| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : JULY 19, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
Broken Armies THE FIRST WORLD WAR By John Keegan Knopf 475pp $35 Imagine somehow knowing for certain that in the near future--within a month or two--you will be violently injured or killed. During World War I, thousands of young men posted to units that regularly suffered 100% casualty rates had that terrible knowledge. What butchery--and what an intrepid effort historian John Keegan makes, in The First World War, to explain just what possessed the human race from 1914 to 1918. While the conflict was truly global, the heavy slaughter was limited largely to Europe, and much of it to a very long, very narrow strip of parallel trenches stretching across the Continent, from the English Channel to the Swiss border. This was not a war of mass civilian death or even much damage to property, outside of a handful of erased French towns. Farmers plowed right up to the shell holes, and soldiers on leave could enjoy the bucolic countryside within earshot of the carnage. The greater war ranged from the East African bush to islands in the Pacific (where the Japanese forces were on the Allies' side) to the North Sea, but it was in the trenches of the Western Front that armies were, in Keegan's word, broken. What now seems conventional wisdom--that military strength assures security--turned out to be folly that late summer, as armies and navies of both opposing alliances flexed their muscles and diplomats ran out of time. Germany had a master scheme to win the war in one bold offensive, but it had no fallback plan. The promise of a decisive stroke--backed by the notion that no defense could stop a motivated, well-led attack--would be the death knell for 10 million young men from as far apart as Canada and Senegal, Austria and Australia. By and large, Keegan asserts, the generals weren't stupid: On both sides, they faced the insolvable problem of how to breach a fixed line with inadequate means. The only effective use of state-of-the-art technology was at sea. On land, there was no battlefield radio communication, in fact, very little ''real-time'' communication at all. Chlorine gas nearly achieved the Germans' dreamed-for breakthrough, but they failed to capitalize militarily on its initial shock value. Similarly, neither side had the tacticians to use airplanes and tanks effectively. In fact, one of the war's most lethal accessories turned out to be a low-tech concept borrowed from American ranchers: barbed wire, which bunched up attacking troops, turning them into easy targets. Keegan's skill is to present comprehensive history that's peppered with telling vignettes and profiles. Unfortunately, some areas get only the broad brush--the matter of early German atrocities could have stood more amplification, for instance. But no ink seems wasted, and Keegan's expansive account of the suffering of the wounded during the Third Battle of Ypres, many of them slowly drowning in rainy shell holes, perhaps should be read by all would-be soldiers and diplomats. A book this fascinating about events so violent and heartbreaking demands at least one caveat: It left me feeling sickened and voyeuristic, as if I had been caught gaping at a bad highway wreck. BY TIM BELKNAP _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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