Summary of John Keegan's The First World War , livre ebook

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71 pages

English

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Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The first World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict. It was unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash of arms, had prudence or common goodwill found a voice.
#2 There are many ceremonial monuments in French and British communities that commemorate the dead of the Second World War. The cross that stands at the crossroads in my West Country village was raised to commemorate the men who did not return from the First World War, but their number is twice that of those killed in the Second.
#3 The Germans, who could not decently mourn their four million dead of the Second World War, found a materially equivalent difficulty in arranging an appropriately symbolic expression of grief for their fallen of the First World War, as many lay on foreign soil.
#4 The war’s effects were felt by the entire world, not just the warring countries. The German war generation was comparable to the French, suffering from the same casualties and losses.

Sujets

World War I

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Publié par	Everest Media LLC
Date de parution	07 avril 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669381600
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Insights on John Keegan's The First World War
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The first World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict. It was unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash of arms, had prudence or common goodwill found a voice.

#2

There are many ceremonial monuments in French and British communities that commemorate the dead of the Second World War. The cross that stands at the crossroads in my West Country village was raised to commemorate the men who did not return from the First World War, but their number is twice that of those killed in the Second.

#3

The Germans, who could not decently mourn their four million dead of the Second World War, found a materially equivalent difficulty in arranging an appropriately symbolic expression of grief for their fallen of the First World War, as many lay on foreign soil.

#4

The war’s effects were felt by the entire world, not just the warring countries. The German war generation was comparable to the French, suffering from the same casualties and losses.

#5

The First World War, compared to the Second, did little material damage. It was a rural conflict, and the fields over which it was fought were quickly returned to agriculture or pasturage. It inflicted no harm to Europe’s cultural heritage that was not easily repaired.

#6

However, it damaged European civilization, the rational and liberal civilization of the European enlightenment, permanently. Within fifteen years of the war’s end, totalitarianism was on the rise, and within twenty years, Europe was once again gripped by the fear of a new war.

#7

The Second World War, when it came in 1939, was the result of the First. It was the continuation of the same circumstances and causes, and the same personalities were at play. The battlefields were the same, as were the rivers Meuse and Bzura.

#8

In Europe in the summer of 1914, a peaceful productivity existed due to international exchange and cooperation. The Great Illusion, written by Norman Angell, demonstrated that the disruption of international credit would either deter war or bring it to an end.

#9

The predominance of the London Stock Exchange fed the belief that any interruption of the smooth, daily equalization of debit and credit would destroy not only confidence in the monetary mechanism, but the system itself.

#10

The interdependence of nations was a condition of the world’s life in the first years of the twentieth century. The acceptance of this idea was far beyond just bankers. The revolution in communications, which required international co-operation, necessitated these associations.

#11

The international working man’s movements, which were led by Karl Marx in 1864, preached social revolution. They drove governments to enact labour welfare laws to protect themselves from revolution.

#12

Europe’s educated classes held much of its culture in common, and they were able to act together when they chose. They could also think and feel together. Europe’s university graduates shared a corpus of thought and knowledge, and their commonality of outlook preserved something recognisable as a single European culture.

#13

The most important visitor to Sarajevo in 1914 was Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. He was travelling within his own territory, but the members of the royal houses of Europe were great international travellers and their acquaintanceship was an important bond between states.

#14

The decision of Tsar Nicholas II in 1899 to convene an international conference dedicated not only to strengthening the limitation of armaments, but also to the founding of an international court for the settlement of disputes between states by arbitration, was a creative innovation.

#15

There was a fear of war in the abstract, but it was more prevalent among the political classes in every major country that their position was threatened in some way or another.

#16

The rivalries between the European powers were exacerbated by Germany, which had built a fleet capable of challenging the British navy in the Second Naval Law of 1900. The race to build the largest battleships was the most important and popular element of British public policy in 1906.

#17

The opening years of the twentieth century saw European policy guided not by the search for a secure means of averting conflict, but by the quest for security in military superiority. This meant building larger armies and navies, and acquiring more and heavier guns.

#18

The first five years after a conscript’s discharge from duty were spent in a reserve unit of his regiment. He was then enrolled in a unit of the secondary reserve, or Landwehr, for the next fifteen years.

#19

The European armies were made up of a variety of different units, but there was a central uniformity to their organization. The division was the core fighting organization, and it consisted of twelve battalions of infantry and twelve batteries of artillery, 12,000 rifles and seventy-two guns.

#20

The potentiality of modern communications failed those dedicated to waging war, but it failed those dedicated to preserving the peace as well. The diplomats in charge of the countries during the July crisis were unable to control or contain the events that were taking place.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Marlborough’s plan to save Holland in 1704 was to draw the French army down the Rhine and fight it when distance from its bases made its defeat probable. Napoleon had a plan for almost every year of his strategic life, from 1798 to 1812.

#2

The first was the building of the European rail network, which was begun in the 1830s. It quickly became clear that railways would revolutionise war, but it took until the 1870s for military planners to understand that railways need to be timetabled quite as strictly in war as in peace.

#3

The art of diplomacy remained an exclusively European practice in 1914. The continent’s diplomats were friends with each other, and they all spoke French as a common language. They were committed to the national interest, but they believed that their role was to avoid war.

#4

The old diplomacy, which was led by Britain, was able to resolve the Balkan crisis of 1913. However, other non-diplomatic interests, such as the professional soldiers, had a different ethos than the diplomats. They were trained in an entirely different way to assure military advantage in an international crisis.

#5

All European armies in 1904 had long-laid military plans, which were rarely discussed with civilian leaders. The commander of the Italian navy in 1915, for example, was not told about the war with Austria until the day it began.

#6

The Schlieffen Plan, which was the most important government document written in Germany in the first decade of the twentieth century, determined how the war would be fought. It was a plan for quick victory in a short war, and it dictated where the war’s focus would lie.

#7

Schlieffen’s plan was based on chessboard thinking, and he believed that the pieces were few: a France weaker than Germany but protected by forts, a Russia weaker than Germany but protected by great space, a weak Austrian ally, but hostile to Russia and therefore useful as a distraction.

#8

The German plan was to commit seven-eighths of Germany’s strength to an all-or-nothing endgame against France, which risked German king in the event of failure. Schlieffen, however, discounted failure.

#9

Schlieffen had no other interests or hobbies. He was a man who enjoyed reading military history. He had been the Great General Staff’s military historian before becoming its chief, and he studied history in a purely technical way.

#10

Schlieffen’s plan was to limit the number of troops that went into the offensive. Hitler’s plan was to push more troops into the offensive, but the road network didn’t allow it.

#11

The plan was not derived from mathematical realities, but it was based on wishful thinking. It was a dream of repeating the great victories of 1870, not as then on the Franco-German frontier, but deep inside France.

#12

The Great Memorandum was flawed at its core. It was unable to show how the new corps were going to advance and invest Paris, the central strongpoint of Germany’s great fortress that was Schlieffen’s France. There was no space for eight corps, which would have been needed to win a decisive battle.

#13

The French war plan, Plan XVII, proposed that France attack Germany head on across the common Franco-German frontier, into Lorraine and towards the Rhine. Schlieffen believed that the French high command would not want to attack these areas.

#14

Plan XVII, which was put into action in 1913, was a complete reversal of Michel’s plan. The reserve units were merged with the active ones, and the deployment northwards was curtailed. The operations on the common frontier were designed to be offensive.

#15

The French adopted Plan XVII, the brainchild of Michel’s successor, Joseph Joffre, in 1911. It was a plan to use the strength of the French peacetime army as forcefully as possible, before the reserves of either side could come into play.

#16

The French and Russian generals worked together on Plan XVII, which was a strategy that would allow Russia to lend help to France in the beginning stages of a German war. Russia had many geographical difficulties that would delay its deployment to the front, but those difficulties were an advantage because the dimension of space