The Great War of 1914-1918 was the first mass conflict to fully mobilize the resources of industrial powers against one another, resulting in a brutal, bloody, protracted war of attrition between the world's great economies.
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The Great War of 1914-1918 was the first mass conflict to fully mobilize the resources of industrial powers against one another, resulting in a brutal, bloody, protracted war of attrition between the world's great economies.
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Add this copy of War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War to cart. $2.88, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by Abrams Press.
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The centenary of WW I offers the opportunity to reflect upon this seminal event of the twentieth century. In his new book "War of Attrition: Fighting the First World War" (2014) William Philpott offers an absorbing, moving history of the Great War which captures its complexity and significance. Philpott, a Professor of the History of Warfare at Kings College, London specializes in the Western Front of WW I and has written an earlier book on the Battle of the Somme. Philpott offers a hard-headed, informed account of how and why the War was fought. At the end of his book he writes with no sense of false modesty: "I can justly claim having now written about the whole of the First World War that I still know very little about it." My reading of the book echoed this claim. I had been in the presence of a highly informed writer who taught me a great deal and who managed to leave me troubled by his subject.
Philpott's densely-written study which takes a fresh, somewhat revisionist approach. The Great War is sometimes seen as an accident fought by bumbling politicians, incompetent generals, and greedy capitalists. There is a measure of truth to these characterizations, but Philpott goes deeper. He sees WW I as radically changing the nature of warfare and the 20th century in its mobilization of large countries, citizenries, and resources. Philpott sees the leaders of both sides as recognizing the nature of the conflict relatively early -- by 1915 -- and by planning in fighting the war in an increasingly rational way. In other words, he disagrees with the view that the political and military leaders were fumblers. Philpott summarizes the nature of the conflict in his title, "War of Attrition".
When the war began, Phipott argues, both sides thought it would be short. They thought that the war would be resolved in large decisive battles or by broad scale conquests of territory. When Germany's early advance through France was halted, the war became stalemated. Leaders of both sides, probably more so, France, Britain, and Russia came to realize that the war would be long, difficult and cruel and could be won only by killing the soldiers on the other side and depriving them of the will and the means to fight on. The war became a long, slow bloodbath. Philpott argues the war was essentially decided when the initial German advance was halted as the resources and reserves available to the Triple Entente far exceeded those of the Central Powers.
Philpott argues that the Great War was fought on five interrelated fronts which he develops throughout the study. The first, of course, is the land war which centered on the Western front in France and Belgium. The second was the sea war in which the blockade and naval superiority of Britain was pitted against German u-boats and mines. Third was the popular front in which the citizenries of the combatants were mobilized and persuaded of the justice of their respective causes and of the need to fight. The fourth front involved diplomacy which centered on finding allies. After 1914, world opinion turned decisively against Germany, Philpott argues, leading to among other things the United States' entry into the war. The fifth and final front was the "united front" which involved the ability of the belligerents on each side to coordinate their efforts. Philpott's study shows how the "War of Attrition" was fought on each of these fronts and how each factor tilted in favor of the Triple Entente.
The book is arranged chronologically with separate chapters documenting activities on each of the five fronts for both the Triple Entente and the Central Powers. Given the brevity of the book, Philpott tries to get to the heart of complex, difficult events rather than to become emeshed in detail. The book is more conceptual than factual. Thus the discussions of the major battles tend to be short and to focus on how the military events illustrated a trend rather than in a particularized account of troop movements. Because of the conceptual nature of the study, I did not find the absence of maps in this book especially bothersome. Philpott discusses the world-wide scope of the conflict, including the war with the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, but the focus is on the Western Front where the war was decided.
If there is a hero in this account, it would be the Allied generalissimo Marshall Ferdinand Foch. Philpott praises Foch for his military acument, for his early understanding of the nature of the conflict, and for his relentless and well conceived push for victory in the war's final year. As with everything about WW I, Philpott's view of Foch will be controversial.
The book shows how Germany and its rather reluctant allies were worn down militarily and politically. Contrary to some accounts, Philpott describes the eagerness of both sides at the outset to enter the war. The victors in particular saw themeselves as fighting the "Great War for Civilization" and then began to question their perception as the war dragged on and the human cost mounted. Philpott makes clear the moral issues that surround the fighting of a large-scale total "war of attrition". Throughout the study, he considers how the war shaped further military and political events of the twentieth century. "Whether it was worth it today is impossible to judge", Philpott writes. "Why it was so might yet be understood".
"War of Attrition" helped me think about WW I during this opening centenary year. Philpott eloquently concludes his study:
"Looking back from our vantage point a century later their war seems remote, irrational and perhaps now unknowable. To dismiss it as futile as many do is however a regrettable failure of understanding. We will continue to mark the veterans' passing, to seek out their stories, to mourn our societies' losses, to honor their contemporaries' sacrifice and to lament and commemorate the sacrifices and slaughters that their generation unleashed on the world. We will do so as long as we still live in their flawed civilization."
This book will interest readers interested in a short, penetrating study of WW I.
