in the 'eighties."
That war broke the past. Morality and all changed in the fatalistic youth of the 1920s. Middle class women broke free from the home to live independent single, urban, lives. Such changes are just coming to a point here a century later.
I do remember an article in a British paper on a Remembrance Day back in the 'OOs. Not many veterans left but they spoke with a woman who was just leaving school in 1918. She told of how the headmistress brought the older girls into assembly. There the headmistress told a cold truth about their future.
"Many of you will never marry." "There aren't enough men left after the war."
I think perhaps not related but coincidental. The median age of a never married adult woman peaked in 1960 at 27.6 while for men it was 24.7. The ages had diverge steadily from 1960. They then plunged to near equality by 1970 at 22. They ages have grown since 1970 but in synch. So why the divergence and plunge? The 1960s would be when a woman who was 20 in 1920 reached age 60 and fell out of the stats.
If there was a patriarchy, it died the Trenches in the 1910s.
Just have to do what Trump said "HAVE TO GET OVER IT"
Trump tells supporters 'we have to get over it' after Iowa school shooting
His comments came after nearly 36 hours of silence and a day after his GOP rivals addressed the shooting that took the life of a sixth grade student and injured others.
Former President Donald Trump on Friday extended condolences following a school shooting in Iowa this week that left one dead and seven wounded before urging supporters to “move forward.”
“I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa,” Trump said during a campaign rally.
“It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward,” he added.
The shooting, just days before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, took the life of a sixth grader and injured seven others, including students and school staff members, officials said. The gunman, identified as 17-year-old student Dylan Butler, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. YEAH Right JUST GET OVER IT....:(
If writers in wars is the subject, don’t overlook James Michener who latercranked out many great books but started with a short story collection about his war called Tales of the South Pacific. Yes that was where the plot for the musical came from.
It contains my all time favorite short story called “ The Milk Run”. Find it if you can.
I mentioned Paul Fussell (whose books I have read and enjoyed) on 2Blowhards(?) long ago, and was promptly informed by a guy whose father had been an infantry officer that Fussell was a crybaby and fraud.
Quaestor properly brings up the European nationalities that took the opportunity to slip the yoke (Ruthenians are Ukrainians, btw, and like their brethren under the Tsar wanted their own country) but there were also millions in Asia and Africa who hated the empires and could see what a cockup the Europeans created.
According to McMeekin's "The Russian Revolution" the old princely families and upper aristocrats were far less enthusiastic about fighting the Germans and Austrians than the middle class (not socialist) city dwellers.
A good study of how the different nations approached the war is Modris Eckstein's "Rites of Spring," which contrasts Germany's heaven-storming modernism with the nostalgic patriotism of the Brits and French.
Actually, give them a weapon and drop them right in the middle of a war - right smack in the middle of the enemy.
There are fighting men like this, but they’re called paratroopers, not poets.
My father clearly considered his war service as the high point of his life. He flew 57 missions over northern Italy and Yugoslavia from November '44 to May '45 with the 381st Squadron of the 310th Bomb Group, after more than a year as an instructor pilot (kept stateside, he always thought, until his mother became an American citizen; his father had naturalized in the '20s).
He was awarded a DFC in April '45 for leading his flight on an accurate bomb run despite severe flak damage to his airplane. (I looked up the squadron and group records and found that they suffered NO combat losses while he was with them, despite being shot at often enough.)
He spent a lot of time in 1962, after his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer, putting together scrapbooks of photos and documents for his four sons, and presumably a lot of grandchildren. I was nine, and listened to his stories while he worked at the kitchen table at night. My older brother already hated him and didn't want to know, and my younger brothers were too young to care, but he prompted my interests in World War II and history in general.
Of course, he may have clammed up too if he had been healthy and could have looked forward to a normal lifespan. He died at age 39 while the Cuban Missile Crisis was dominating the headlines.
"don’t overlook James Michener"
Yes! And I recently reread Hawaii and am a little ways into The Source.
His work in WW2 wasn't in combat but if I recall involved making reports and talking a lot to those who were in the battles.
He was no poet, but William S. Triplet wrote excellent memoirs of his service as an infantry sergeant in WWI and colonel commanding armor in WWII. (He earned a Purple Heart in both wars.)
"A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne" and "With the Armored Divisions" both edited by Robert Ferrell.
Minnesota Farm Guy said "Sherman had it right - and he was one of the great warriors of all time!"
I am reading Sherman's memoirs and it is an amazing book. It ought to be a multi-season streaming series, and the Civil War wouldn't need to begin until near the end of season 2.
(Grant's are great too, of course.)
Another good WW1 book is Six Weeks, referring to the average lifespan of a British lieutenant at the front. It delves into the class backgrounds of the young officers.
At the beginning of the war, the Army would only commission volunteers from Eton, Harrow, and Winchester - not even from the other elite boarding schools. Imagine if the US would only commission guys from Andover, Exeter, and Groton. Just tells you a lot about how the people benefiting from the British system were the ones eager to go risk their lives to carry out that system’s operations.
So those guys were steeped in poetry, not just in English (Winston got an award at Harrow for memorizing hundreds of lines of Macaulay) but also in Latin and Greek (Winston did not get awards in the classics, but lots of other boys did!)
Understandable that they would use this medium to express their thoughts under stress.
JSM
My father and the other men of his generation I knew served in WWII had little of none of that attitude. While they were proud of having served (and held it against any Hollywood or other prominent public figures who didn't), they generally held to a rather cynical world-wise view. Bogart. I kind of thought Bob Dole, and his style of the speaking out of the side of his mouth, as if sharing cynical quips with a fellow soldier embodied it.
Schlieffen was an idiot whose plan was predicated on march rates and logistical assumptions that bore no relation to reality.
If only the Krauts had listened to the Great Moltke, who warned them in the 1890s that the era of quick victories was over.
Sounds very timely now.
Blogger is being Bloggery again.
Schlieffen was an idiot whose plan was based on march rates and logistical assumptions that bore no relation to reality.
Better for the Krauts if they had heeded the Great Moltke, who warned in the 1890s that the era of quick victories was over.
They could have defended their Western Front for decades, probably, and carved out some imperial Lebensraum, if they'd concentrated more against the Russ.
After reading Tina Trent's difficulties with her syllabus I searched for Dickey P-61 and found this remarkable remembrance https://lithub.com/on-james-dickey-and-the-truths-that-matter/
"I love war," is the happy talk of financiers and industrialists.
But not of the people who carry the guns.
Our War of Northern Aggression began in April, 1861. Soldiers from both sides said the same to loved ones as they headed out the door.
The war ended four years later, with 620,000 dead,* and countless number injured.
*This is the typical death count given; others say it's higher.
Further to Quaestor's point, the Hungarians have been called The Other Master Race for good reason. They resented their own oppression (as they saw things) but were more than eager to oppress the smaller peoples they ruled over.
In both wars, Hungarians and Romanians fought one another with much more gusto than they did against the bigger countries.
It has been often said that "You can't learn anything important from books."
That always struck me as absurd--books taught me that wars are always dirty and dangerous, usually badly conducted, and quite often unnecessary.
Enjoyable history discussion. Thank you, commenters.
I wouldn't call von Schlieffen an idiot. His plan was drawn up based on certain political and strategic assumptions. The plan can be summarized by N.B. Forrest's dictum: "Be the fuhstest with the mostest". Germany was a nation with vast literacy, compulsory military training, and an excellent rail system. The German General Staff was a model for other countries, even the US. Their mobilization was miraculously fast.
The problem?The plan made one big assumption; that the Russians would need a long time to mobilize so the Imperial German Army could concentrate almost all their military might on the French/Western front. That assumption was misguided. Russia attacked East Prussia quite early in the war, causing a major disruption to the plan. More forces needed to be directed eastward, robbing the western advance of it's power.
Thus, the stalemate. Perhaps the error in logistics you refer to is in reference to the diversion of troops from west to east. I can imagine snafus occurring... as a veteran I know armies will be armies.
To blame the failure on von Schlieffen is questionable to me. The political powers in Germany misread the Russian stance and capabilities. Von Schlieffen's plan was predicated on the Germans not having to worry about the eastern border. Whoever decided to commit to this plan in 1914, (Kaiser?) gambled and lost.
Von Schlieffen retired in 1906 and died in 1913. He didn't make the decision.
MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen
Narr,
One could argue that the German blitzkrieg of France was a quickly won victory. Had the Germans stopped there and played nice, there might have been a chance for diplomatic action which may have abrogated the mutual support treaties and avoided the conflagration that we know followed.
Militarily, quick victories are still doable. Political issues/considerations are what drag victory into the mouth of defeat.
MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen
There were no quick victories over major powers from the 1880s to the 19teens. What happened in 1940 was due to (among other things) changes in technology. IMHO.
Also FWIW and IMHO, the two corps transferred from West to Ost before the Marne battles (and too late for Tannenberg) would not have garnered victory.
Logistically, the Germans were living off the land in large part by the time they reached the Marne, due to assumptions that the Belgians would roll over like sensible people. They fought, and destroyed as much of their rail network as they could, giving the Eisenbahn Bautruppen more work than they could handle. Which turned out to be enough to derail the German assumptions.
For a people of such talent and intelligence the Krauts can be remarkably obtuse. I blame the idealism.
(My namesake great grandpappy on my mother's side rode with Forrest.)
Narr, the Schlieffen plan was not made by Schlieffen. He wrote a denkschrift on attacking France as a one front war and was more about grand tactics than logistics. The German General Staff based their work on von Schlieffen's high-level work but didn't implement the plan's basic requirement of 96 battalions attacking on one front. The German Army only had a total of about 70 battalions at the time, so von Schlieffen was calling for compulsory conscription as a precursor to success of am attack on France. He stated that he had doubts 96 battalions could do the job.
I do not contest that the German implementation of the 'Schlieffen Plan' was a failure. My issue is you calling von Schlieffen an idiot, when he is widely regarded by the pros as a military genius.
I have two ancestors who rode with NBForrest. One was killed (Lt. Nailling) at Tishamingo Creek. The other went on to end up in the Battle of Franklin and then on to Atlanta. Ironically, My GGGrandfather and his brother were captured by Forrest's cavalry at Lexington, Ky. GDad was paroled and my GGGuncle ended up dying at Andersonville.
My father served as NBF the third's adjutant at a new camp at Walla Walla in 1939. NBF3 would go on to be the first US general to die in combat in WW2.
MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen
I've seen the work of many a war poet in porta-potties throughout Iraq.
It could bring a tear to your eyes.
Or maybe it was something else.
Many of today's most popular video games are meant to provide the experience of war with none of the actual danger, discomfort, or horror. Maybe that gives a false impression that war can be "fun" -- which anyone who's ever been in one is quickly disabused of.
For clarity, my dad's paternal ancestors include two who fought against and were captured by Forrest. His maternal ancestors rode with Forrest.
Thanks
Goetz von Berlichingen
Bismarck's late 19th century diplomacy was dedicated to preventing a Franco-Russian alliance, but others didn't take the threat so seriously.
And my GGGrandfather helped to hold off an N. B. Forrest assault on a blockhouse in Murphreesboro in 1862 as part of the Michigan 9th.
Whaddayaknow, it's in Wikipedia:
"Wharton's Texans struck the Michiganders, compelling them to withdraw to the fence line in front of the Maney House where they would hold their position against multiple attacks."
That's the house my GGGrandfather was in.
The great antiwar feeling against WWI in Britain and France largely took shape in the 1920s. In the immediate aftermath of the war, there was much less of this - those who fought and won were proud of their accomplishment.
Up until at least the 18th century and probably later, the upper classes who fought were usually the most pro war element of the population. It offered them a chance at advancement socially, politically, and economically. War was considerably less popular among the middle classes (who paid the taxes to support it) and lower classes (who suffered from the devastation and destitution it brought). The youth of petty aristocracy of Louis XIV’s France pretty much always were in favor of provoking wars as they saw it as a chance for glory leading to social, political and economic advancement. This same feeling was probably shared by the upper class of most European nations leading up to 1914.
Smedley Butler in 1935
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
OK, the "Schlieffen Plan" is just a convenient term for what the Germans tried to do in the West in 1914--cow the Belgians, arrest The Old Contemptibles if they showed up (that's a joke), and outflank the French -west- of Paris.
In the event, they couldn't get very far to the west of Paris.
I'm not sure where you get your 96 battalion number and how to interpret "one front."
Kluck's and Bulow's armies between them had 24 infantry divisions of 12 batts each, equaling 264 battalions Active and Reserve. Please clarify.
I'll modify my statement to this: The "Schlieffen Plan" as executed was a result of collective, not individual idiocy.
No war plan can be called a good one if it ignores political and logistical realities.
What Kevin says at 525PM is more or less true. In Ancien Regime France (I'm less sure about other places) the great noble families were exempt from monetary taxes because they paid the Blood Tax leading soldiers in battle (in theory anyway).
Frederick the Great said his ideal war was one which the average burgher wouldn't notice was even happening.
It took the French Revolution (Vive!) to create the wars of peoples that we take for granted nowadays.
My ggf Edwin Lafayette McCallum joined Wilson's 16th/21st Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry (CS) as a 17 year old in 1863, along with his 15 year old brother. They both survived--though ggf was wounded--to surrender with Forrest in April 1865.
Ma's paternal Tennessee cornfed forbears left bodies and body parts all over Georgia.
There is some evidence that one of my Opa's (or Oma's) ancestors saw service in the Mecklenburg Cannoneers in the 1860s-70s. That's the Mecklenburg in Germany, not the one in North Carolina.
Blogger continues to toy around with my comments today. Apologies for repeats.
Narr'
There were various Schlieffen Plans (Called Aufmaersche) based on who they were fighting and based on who was allied with whom. He did not believe that Germany could successfully prosecute a two-front war by fighting two fronts at once. He advocated for fighting one enemy at a time...therefore kill France quick with most of your entire Army and then turn to Russia (a recurring theme in German war history).
In 1905 the German Army was about 600k, with a third of that being new recruits. German conscription laws were altered after von Schlieffen pointed out that France and Russia had high conscription rates, much higher than Germany's rate. Germany had a population half again as large as France's, but the IGA was half the size of France's army.) In 1914, before war start it stood a 800,00 thousand. Mobilization eventually brought something like 10-13 million soldiers into the German Army. Also, some German states had their own independent armies that were brought under the control of the IGA.
It has been sometime since I've read Ritter and van Creveld on the subject matter, so I may be making some errors, but I'm petty confident in my assertions. A number of post-war analysts, including the aforementioned historians blame von Moltke (der Jungere) for the plan failure as he made major changes to it. Perhaps he is the idiot you have been looking for.
Such is history.
Narr said: No war plan can be called a good one if it ignores political and logistical realities.
Sure, that's obvious. But von Schlieffen wrote his Aufmaersche in 1905. He retired from the Army in 1906. He died in 1913. Von Moltke rejiggered the plan and put it into motion in 1914. Who would you blame for ignoring political and logistical realities at war's start?
Thanks for the conversation!
MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen
NB: Here is a link to a master's thesis I stumbled across. It is an interesting read.
Glueck auf!
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA491685.pdf
Petty confident? A freudian slip?
Goetz
It's fun, Goetz.
The Lesser Moltke, absolutely. He had planning and strategic control and flubbed both.
Let me get back to this, hopefully tonight. The dackel wants his walk.
Before I forget again, Jack Beatty's "The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War was Not Inevitable" is very interesting in its analyses of the systemic internal crises that were affecting every great power, including the USA.
William said...
"The aviators got all the glory and clean, quick deaths. So far as I know, none of them became war poets."
Two of the American aviators, William Wellman and Howard Hawks, became Hollywood movie directors, which I think is creative job perhaps even higher than poetry, since it combines so many of the arts. Wellman's "Wings" won the 1927 academy award. Hawks never won an Oscar, but made a lot of fine films, including "Only Angels have Wings" which is about early aviation in South America.
I think the Schlieffen plan (or whatever we want to call the German late summer and fall of 1914 plan) was a fundamental mistake and lead to Germany losing the war. The are two separate issues - military and geopolitics.
Politically it relied on violating Belgian (and ideally Dutch) neutrality. This drew Britain including its navy and eventually a large army backed by its industry and empire into the war. Maybe Britain would have joined without justifying it as protecting Belgian neutrality but that is far from certain and might have been delayed in any case. It didn’t help relations with Italy. The need to counter Britain and the blockade its navy sustained brought about unrestricted submarine warfare provoking the United States.
However, it was also militarily foolish. The Russian army and state were much weaker than France’s and beyond the reach of effective support by allies like Britain. Gambling on a decisive victory over France while the Russians slowly mobilized promised a quick victory which war in the East did not. But it was much more of a gamble.
In contrast, a smallish defensive German army in the West behind its prewar fortifications and eventually trench system could bog down a French advance on such a narrow front. Would France really violate Belgian and probably also Dutch neutrality to broaden the front? That would be a huge political gamble and one which the Germans could probably counter anyway. French offensives in Alsace-Lorraine would almost certainly have resulted in massive French casualties leaving them in a weakened state to take on the Germans later in the war.
In the meantime an 18-24 month campaign in the East by a substantial German army plus the Austrian army almost certainly would crush the Russian army and drive it out of Poland, the Baltics and much of the Ukraine - it’s doubtful a weak Czarist government could survive this. I doubt a Czarist government would have abandoned Poland without a fight (or could have politically long survived a decision to to do so) and the geography of trying to hold it was so unfavorable to the Russian defenders that defending it invited huge early losses among the Russian army. Further the vast length of the eastern front (and inept coordination between Russian commanders) also offered far more opportunities for the better led and more nimble German army to win a war of maneuver than was possible in the west.
Austria deploying much of its army for offensive operations against Serbia instead of Galicia was militarily foolish - the Serbs could be screened and dealt with later. Once the Russians were beaten they would come to terms or be quickly crushed. The Schlieffen plan’s need to quickly overrun Belgium also tied Germany’s hands regarding violating Belgium’s neutrality once a decision to mobilize was made.
In some ways I think the Germans leaned the wrong lessons from history - 1812 taught them Russia could not be beaten (1905 should have suggested otherwise) and 1870 that an offensive war against the French would be quick and easy. German planners also spooked themselves by imaging endless hordes of Russians mobilizing in the East which they could never defeat if tied down in the west - 1915 and 1917 showed this was a false assumption, the Russian army simply wasn’t very good at maneuver warfare and the Russian state too weak to endure an endless series of beatings.
Success in the East would have given Germany the chance to utilize Polish and Ukrainian resources and avoid the famine of 1918, and if they could avoid provoking United States, overmatch the Western allies.
Narr!
Vielen Dank for the book empfehlung! I'll check it out.
Literally.
I have commenters I classify as 'scroll over country' and just ignore. I always read you.
If only you could get over this von Schlieffen hate... ;-]
MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen
Kevin, interesting comment.
The Schlieffen Plan (SP) had a version doing pretty much what you suggested. The politicians (which includes the General Staff at the time) chose poorly.
The GS thought Russia would take a long time to mobilize and that, according to Clausewitzean theory, any German offensive would degrade long before French defenses would give way, so irresistible power and speed were requirements.
Von Schlieffen was very aware of the problems the right flank going through Belgium would face. It is apocryphal, but it is said the his dying words were "you must strengthen the right flank!"
The Belgian defense was heroic.
You wrote: "In some ways I think the Germans leaned the wrong lessons from history"
I wrote those very words in a comment here under a different name years ago. Althouse front-paged that comment...the only time. It was about Germans learning the wrong lesson from WW2.
It seems to be a habit with them.
MfG
Goetz von Berlichingen
What Kevin said.
Thanks, Goetz. My own tactic is to skip entire threads, but if I do click on comments I read all of them. I can be a smartass sometimes, but I post in good faith and enjoy the
back-and-forth of informed commenters.
I don't hate Schlieffen, honest. I just think his overall strategic plan, grown and changed as it was, brought with it too many political and logistical problems. That it was scaled back to avoid The Netherlands was wise, and they would have been better advised to continue to think along those lines.
In the event, the greatest losses of any army in the fall of 1914 were suffered by the French, throwing themselves against the German lines a la Plan 17. If the Germans hadn't exhausted themselves with superhuman expectations for the SP, which brought the Brits in to boot, I don't think France could have made any more major offensives--for years, if ever.
And with that vast hinterland in the East, the Germans could just fart in the general direction of France.
To be fair, the Germans were not alone in misreading the past--the Offensive Spirit exemplified by Foch was as foolish militarily as the SP was politically (and militarily).
As Clausewitz coulda tole 'em, there's no good military strategy that's not rooted in political realities. But Wilhelmine Germans too often believed in creating their own realities.
My understanding of these issues is informed largely by the relevant works of Holger Herwig, PhD.
He's prolific and sometimes provocative--take a look at his Wikipedia entry for titles.
(I have not read ALL of his books.)
James Michner, Rites of Spring, Justus Doenecke (on the home front movements), the Belgiun defense, and I also agree with Narr's suggestions.
What Hardcore History brings to the table is technological advances. Not many years earlier, wars were fought by professional soldiers protecting protectorates (rich people). In WWI, the French soldiers faced tanks while dressed in their absurd regalia (red pantaloons, expecting arcare rules of elite warfare).
But to be fair, the war as conducted by far more lethal weapons, was a surprise to both sides. So I give the poets a pass. They expected a gentlemen's war, and there was little reason to not do so. And those wars had evolved to basically demonstrations of individual, orchestrated valor. No surprise the wealthiest brought their own manservants to the trenches to serve them as they fought WWI.
But every war poet of WWI still fought valiantly, adapted to horrific conditions (if they were not already killed) that are beyond description, and are entitled to their dips into sentimentality. That's what I object to in your description of Korda's book. I have not read this one but others.
Korda is propagandistic. The commenters have far better recommendations, but for someone who is not a field expert, Hardcore History is the place to start.
I don't always agree with Tina Trent, but I always take her seriously--she does her research and presents her conclusions clearly.
It just occurred to me that The Great War is the most misunderstood. Like Tina I grew up shaking my head about the pantalons rouge, but in truth they had already approved switching to the horizon bleu but hadn't manufactured enough of them. This according to the Imperial War Museum video on the Schlieffen Plan (q.v.) I believe, for that matter, that some German reserve units were still sporting the old Prussian blue uniforms, not the feldgrau.
To me, the backward-looking is best illustrated, not by the uniforms (everyone had adopted
some shade of more natural coloration) but the fact that every one of those cavalrymen had been turned into a lancer.
My first real historical interest was WWI aviation and aces, and with Wikipedia at hand I'm in hog heaven.
High praise if coming from Narr.
The point of reading history is to read book after book after book. Including memoirs. It was once amazing how divided these were, but you could identify threads of meaning. Contemporary or close to it was always the best place to start. Coming away with more questions than answers is history, said my great professor, Justus.
Then, if you found something of interest, you move to the official original sources, always with one eye shut. It takes years.
I do enjoy the occasional history book by a journalist who just happens on a great journalistic story. Such as In the Garden of Beasts. Or anything by Laura Hillenbrand. Or The Worst Hard Time. These authors use original sources, do their homework -- and know their limitations.
In contrast, Korda is a propagandist. If you know nothing about the poets of WWI, or poetry in the culture of the time, or trench warfare, or moden war versus pre-modern war, how about not condemning them so casually?
Some of my history profs liked the aphorism that journalists write the first, rough draft of history. Some of them, like Jack Beatty mentioned earlier, turn to history itself and sometimes write good, insightful books. I enjoy Eric Larson when I see him on CSPAN but haven't read his books.
My job immersed me in primary and archival sources, from the ORs to personal journals and sets of letters that were unknown to historians before, just in the case of the ACWABAWS.
But we also had World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam materials. It was a privilege to acquire, process, transcribe, publicize, and learn from them, and try to ensure they survive for centuries.
Tina,
"They expected a gentlemen's war, and there was little reason to not do so. "
Nobody knew of Crimea, or the American Civil War, or the Boer War?
Post a Comment