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The First World War: A Complete History
It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would end officially almost five years later. Unofficially, it has never ended: the horrors we live with today were born in the First World War.
It left millions-civilians and soldiers-maimed or dead. And it left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced us to U-boat packs and strategic bombing, to unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole populations lost their national identities as political systems, and geographic boundaries were realigned. Instabilities were institutionalized, enmities enshrined. And the social order shifted seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions-all underwent a vast sea change. And in all these ways, the twentieth century can be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914.
It left millions-civilians and soldiers-maimed or dead. And it left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced us to U-boat packs and strategic bombing, to unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole populations lost their national identities as political systems, and geographic boundaries were realigned. Instabilities were institutionalized, enmities enshrined. And the social order shifted seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions-all underwent a vast sea change. And in all these ways, the twentieth century can be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914.
680 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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6321 people want to read
About the author
Martin Gilbert
249 books417 followersThe official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”
Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”
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Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 235 reviews
August 17, 2022
I believe that this is as definitive a history as you can get of the First World War. Though some may complain that it does not focus on this or that aspect, such as the battles and military fortunes of the war itself, or of the political and diplomatic side, or that it focuses too much on the British perspective, I believe that there are few books as through a history of the First World War.
Martin Gilbert is the greatest living historian on Twentieth Century history.
The subject on the prelude to war describes the political struggles just prior to the war, and puts the most of the blame on Austria-Hungary and Germany. Serbia could not accept the conditions demanded by Austria for peace, after the assassination by Gavrilo Principe of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The author describes the human dimension of the conflict and that of many British soldiers and their memoirs and poetry are a specialty of this volume.
also painfully apparent is the Armenian genocide, the first great genocide of the 20th century in which over a million Armenian men, women and children were barbarously slaughtered in a Ottoman attempt to end the movement for self-determination of that nation.
Gilbert covers the First World War careers of people who later became the giants of the Second World War such as Hitler, Mussolini and Winston Churchill.
We discover that the officer who recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross was in fact Jewish and that far from the Nazi claims of the Jews stabbing Germany in the back, 100s of thousands of Jews served in the German army during the war, and 10 000 Jews died in German uniform. Jewish industrialist and leader Walter Rathenau ( a moderate and opponents of radical Socialism, later assassinated by the Nazis) played a leading role in putting Germany's economy on a war footing, enabling wartime Germany to continue its war effort for years despite the serious shortages of labor and raw materials that were caused by an ever-tightening naval blockade.
While there were unfortunately a significant amount of Jewish Communists, it is equally significant that the German Imperial Government during the First world War, financed and helped build up the Bolshevik movement and injected Lenin like a bacillus into Russia in order to neutralize Russia's effectiveness in the war, , and succeeded only too well
Focusing on the middle Eastern theatre , the book illustrates how the national aspirations of Jews for a re-established homeland in the Holy Land, and of the Arabs for a pan-Arab super state were given momentum by the events of the First World War.
The book focuses on the aftermath of the war and of the harsh Treaty of Versailles in which Germany was bitterly punished laying the seeds for the rise of Nazism and extremism in Germany, and allowing a demagogue like Hitler to take advantage of massive disenchantment.
The book does however neglect the war in Africa in which Germany lost her African empire.
Ultimately another monumental and thorough history by Martin Gilbert, as always focusing on the human side,
Martin Gilbert is the greatest living historian on Twentieth Century history.
The subject on the prelude to war describes the political struggles just prior to the war, and puts the most of the blame on Austria-Hungary and Germany. Serbia could not accept the conditions demanded by Austria for peace, after the assassination by Gavrilo Principe of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The author describes the human dimension of the conflict and that of many British soldiers and their memoirs and poetry are a specialty of this volume.
also painfully apparent is the Armenian genocide, the first great genocide of the 20th century in which over a million Armenian men, women and children were barbarously slaughtered in a Ottoman attempt to end the movement for self-determination of that nation.
Gilbert covers the First World War careers of people who later became the giants of the Second World War such as Hitler, Mussolini and Winston Churchill.
We discover that the officer who recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross was in fact Jewish and that far from the Nazi claims of the Jews stabbing Germany in the back, 100s of thousands of Jews served in the German army during the war, and 10 000 Jews died in German uniform. Jewish industrialist and leader Walter Rathenau ( a moderate and opponents of radical Socialism, later assassinated by the Nazis) played a leading role in putting Germany's economy on a war footing, enabling wartime Germany to continue its war effort for years despite the serious shortages of labor and raw materials that were caused by an ever-tightening naval blockade.
While there were unfortunately a significant amount of Jewish Communists, it is equally significant that the German Imperial Government during the First world War, financed and helped build up the Bolshevik movement and injected Lenin like a bacillus into Russia in order to neutralize Russia's effectiveness in the war, , and succeeded only too well
Focusing on the middle Eastern theatre , the book illustrates how the national aspirations of Jews for a re-established homeland in the Holy Land, and of the Arabs for a pan-Arab super state were given momentum by the events of the First World War.
The book focuses on the aftermath of the war and of the harsh Treaty of Versailles in which Germany was bitterly punished laying the seeds for the rise of Nazism and extremism in Germany, and allowing a demagogue like Hitler to take advantage of massive disenchantment.
The book does however neglect the war in Africa in which Germany lost her African empire.
Ultimately another monumental and thorough history by Martin Gilbert, as always focusing on the human side,
September 27, 2020
Martin Gilbert has an interesting way of writing history. He provides little or no explanation or analysis. Instead he gives an almost day-by-day account, a constant flow of facts and first hand accounts, full of interesting footnotes and names that you might recognise. Alongside the usual suspects we hear from a variety of witnesses before they were famous, including James Callaghan, Clement Attlee, De Gaulle, Rommel, Goering, Valentine Flemming (father of Ian) and a certain Corporal Hitler.
Gilbert’s approach won’t suit everyone. Sometimes you travel from the Eastern front to Gallipoli within a single paragraph. It’s probably not the first book you should read if you really want to understand why. And then there’s the poetry.
But somehow the resulting mosaic builds into a remarkable picture, not just of what happened, but also an insight into what it might actually have been like. I found it hugely informative and a fantastic record of the Great War.
Gilbert’s approach won’t suit everyone. Sometimes you travel from the Eastern front to Gallipoli within a single paragraph. It’s probably not the first book you should read if you really want to understand why. And then there’s the poetry.
But somehow the resulting mosaic builds into a remarkable picture, not just of what happened, but also an insight into what it might actually have been like. I found it hugely informative and a fantastic record of the Great War.
March 20, 2021
Even as the epic Battle of the Somme in the second half of 1916 was winding down and Britain began tallying its incomprehensible 420,000 casualties from what would seem to be a Pyrrhic victory, the press continued feeding the British public propaganda balm. A reporter for the London Daily Mirror, observing a dead British soldier in the field, wrote, rather perplexingly: "Even as he lies on the field he looks more quietly faithful, more simply steadfast than others." Even in death, it seems, a Britisher never lost that stiff upper lip and his saintliness compared to the corpses of the enemy. A very much living British officer on the front, reading that account, expressed his disdain for such tosh in a letter home: "He has drawn well on his imagination, as half of it is not true, but just what he thought it would be like."
Like the American Civil War, the First World War was a war written about in letters, diaries and, perhaps even more fulsomely, poetry. Sir Martin Gilbert in his ambitious kaleidoscopic tapestry of this mammoth war has quoted quite a bit of this writing liberally, and well, in humanizing a war that often devolves into discussions of mere political and military strategy. The book touts itself as a "complete history" of the war, an impossible claim to make even if it spanned multiple volumes rather than one. But as a one-volume work, I can't imagine a more complete account being possible. The book tries to cover so many incidents, so many centers of interest, so many participants, on the ground and in the ivory towers of power, that it can get a bit disorienting. The whole thing feels like a moving target; nothing is lingered over, and Gilbert is on to the next thing. One paragraph may be talking about the Marne on the Western Front in France and in the next two graphs he whisks you off to the Congo in Africa or off to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in Turkey. At first, this can feel a bit overwhelming, as if Gilbert wrote the entire thing on index cards and strung them together on an endless row of tape and had a secretary transcribe the entire shebang in linear, chronological order. As it moves along, though, this strategy pays off, building in power and gravitas as one's understanding increases. By the end, I realized what a triumph Gilbert had achieved.
World War I is still shocking, even considering the many horrors that followed in the next hundred years, and including the Second World War that this war set the stage for. It's almost impossible to imagine anyone surviving any of this: the shells, the poison gas, the filthy conditions of the trenches, the over-the-top suicidal charges into rapid-fire weapons. Gilbert does a tremendous job providing a vast picture of an insanely complex conflict, one that even the most informed historians still struggle to explain.
Although this is largely a linear collection of incidents, Gilbert sometimes moves outside of the timeline in poetic ways, to suggest the lingering memory of the conflict. This passage is a prime example:
"Yet for every victorious headline there was a sombre subtext. Four days before the offensive was renewed, the Newfoundland officer Hedley Goodyear, who had led his men in the attack on August 8, wrote to his mother: ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m Hun-proof.’ He was killed by a sniper between Lihons and Chaulnes. His photograph, showing him in uniform, stood on his fiancée’s mantelpiece for the next fifty years."
Yeah, that's heartbreaking.
I think I came up with a couple of new heroes from this book, the British soldier-poet Wilfred Owen, whose verses pretty much kicked the ass the other other well-meaning, but maudlin, efforts of the other soldier poets quoted here, and Edith Cavell, a nurse shot by the Germans, who vowed to treat any battlefield casualty regardless of nationality.
Interestingly, British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George rather ominously suggested future war if German reparations were too harsh. As he wrote in a famous memorandum at the end of the war: "...the maintenance of peace will depend upon there being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up either the spirit of patriotism, of justice, or of fair play, to achieve redress..."
Boy, did he nail that one.
The deal is this. The book is jam-packed with facts, possibly too many for easy digestion. It's neither dryly analytical/academic, nor novelistic in the grand way, like a Beevor or a Toland -- not terribly scintillating as prose. It sticks to events, large and small, and largely eschews overarching analysis of causes and strategies of the kind found in, say, John Keegan's book on the war (see my recent review of that). That said, the book is pretty awesome, if you can handle it and stick with it. Reading this, I learned a hell of a lot, and have a much deeper understanding of World War I, a conflict, that, somewhat regrettably, it has taken me too long to finally dive into. Now I feel like I'm on solid ground for more.
Is this a five-star book? Probably not. Four stars is probably more accurate, simply for the dryness and episodic approach, but the cumulative effect of the book was too impressive, and as a single source on the war, it's pretty essential.
KR@KY 2021
Like the American Civil War, the First World War was a war written about in letters, diaries and, perhaps even more fulsomely, poetry. Sir Martin Gilbert in his ambitious kaleidoscopic tapestry of this mammoth war has quoted quite a bit of this writing liberally, and well, in humanizing a war that often devolves into discussions of mere political and military strategy. The book touts itself as a "complete history" of the war, an impossible claim to make even if it spanned multiple volumes rather than one. But as a one-volume work, I can't imagine a more complete account being possible. The book tries to cover so many incidents, so many centers of interest, so many participants, on the ground and in the ivory towers of power, that it can get a bit disorienting. The whole thing feels like a moving target; nothing is lingered over, and Gilbert is on to the next thing. One paragraph may be talking about the Marne on the Western Front in France and in the next two graphs he whisks you off to the Congo in Africa or off to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli in Turkey. At first, this can feel a bit overwhelming, as if Gilbert wrote the entire thing on index cards and strung them together on an endless row of tape and had a secretary transcribe the entire shebang in linear, chronological order. As it moves along, though, this strategy pays off, building in power and gravitas as one's understanding increases. By the end, I realized what a triumph Gilbert had achieved.
World War I is still shocking, even considering the many horrors that followed in the next hundred years, and including the Second World War that this war set the stage for. It's almost impossible to imagine anyone surviving any of this: the shells, the poison gas, the filthy conditions of the trenches, the over-the-top suicidal charges into rapid-fire weapons. Gilbert does a tremendous job providing a vast picture of an insanely complex conflict, one that even the most informed historians still struggle to explain.
Although this is largely a linear collection of incidents, Gilbert sometimes moves outside of the timeline in poetic ways, to suggest the lingering memory of the conflict. This passage is a prime example:
"Yet for every victorious headline there was a sombre subtext. Four days before the offensive was renewed, the Newfoundland officer Hedley Goodyear, who had led his men in the attack on August 8, wrote to his mother: ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m Hun-proof.’ He was killed by a sniper between Lihons and Chaulnes. His photograph, showing him in uniform, stood on his fiancée’s mantelpiece for the next fifty years."
Yeah, that's heartbreaking.
I think I came up with a couple of new heroes from this book, the British soldier-poet Wilfred Owen, whose verses pretty much kicked the ass the other other well-meaning, but maudlin, efforts of the other soldier poets quoted here, and Edith Cavell, a nurse shot by the Germans, who vowed to treat any battlefield casualty regardless of nationality.
Interestingly, British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George rather ominously suggested future war if German reparations were too harsh. As he wrote in a famous memorandum at the end of the war: "...the maintenance of peace will depend upon there being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up either the spirit of patriotism, of justice, or of fair play, to achieve redress..."
Boy, did he nail that one.
The deal is this. The book is jam-packed with facts, possibly too many for easy digestion. It's neither dryly analytical/academic, nor novelistic in the grand way, like a Beevor or a Toland -- not terribly scintillating as prose. It sticks to events, large and small, and largely eschews overarching analysis of causes and strategies of the kind found in, say, John Keegan's book on the war (see my recent review of that). That said, the book is pretty awesome, if you can handle it and stick with it. Reading this, I learned a hell of a lot, and have a much deeper understanding of World War I, a conflict, that, somewhat regrettably, it has taken me too long to finally dive into. Now I feel like I'm on solid ground for more.
Is this a five-star book? Probably not. Four stars is probably more accurate, simply for the dryness and episodic approach, but the cumulative effect of the book was too impressive, and as a single source on the war, it's pretty essential.
KR@KY 2021
April 28, 2021
Well-written, engrossing comprehensive history of WWI. Sir Martin Gilbert expounds on the power politics, alliances, national aspirations and failed diplomacy leading up to the war, then provides a blow-by-blow narrative of the conflict on all fronts. Four years of war is followed by the power politics, alliances, national aspirations and failed diplomacy of a precarious peace that ended in a second great global conflict a mere two decades after the first.
Throughout the narrative, Gilbert skillfully interweaves personal experiences from the leaders of nations, the military commanders, officers, private soldiers, ordinary seamen, and civilians. The experiences and observations of the famous and obscure, were gleaned from letters, memoirs, interviews, articles, prose, poetry, war monuments and headstones. The reader gets both the panoramic view and the close-up, all of which adds up to an impression of the whole brought into sharp focus by a meticulous attention to detail.
“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” The quote is attributed to Stalin, from which one might infer a cynical attitude towards genocide. Nevertheless, regardless of the source of the quote, reading a soldier’s poignant last letter to his wife, parents or lover can make a deeper impression on the reader’s imagination than the bare casualty list of a battle in which that soldier died. The statistics of WWI’s dead and wounded, both military and civilian, multiplies individual tragedies by the millions.
“On 22 July 1938, as war again threatened Europe, and Hitler demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, the Imperial War Graves Commission completed its task of cemetery building for the First World War.” A particularly sad comment from the book’s final chapter. To quote Shakespeare: “What’s past is prologue.”
“All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results. These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them.”
Gilbert, Martin. The First World War: A Complete History (p. 543). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
Throughout the narrative, Gilbert skillfully interweaves personal experiences from the leaders of nations, the military commanders, officers, private soldiers, ordinary seamen, and civilians. The experiences and observations of the famous and obscure, were gleaned from letters, memoirs, interviews, articles, prose, poetry, war monuments and headstones. The reader gets both the panoramic view and the close-up, all of which adds up to an impression of the whole brought into sharp focus by a meticulous attention to detail.
“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” The quote is attributed to Stalin, from which one might infer a cynical attitude towards genocide. Nevertheless, regardless of the source of the quote, reading a soldier’s poignant last letter to his wife, parents or lover can make a deeper impression on the reader’s imagination than the bare casualty list of a battle in which that soldier died. The statistics of WWI’s dead and wounded, both military and civilian, multiplies individual tragedies by the millions.
“On 22 July 1938, as war again threatened Europe, and Hitler demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, the Imperial War Graves Commission completed its task of cemetery building for the First World War.” A particularly sad comment from the book’s final chapter. To quote Shakespeare: “What’s past is prologue.”
“All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results. These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them.”
Gilbert, Martin. The First World War: A Complete History (p. 543). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
October 18, 2008
It’s 543 pages of one damned thing after another. An oddly compelling way to do history: no real attempt to make sense of anything in terms of strategy or economics or politics; just a list of events mostly told via individual recollections. Gilbert troubles to quote a lot of poems throughout the text, mostly English war poets of the time. Most of this verse is quite bad (I’ve always thought), but given the context and the horror, it is oddly moving. Perhaps this is the best way to read this sort of poetry. A lot of the poets died, of course: Wilfred Owen, Joyce Kilmer (“only God can make a tree”) and Rupert Brook (who died of an infected mosquito bite on his lip while in training for the Gallipoli campaign). Some of the sources Gilbert uses recur throughout the book, which gives it a real cohesiveness it might’ve otherwise lacked. For example, “On August 7, in Vienna, the 25-year-old Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had just returned from teaching at Cambridge, volunteered as a gunner in the Austrian army, despite a double hernia that entitled him to exemption…(his sister Hermione recalled) there were “many comic misunderstandings ‘which stemmed from the fact that the military authorities, with whom he was always dealing, always assumed that he was looking for an easier post while he, on the contrary, was after a more dangerous one.’” Some of Wittgenstein’s attitudes are strangely archaic: “From his river gunboat on the Russian front, he wrote on October 25: ‘It makes me feel today more than ever the terribly sad position of our race – the German race. Because it seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper had against England. The English – the best race in the world – cannot lose. We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year, then the next year. The though that our race is going to be beaten depressed me terribly, because I am completely German.'” (p. 104). This is a little less hysterical than Corporal Hitler’s letters home (also quoted in this book), but there are some shared attitudes. Maybe everybody thought that way then. The weird conincidences of war: Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein’s friend and colleague, was being tried (and found guilty) for pacifistic activities in England at almost the exact same time (June 1916) that Wittgenstein was awarded by the Austro-Hungarian authorities “the Silver Medal for Valour, Second Class, a rare honour for someone of such a low rank. The citation read: ‘Ignoring the heavy artillery fire on the casemate and the exploding mortar bombs, he observed the discharge of the mortars and located them. The battery in fact succeeded in destroying two of the heavy-calibre mortars by direct hits, as was confirmed by prisoners taken.’ Ignoring the shouts of his officer to take cover, Wittgenstein continued to observe the effect of the gunfire. ‘By this distinctive behaviour,’ the officer reported, ‘he exercised a very calming effect on his comrades.’” (p. 253). Speaking of decorations – Corporal Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class on August 4, 1918 for ‘personal bravery and general merit.’ This was an unusual decoration for a corporal. Hitler wore it for the rest of his life. The regimental adjutant who recommended him for it, Captain Hugo Guttman, was a Jew.” (Guttman, Gilbert says in a footnote, emigrated to Canada when Hitler came to power). (p. 447). Hundreds and hundreds of examples of this sort of thing. When Gilbert goes from the particular to the big numbers, it is almost impossible to comprehend. The worst single day of the war, he notes, was during the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916): “Just over a thousand British officers and more that 20,000 men were killed, and 25,000 seriously wounded.” (p. 260). This was in one day. Elsewhere (everywhere!) a couple of hundred dead here a few dozen there, even in some of the most obscure areas (Anatolia, Bulgaria, Turkey, East Africa, etc) just keeps adding up, page after page. Then, at the very end, in 1918, the Spanish ‘flu kills more than the entire war did! World War II and the Holocaust winds up being more appalling because it was so deliberate and so systematic; the First World War was mostly just incredibly stubborn and stupid. Take your pick on which was the biggest disaster.
December 30, 2014
No book, even a 600-pager like this one, can cover all of the Great War, so the most important thing to know when deciding to read this one is what it does and doesn’t offer.
Gilbert’s book is mostly a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the Great War as it was fought. There’s a whole lot of what and not a lot of why. One might criticize it for being essentially a list of places and dates, but I found it to be so engagingly written that it was never a chore.
There’s some discussion of new developments in warfare, especially some of the first uses of tanks, airplanes, and poison gas. These things made war deadlier, but not more effective or decisive. After Germany’s early gains, the war's various fronts mostly degenerated into stalemates, with enormous numbers of troops dying for little or no gains in territory despite their tremendous heroism. Artillery attacks usually failed to dislodge the enemy from their position, and attempts to launch combined artillery and infantry assaults often resulted in infantry being killed by friendly fire. New kinds of poison gas saw their début (as detailed in an episode of my friend Joey’s excellent history podcast), but, though terrifying, they weren’t especially effective. Germany used indiscriminate submarine warfare to try to counter the Allies’ industrial superiority and naval blockade, but this mostly served to bring America into the war against them. They tried bombing Britain from the air, but Germany’s Zeppelins seem to have crashed or been blown of course as often as they made it to London, and those that made it only succeeded in killing civilians without making a dent in Britain’s industrial capacity.
Military leaders on both sides didn’t seem to grasp the situation. Even after months of horrific and fruitless trench warfare, they still seemed to think that if they tried a little harder, threw just a few more tens of thousands of young men into the meat grinder of their opponents’ machine guns, they could prevail. The book is full of quotations from Lord Haig and other generals expressing confidence that their enemies were on the verge of defeat, adding to the overall impression of tragic, wasteful folly.
My main complaint would be that the book is too Euro-centric in general, and too Anglo-centric in particular. Granted, the Western Front was the war’s main event, but the rest of the world was given short shrift, or sometimes no shrift. The Pacific theater, to the extent there was one, gets no attention other than mentioning that oh yeah, Japan declared war on Germany, too. Likewise for campaigns in Africa. Personal stories from the front are almost exclusively those of British soldiers.
I also found myself wanting a lot more detail of the combatants’ high-level strategies, as well as the political and diplomatic situation that created the war. I’m definitely going to have to find another book that covers these.
Gilbert doesn’t completely ignore politics, however, and the time he does spend on the subject revealed some surprises for me. For example, I always thought that Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and boom — everyone started shooting right away. That wasn’t the case. It took weeks for Austria-Hungary to elect, with Germany’s support, to use the Archduke’s death as an excuse to attack Serbia. They and Germany woefully miscalculated Russia’s willingness to declare war to support her ally. The Kaiser’s continual waffling in the lead-up to the war let it build its own momentum until it could no longer be stopped.
Gilbert’s book is mostly a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the Great War as it was fought. There’s a whole lot of what and not a lot of why. One might criticize it for being essentially a list of places and dates, but I found it to be so engagingly written that it was never a chore.
There’s some discussion of new developments in warfare, especially some of the first uses of tanks, airplanes, and poison gas. These things made war deadlier, but not more effective or decisive. After Germany’s early gains, the war's various fronts mostly degenerated into stalemates, with enormous numbers of troops dying for little or no gains in territory despite their tremendous heroism. Artillery attacks usually failed to dislodge the enemy from their position, and attempts to launch combined artillery and infantry assaults often resulted in infantry being killed by friendly fire. New kinds of poison gas saw their début (as detailed in an episode of my friend Joey’s excellent history podcast), but, though terrifying, they weren’t especially effective. Germany used indiscriminate submarine warfare to try to counter the Allies’ industrial superiority and naval blockade, but this mostly served to bring America into the war against them. They tried bombing Britain from the air, but Germany’s Zeppelins seem to have crashed or been blown of course as often as they made it to London, and those that made it only succeeded in killing civilians without making a dent in Britain’s industrial capacity.
Military leaders on both sides didn’t seem to grasp the situation. Even after months of horrific and fruitless trench warfare, they still seemed to think that if they tried a little harder, threw just a few more tens of thousands of young men into the meat grinder of their opponents’ machine guns, they could prevail. The book is full of quotations from Lord Haig and other generals expressing confidence that their enemies were on the verge of defeat, adding to the overall impression of tragic, wasteful folly.
My main complaint would be that the book is too Euro-centric in general, and too Anglo-centric in particular. Granted, the Western Front was the war’s main event, but the rest of the world was given short shrift, or sometimes no shrift. The Pacific theater, to the extent there was one, gets no attention other than mentioning that oh yeah, Japan declared war on Germany, too. Likewise for campaigns in Africa. Personal stories from the front are almost exclusively those of British soldiers.
I also found myself wanting a lot more detail of the combatants’ high-level strategies, as well as the political and diplomatic situation that created the war. I’m definitely going to have to find another book that covers these.
Gilbert doesn’t completely ignore politics, however, and the time he does spend on the subject revealed some surprises for me. For example, I always thought that Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and boom — everyone started shooting right away. That wasn’t the case. It took weeks for Austria-Hungary to elect, with Germany’s support, to use the Archduke’s death as an excuse to attack Serbia. They and Germany woefully miscalculated Russia’s willingness to declare war to support her ally. The Kaiser’s continual waffling in the lead-up to the war let it build its own momentum until it could no longer be stopped.
September 10, 2021
Большая книжка британского историка про большую войну. Очень долго ее читал в силу обстоятельств (=ленился), а вывод вот какой: это не только масштабный исторический труд, обобщающий огромные пласты информации, но и довольно мощное антивоенное послание. Гилберт сделал книгу, где совмещает общий план с личными историями или, скорее, трагедиями, тут множество выдержек из дневников, писем, много стихов и много печали. Почему стоит прочесть? Потому что вокруг избыток бестолковой милитаристской риторики.
July 5, 2019
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke
***********************************************
Data: 28 de Julho de 1914 a 11 de Novembro de 1918
Beligerantes:
Aliados (Tríplice Entente)
França, Império Britânico, África do Sul, Austrália, Canadá, Índia, Terra Nova, Nova Zelândia, Rodésia do Sul, Rússia (até 1917), Itália, Estados Unidos, Sérvia, Japão, Bélgica, Grécia, Romênia, Portugal entre outros.
Total de soldados: 42 959 850
Total de mortos: 11 milhões
Impérios Centrais (Tríplice Aliança)
Alemanha, Áustria-Hungria, Império Otomano, Bulgária entre outros.
Total de soldados: 25 248 321
Total de mortos: 8 milhões
fonte wikipedia
***********************************************
Em 2018, mais precisamente a 11 de Novembro comemorámos os 100 anos do fim da primeira guerra mundial.
Foram 1.590 dias de uma guerra que poderia ter sido evitada – afinal de contas os maiores líderes europeus tinham entre si algum tipo de parentesco – através da diplomacia e do bom senso. Não fosse a ganância, a sede de vingança e de poder e a Europa do início do século XX podia ter vivido uma era de prosperidade e avanço. O assassinato do Arquiduque foi só o acender do rastilho de um grande paiol. Velhos ódios e ressentimentos voltaram a ser exacerbados e a Europa mergulha numa loucura, numa perda total de sentido de humanidade, cujo balanço são milhões de vidas ceifadas e património histórico, hospitais, escolas etc destruídos. Todos os envolvidos no conflito inicial acharam que seria uma guerra rápida e lucrativa. Acordos entre as nações repartiam territórios como quem reparte uma fatia de tarte.
Ninguém imaginou que seriam mais de 4 anos de guerra.
Foi uma guerra lenta. Avançar era tarefa difícil. As trincheiras eram locais que levavam qualquer soldado à loucura em pouco tempo. Havia doenças, fome, sede, frio e morte por todo o lado.
Pela primeira vez combateu-se simultaneamente em terra, no mar e no ar. A guerra química deu os primeiros passos. A indústria bélica transformou-se.
Uma guerra que acabou com impérios, destruiu nações, não teve heróis e não teve vencedores.
No canal do youtube The Great War Indy Neidell segue a Grande Guerra desde o seu início em 1914 até ao seu fim em 1918.
Europa antes e depois da I Grande Guerra
― Edmund Burke
***********************************************
Data: 28 de Julho de 1914 a 11 de Novembro de 1918
Beligerantes:
Aliados (Tríplice Entente)
França, Império Britânico, África do Sul, Austrália, Canadá, Índia, Terra Nova, Nova Zelândia, Rodésia do Sul, Rússia (até 1917), Itália, Estados Unidos, Sérvia, Japão, Bélgica, Grécia, Romênia, Portugal entre outros.
Total de soldados: 42 959 850
Total de mortos: 11 milhões
Impérios Centrais (Tríplice Aliança)
Alemanha, Áustria-Hungria, Império Otomano, Bulgária entre outros.
Total de soldados: 25 248 321
Total de mortos: 8 milhões
fonte wikipedia
***********************************************
Em 2018, mais precisamente a 11 de Novembro comemorámos os 100 anos do fim da primeira guerra mundial.
Foram 1.590 dias de uma guerra que poderia ter sido evitada – afinal de contas os maiores líderes europeus tinham entre si algum tipo de parentesco – através da diplomacia e do bom senso. Não fosse a ganância, a sede de vingança e de poder e a Europa do início do século XX podia ter vivido uma era de prosperidade e avanço. O assassinato do Arquiduque foi só o acender do rastilho de um grande paiol. Velhos ódios e ressentimentos voltaram a ser exacerbados e a Europa mergulha numa loucura, numa perda total de sentido de humanidade, cujo balanço são milhões de vidas ceifadas e património histórico, hospitais, escolas etc destruídos. Todos os envolvidos no conflito inicial acharam que seria uma guerra rápida e lucrativa. Acordos entre as nações repartiam territórios como quem reparte uma fatia de tarte.
Ninguém imaginou que seriam mais de 4 anos de guerra.
Foi uma guerra lenta. Avançar era tarefa difícil. As trincheiras eram locais que levavam qualquer soldado à loucura em pouco tempo. Havia doenças, fome, sede, frio e morte por todo o lado.
Pela primeira vez combateu-se simultaneamente em terra, no mar e no ar. A guerra química deu os primeiros passos. A indústria bélica transformou-se.
Uma guerra que acabou com impérios, destruiu nações, não teve heróis e não teve vencedores.
No canal do youtube The Great War Indy Neidell segue a Grande Guerra desde o seu início em 1914 até ao seu fim em 1918.
Europa antes e depois da I Grande Guerra
July 25, 2015
Historians come in many flavours. There are those who expound on the big picture, who create masterful theories that appear to explain a lot, and some who dive into the detail of personalities and events. Martin Gilbert was a well respected historian with the public - his plentiful output sold well. Yet he was coolly assessed by reviewers and other historians. Paul Addison described one of his volumes on Winston Churchill as "more like a compilation of source materials", and Richard Overy described his Second World War history as "so perversely at odds with the conventions of modern history-writing that the least we might expect is some guidance".
Yet there is a place for the chronicler. History isn't just about grand narratives and theories of causation - events are important. The historian's own purpose and point of view don't have to be centre stage - as long as they aren't surreptitiously distorting the tale. David Kynaston is writing a much hailed history of post war Britain which echos Gilbert's style. The historians own voice and point of view is subtle, the sources and characters speaking for themselves. Kynaston roams back and forward through popular culture and specific individuals before centring on his core topic in each chapter.
Gilbert's history of World War 1 certainly is light on grand strategy and the big picture. It isn't really a military history, and doesn't spend a great deal of time on politics. It does jump from place to place, although I didn't find it particularly difficult to follow. What it is superb at is giving the human view of war. Through letters, diaries and poetry we get a vivid portrait of most of the theatres of war and of what it was like for the individuals. The real delight is in following particular characters (often to sad conclusions) and reading the footnotes about the legacy of individuals.
The up close and personal point of view does allow appreciation of the suffering, as well as a sense of living through the drama of the war itself. The many military and diplomatic coups of the central powers lead to nail biting moments right up until mid 1918, even knowing the outcome.
Martin Gilbert was a British Jew. This does show through in his perspective to some extent. German atrocities are highlighted while British ones are not, and he does point out Jews with particular interest (e.g. Walter Rathenau) in a way other authors might not. The book is lighter on the perspective of Central Powers participants but not overly so. The main omission is of Turkish perspectives however this probably reflects when the book was written (1994).
This book isn't the last word in explaining the First World War, however it contributes a lot to understanding what the war was about, the nature of it and its impact on individuals. As Martin Gilbert himself states: "All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results. These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them". This book is a powerful exposition of that story.
Yet there is a place for the chronicler. History isn't just about grand narratives and theories of causation - events are important. The historian's own purpose and point of view don't have to be centre stage - as long as they aren't surreptitiously distorting the tale. David Kynaston is writing a much hailed history of post war Britain which echos Gilbert's style. The historians own voice and point of view is subtle, the sources and characters speaking for themselves. Kynaston roams back and forward through popular culture and specific individuals before centring on his core topic in each chapter.
Gilbert's history of World War 1 certainly is light on grand strategy and the big picture. It isn't really a military history, and doesn't spend a great deal of time on politics. It does jump from place to place, although I didn't find it particularly difficult to follow. What it is superb at is giving the human view of war. Through letters, diaries and poetry we get a vivid portrait of most of the theatres of war and of what it was like for the individuals. The real delight is in following particular characters (often to sad conclusions) and reading the footnotes about the legacy of individuals.
The up close and personal point of view does allow appreciation of the suffering, as well as a sense of living through the drama of the war itself. The many military and diplomatic coups of the central powers lead to nail biting moments right up until mid 1918, even knowing the outcome.
Martin Gilbert was a British Jew. This does show through in his perspective to some extent. German atrocities are highlighted while British ones are not, and he does point out Jews with particular interest (e.g. Walter Rathenau) in a way other authors might not. The book is lighter on the perspective of Central Powers participants but not overly so. The main omission is of Turkish perspectives however this probably reflects when the book was written (1994).
This book isn't the last word in explaining the First World War, however it contributes a lot to understanding what the war was about, the nature of it and its impact on individuals. As Martin Gilbert himself states: "All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results. These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them". This book is a powerful exposition of that story.
December 1, 2022
A Primeira Guerra Mundial é um tema que há muito me fascina. Tive sempre a sensação que a minha geração não sabe quase nada sobre essa Guerra que mudou tudo. Muito mais que qualquer outro acontecimento. Ao longo dos anos fui procurando saber mais sobre o tema, primeiro sobre a participação de Portugal, depois de modo mais genérico. O centésimo aniversário do início da Guerra acabou por reavivar uma série de edições sobre o tema.
Este livro do Martin Gilbert é considerado uma das mais completas obras sobre a Grande Guerra e não poderia ser de outro modo. Ele conseguiu condensar os grandes acontecimentos nos vários cenários da Guerra, oferecendo as diversas perspetivas dos lados envolvidos, conseguindo não cair no facilitismo de falar disto de forma desapaixonada. Era tão fácil falar só de números.
O que nos prende a este livro é precisamente o modo como a cada novo ataque, a cada novo dia, travamos conhecimentos com as pessoas que fizeram parte desta Guerra. A cada página ficamos ligados a pessoas concretas que morreram em combate, que foram feridas, que foram feitas prisioneiras, que foram perseguidas e brutalmente assassinadas, que morreram de fome ou frio. Pessoas que tinham aspirações e planos, que se viram envolvidas neste conflito sem perceber como e porquê, e cujas vidas terminaram ou foram viradas de pernas para o ar, sem terem qualquer hipótese de decisão.
Li algumas reviews que apresentavam o livro como sendo de difícil leitura ou algo pesado. N��o senti isso. Achei que a leitura fluía muito bem, precisamente porque não se limita a relatar o que passa a cada dia, do ponto de vista militar ou político, e porque o Martin Gilbert tem uma escrita ligeira.
É um livro imperdível para quem tem interesse na Grande Guerra e gosta de história em geral. Para mim, um daqueles livros que nos deixam à deriva quando acabam.
Este livro do Martin Gilbert é considerado uma das mais completas obras sobre a Grande Guerra e não poderia ser de outro modo. Ele conseguiu condensar os grandes acontecimentos nos vários cenários da Guerra, oferecendo as diversas perspetivas dos lados envolvidos, conseguindo não cair no facilitismo de falar disto de forma desapaixonada. Era tão fácil falar só de números.
O que nos prende a este livro é precisamente o modo como a cada novo ataque, a cada novo dia, travamos conhecimentos com as pessoas que fizeram parte desta Guerra. A cada página ficamos ligados a pessoas concretas que morreram em combate, que foram feridas, que foram feitas prisioneiras, que foram perseguidas e brutalmente assassinadas, que morreram de fome ou frio. Pessoas que tinham aspirações e planos, que se viram envolvidas neste conflito sem perceber como e porquê, e cujas vidas terminaram ou foram viradas de pernas para o ar, sem terem qualquer hipótese de decisão.
Li algumas reviews que apresentavam o livro como sendo de difícil leitura ou algo pesado. N��o senti isso. Achei que a leitura fluía muito bem, precisamente porque não se limita a relatar o que passa a cada dia, do ponto de vista militar ou político, e porque o Martin Gilbert tem uma escrita ligeira.
É um livro imperdível para quem tem interesse na Grande Guerra e gosta de história em geral. Para mim, um daqueles livros que nos deixam à deriva quando acabam.
July 28, 2021
Una nota "stonante": la marginalità in cui viene relegato il fronte italo-austriaco, pochissimo, quasi per nulla considerato dall'autore...
October 7, 2020
Terminata anche questa rilettura. probabilmente il saggio più completo e meglio scritto sulla WW1, di certo in alcuni passaggi può essere difficile ma è affascinante e, come la prima volta che lo lessi, scorre come un fiume in piena senza arenarsi in noiose lanche.
Di gran prgio anche tutta la parte in cui indaga sui grandi personaggi intelletuali dell'epoca, sulle loro posizioni e sulle motivazioni delle loro azioni.
5 stelle piene.
Di gran prgio anche tutta la parte in cui indaga sui grandi personaggi intelletuali dell'epoca, sulle loro posizioni e sulle motivazioni delle loro azioni.
5 stelle piene.
January 8, 2017
A very good and thorough overview of the war in sequential order. It doesn't try to explain the strategies or get in the minds of the participants. It just tells the tale, as it were. Mainly through anecdotes and asides. That being said I took brief impressions of the book as I was reading it, a bit tongue and cheek but still:
- good explanation of cause of war
- Valiant act. then he died. here is a poem.
- the Germans are driving to Paris through Belgium. Belgium fights valiantly. losses.
- German brutality against civilians.
-Hitler
-the British and French miscalculate...ad nauseam
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
- the allies fall back
-Hitler
- battle of the Marne...MISTAKES WERE MADE...and then massive death toll. Here's a poem
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-and now we are in stalemate.
- Churchill is awesome Yeah!
-Mussolini
- Poor planning, unbelievable number of people dead. they gained a few hundred yards, and then the enemy got it back the next day.
- Another country comes into the war in the east and does good until the Germans come and solidify the ranks of there adversaries and then they do bad
, attacks bogged down not by trenches but by everything else. and then massive death toll. Here's a poem.
- here are some random pictures.
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
- maps in the back.
- Germans win again, holy crap i know the winner and still...
- another persons POV viewed through a letter because of course he died...here's a poem.
- surprisingly tense book.
- here is something about the communists who were helped by the Germans you know.
- anti-war folks....and their executed.
-the Jews try to help and are killed and/or persecuted on all sides.
- ohh look a new war front...and its bogged down
-Verdun and the Somme...MISTAKES WERE MADE, and then massive death toll. Here's a poem
- submarine warfare...Wilson says US still neutral
-as a palate cleanser here is the air war, less blood more gallantry still plenty of death.
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-Churchill is awesome Yeah
-Wilson fails. US still neutral
-random dig at American racism
- another persons POV viewed through a letter because of course he died...here's a poem.
-unrestrictive submarine warfare/Zimmerman note Wilson finally getting off the pot
-Mussolini
-here come the communists/revolution.
- here is something about the communists who were helped by the Germans you know
-US finally at war
-the convoy system
-US soldiers not good.
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-Russia collapses, loses everything
- central powers last hurrah
-Pershing bad, Brits and French good. Americans stubborn
-Americans stubborn, now in a slightly good way...begrudgingly.
-here's a poem
-random dig at American racism
-Americans do good.
-the allies advance, war almost over - here's a poem
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-The end
- Germans in revolt
-here's a poem
-final days of fighting
-armistice
- a really good summary of its faults and causes of the next great war
- good explanation of cause of war
- Valiant act. then he died. here is a poem.
- the Germans are driving to Paris through Belgium. Belgium fights valiantly. losses.
- German brutality against civilians.
-Hitler
-the British and French miscalculate...ad nauseam
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
- the allies fall back
-Hitler
- battle of the Marne...MISTAKES WERE MADE...and then massive death toll. Here's a poem
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-and now we are in stalemate.
- Churchill is awesome Yeah!
-Mussolini
- Poor planning, unbelievable number of people dead. they gained a few hundred yards, and then the enemy got it back the next day.
- Another country comes into the war in the east and does good until the Germans come and solidify the ranks of there adversaries and then they do bad
, attacks bogged down not by trenches but by everything else. and then massive death toll. Here's a poem.
- here are some random pictures.
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
- maps in the back.
- Germans win again, holy crap i know the winner and still...
- another persons POV viewed through a letter because of course he died...here's a poem.
- surprisingly tense book.
- here is something about the communists who were helped by the Germans you know.
- anti-war folks....and their executed.
-the Jews try to help and are killed and/or persecuted on all sides.
- ohh look a new war front...and its bogged down
-Verdun and the Somme...MISTAKES WERE MADE, and then massive death toll. Here's a poem
- submarine warfare...Wilson says US still neutral
-as a palate cleanser here is the air war, less blood more gallantry still plenty of death.
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-Churchill is awesome Yeah
-Wilson fails. US still neutral
-random dig at American racism
- another persons POV viewed through a letter because of course he died...here's a poem.
-unrestrictive submarine warfare/Zimmerman note Wilson finally getting off the pot
-Mussolini
-here come the communists/revolution.
- here is something about the communists who were helped by the Germans you know
-US finally at war
-the convoy system
-US soldiers not good.
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-Russia collapses, loses everything
- central powers last hurrah
-Pershing bad, Brits and French good. Americans stubborn
-Americans stubborn, now in a slightly good way...begrudgingly.
-here's a poem
-random dig at American racism
-Americans do good.
-the allies advance, war almost over - here's a poem
-Victorian cross awarded, another amazing tale of gallantry.
-The end
- Germans in revolt
-here's a poem
-final days of fighting
-armistice
- a really good summary of its faults and causes of the next great war
February 28, 2019
Diferentemente de Lawrence Sondhaus, que em seu livro “A Primeira Guerra Mundial” optou por separar os capítulos por temas e fazer uma abordagem mais política da guerra, Martin Gilbert aqui narra os acontecimentos em ordem cronológica, separando os capítulos por períodos de alguns meses. Além disso o autor faz uma abordagem mias detalhada das batalhas e das questões militares, usando citações e relatos de soldados e governantes como um acréscimo à narrativa (e não uma interrupção como Max Hastings em “Catástrofe: 1914 a Europa vai à guerra”). Infelizmente, a maioria esmagadora dos relatos são de britânicos, sempre os humanizando com nomes e histórias pessoais, enquanto os soldados das potências centrais são apenas números (como a maioria dos livros norte-americanos sobre a Segunda Guerra).
Um aspecto interessante foi o autor destacar ao longo de todo o livro as participações - nas batalhas da Primeira Guerra - dos personagens que assumiriam um papel relevante posteriormente na Segunda Guerra, como: Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Hess, Göring, Rommel, Pétain, De Gaulle, Truman, MacArthur, entre outros. Aliás, como Martin Gilbert também escreveu uma biografia de Churchill (publicado em dois volumes também pela Editora Casa da Palavra), há bastante material sobre o futuro primeiro-ministro britânico no livro.
Há também aproximadamente 65 poemas ao longo do texto, todos em inglês, mas com tradução na seção de “Notas” no final do livro.
Todos os teatros da guerra são mencionados, mas as batalhas na França, Bélgica e Galípoli recebem proporcionalmente maiores detalhes.
A edição impressa conta com capa cartão, papel Pólen Gold (amarelado) 70g/m², ótima tipografia, seção com 29 fotos em preto e branco (no mesmo papel do texto) e 31 mapas no final do livro.
Ótima leitura, bem abrangente e com texto fluido. O prelúdio da guerra é abordado de forma bem breve, quem procura uma contextualização melhor, indico ler antes o “A Primeira Guerra Mundial” da Margaret MacMillan, que aborda o período do final do séc. XIX até a declaração da guerra em 1914 (e não a guerra em si, apesar do título). Recomendadíssimo.
Um aspecto interessante foi o autor destacar ao longo de todo o livro as participações - nas batalhas da Primeira Guerra - dos personagens que assumiriam um papel relevante posteriormente na Segunda Guerra, como: Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Hess, Göring, Rommel, Pétain, De Gaulle, Truman, MacArthur, entre outros. Aliás, como Martin Gilbert também escreveu uma biografia de Churchill (publicado em dois volumes também pela Editora Casa da Palavra), há bastante material sobre o futuro primeiro-ministro britânico no livro.
Há também aproximadamente 65 poemas ao longo do texto, todos em inglês, mas com tradução na seção de “Notas” no final do livro.
Todos os teatros da guerra são mencionados, mas as batalhas na França, Bélgica e Galípoli recebem proporcionalmente maiores detalhes.
A edição impressa conta com capa cartão, papel Pólen Gold (amarelado) 70g/m², ótima tipografia, seção com 29 fotos em preto e branco (no mesmo papel do texto) e 31 mapas no final do livro.
Ótima leitura, bem abrangente e com texto fluido. O prelúdio da guerra é abordado de forma bem breve, quem procura uma contextualização melhor, indico ler antes o “A Primeira Guerra Mundial” da Margaret MacMillan, que aborda o período do final do séc. XIX até a declaração da guerra em 1914 (e não a guerra em si, apesar do título). Recomendadíssimo.
September 26, 2022
It's been an exhausting week mentally living in the mud, privations, and suffering of the First World War. In this historical account, Martin Gilbert skillfully weaves together vivid personal narratives with objective overviews. He quotes an immense amount of first person recollections via letters, journals, and interviews from both well- and little-known sources (albeit mostly British sources). Gilbert directly connects the events from these years to the rise of fascism in Europe and the Second World War. His writing is engaging and compassionate. While no single historical account should be utilized exclusively, this volume could easily be a foundational staple to studying this conflict and its repercussions.
February 6, 2014
-Un buen vistazo a la Gran Guerra.-
Género. Historia.
Lo que nos cuenta. Repaso estrictamente cronológico, en ocasiones día a día incluso, de los eventos que crearon el caldo de cultivo general para la Primera Guerra Mundial, las circunstancias que rodearon su estallido, su desarrollo y un pequeño repaso a varias y distintas consecuencias de la misma.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Historia.
Lo que nos cuenta. Repaso estrictamente cronológico, en ocasiones día a día incluso, de los eventos que crearon el caldo de cultivo general para la Primera Guerra Mundial, las circunstancias que rodearon su estallido, su desarrollo y un pequeño repaso a varias y distintas consecuencias de la misma.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
June 17, 2013
Okay. The book covered some parts of the war that I was definitely never told in school.
On the other hand he showed his public schoolboy/oxbridge bent, with his overemphasis on the war poetry that only came out of his social strata in what was ultimately a huge exercise in grinding up young men.
At least he has covered some things from the axis point of view.
But really his love for Churchill and people of his own class shines through, the working class people involved seem to be just numbers for him.
Semi-Marxist Semi-Rant over
On the other hand he showed his public schoolboy/oxbridge bent, with his overemphasis on the war poetry that only came out of his social strata in what was ultimately a huge exercise in grinding up young men.
At least he has covered some things from the axis point of view.
But really his love for Churchill and people of his own class shines through, the working class people involved seem to be just numbers for him.
Semi-Marxist Semi-Rant over
September 28, 2009
Big book of death in the trenches. If people aren't being machine-gunned in No Man's Land, they're being blown into their component pieces by artillery. Gilbert uses a lot of contemporary anecdotes to illustrate the experience of trench warfare. He does an excellent job of describing the war on the main fronts, without stinting too much on the other theaters of conflict.
I have three criticisms: In the choice of accounts used, the book tends to be a bit Anglocentric. Gilbert justifies this by citing the central place the Great War continues to hold in popular British culture. I would have liked to have read more from the French or Russian experience. Gilbert eschews the use of academic citation. As a former academic, I would have liked to know the sources of some of his quotes. Lastly, I wish he would have covered more of the social impact of the war on the homefronts. Basically, I really want a 3,000 page book on the war.
These criticisms aside, this is one of the best, most accesible one-volume works on the First World War. It is highly readable. Gilbert does a good job of portraying the horrors of war in the trenches. He also does a good job of laying out the complex tangle of issues that drove the conflict and made it so difficult to bring to an end. From the war's mid-point, the various combatants wanted to end the war but were at a complete loss as to how.
The author also does a good job of unraveling the action on various fronts, making the events and their chronology very comprehensible.
I have three criticisms: In the choice of accounts used, the book tends to be a bit Anglocentric. Gilbert justifies this by citing the central place the Great War continues to hold in popular British culture. I would have liked to have read more from the French or Russian experience. Gilbert eschews the use of academic citation. As a former academic, I would have liked to know the sources of some of his quotes. Lastly, I wish he would have covered more of the social impact of the war on the homefronts. Basically, I really want a 3,000 page book on the war.
These criticisms aside, this is one of the best, most accesible one-volume works on the First World War. It is highly readable. Gilbert does a good job of portraying the horrors of war in the trenches. He also does a good job of laying out the complex tangle of issues that drove the conflict and made it so difficult to bring to an end. From the war's mid-point, the various combatants wanted to end the war but were at a complete loss as to how.
The author also does a good job of unraveling the action on various fronts, making the events and their chronology very comprehensible.
December 8, 2013
A good, comprehensive treatment of the war. Gilbert does a good job covering the war’s scope, from the war’s origins to its aftermath.
The narrative isn’t exactly riveting or stirring, but it is endlessly informative. While the coverage of certain battles and campaigns varies throughout the book, Gilbert does a great job bringing it all together in a way that makes sense. Politics,strategy, diplomacy and military actions are all brought together in a clear narrative.
Gilbert is also good at weaving anecdotes into the story, about such things as the experiences of civilians, and the sheer horror and scale of the war’s effects.Sometimes he resorts to a barrage of facts that disconcert the reader, but it helps drive the narrative along. He is good at showing how the war escalated into bloody and horrific stalemate where advances were minimal and casualties horrendous.
Gilbert includes a lot of literature excerpts and war poetry, which gets irritating sometimes but drives home the horrors of the war. He also includes anecdotes about the more famous figures that were involved in the war, or would become famous later on( Churchill, de Gaulle, Hitler, etc.).
The book lacks thorough analysis, but this does not otherwise detract from its story. He also ignores to some extent the war’s sideshow theaters like Africa and Asia, although actions in the Middle East are covered well.
Some of Gilbert’s language is a little odd, like “torpedoed with a Turkish torpedo,” but instances like this are few and far between.
The narrative isn’t exactly riveting or stirring, but it is endlessly informative. While the coverage of certain battles and campaigns varies throughout the book, Gilbert does a great job bringing it all together in a way that makes sense. Politics,strategy, diplomacy and military actions are all brought together in a clear narrative.
Gilbert is also good at weaving anecdotes into the story, about such things as the experiences of civilians, and the sheer horror and scale of the war’s effects.Sometimes he resorts to a barrage of facts that disconcert the reader, but it helps drive the narrative along. He is good at showing how the war escalated into bloody and horrific stalemate where advances were minimal and casualties horrendous.
Gilbert includes a lot of literature excerpts and war poetry, which gets irritating sometimes but drives home the horrors of the war. He also includes anecdotes about the more famous figures that were involved in the war, or would become famous later on( Churchill, de Gaulle, Hitler, etc.).
The book lacks thorough analysis, but this does not otherwise detract from its story. He also ignores to some extent the war’s sideshow theaters like Africa and Asia, although actions in the Middle East are covered well.
Some of Gilbert’s language is a little odd, like “torpedoed with a Turkish torpedo,” but instances like this are few and far between.
November 24, 2011
This very long work is essentially a chronology of the war, from the rapid escalation of tension before August 1914 to the problems of armistice in 1918 and how they affected state relations in the 1930s. Gilbert, the official biographer of Churchill, brings home at many points the reality of the 9 million military dead of WWI through use of poems, quotes and letters written home by the men who died, as well as graphic recollections by nurses who served at the front (one image that stays with me is the room full of amputated limbs).
It’s fascinating reading and broad in scope, but it does have its problems. First, the endless litany style does grate after a while. Second, Gilbert is intensely pro-Anglo-American. Thus he ignores all the fighting out of Europe, and while he mentions Japan once, fails to dwell on why Japan entered the war, how her people felt about it, what her success or losses were, etc. Thus, too, he dwells on German “atrocities” during the war but mentions several instances which make it quite clear that barbarism and selfishness were aspects of both sides. Finally, while arguing that superior Allied force was the deciding factor in the German capitulation, he fails to convince that internal revolution played a small part. Despite these flaws, an impressive and engaging book.
It’s fascinating reading and broad in scope, but it does have its problems. First, the endless litany style does grate after a while. Second, Gilbert is intensely pro-Anglo-American. Thus he ignores all the fighting out of Europe, and while he mentions Japan once, fails to dwell on why Japan entered the war, how her people felt about it, what her success or losses were, etc. Thus, too, he dwells on German “atrocities” during the war but mentions several instances which make it quite clear that barbarism and selfishness were aspects of both sides. Finally, while arguing that superior Allied force was the deciding factor in the German capitulation, he fails to convince that internal revolution played a small part. Despite these flaws, an impressive and engaging book.
April 18, 2019
"The First World War” by Martin Gilbert is an excellent book, the author covered the all conflict briefly. Well written, captures the horror and brutality of War, with individual stories, docummented and direct quotes because his focus is more on the human story. Every front is covered, date by date, diaries, documments, evidence and stirring narratives that people died.
An excellent way to learned a Different Perspective on WWI.This book will certainly sophisticate but not too complex history of the first world war. I recommend this book.
An excellent way to learned a Different Perspective on WWI.This book will certainly sophisticate but not too complex history of the first world war. I recommend this book.
August 29, 2019
probably deserves the final star for a 4.5 ~ 5.0 star rating, but I'm sitting on a load of good books and can't distribute too many five stars too quickly.
a thousand page tome on world war one, interspersed with the poetry of some of the soldiers. Gilbert writes briskly and well. a good learning experience about the great tragedy.
a thousand page tome on world war one, interspersed with the poetry of some of the soldiers. Gilbert writes briskly and well. a good learning experience about the great tragedy.
July 10, 2022
Good history of the war is a relatively straightforward account of the battles and course of the war. However, the focus is mostly on the immediate happenings around the war. Excuse me if I find it a bit journalistic for my taste. I am a theory spinner and I am much more on the long-term effects of this war on the course of history on things like politics and capitalism and how it shaped the outline of the following years of the twentieth century. This book sticks to the immediate and proximate effects of the war while I look for a grand narrative (my vice I suppose) but it is a really good account of the war on its own terms and for the generations that lived the experience the immediate effects were more important than the grand narrative. The world war I generation was suspicious of such grand narratives and for good reason.
September 11, 2025
people looked at me like i was crazy when i pulled out a full on history textbook at the pool but what can i say? i actually enjoyed this book so much he did such a good job at fully painting the picture of the war and i loved all the footnotes too. also i’ve been obsessed with wwi for so long it was perfect
October 16, 2017
Mark L.
Mrs. D Smith
HLA Hour 3
9/26/2017
Book Review 1
The book I read was The First World War by Martin Gilbert. This book is about all of the technology, weapons, tactics, and battles of World War One.
This book goes day by day month by month year in a timeline of the war. It tells about significant things that happen during that time.
The point of this book is to inform and explain this war to more people about World War One which I believe is overshadowed in the U. S. by other wars such as World War Two and the American Civil war. I think the most important thing shown here is that this was a very interesting time filled with terrible violence, death, and destruction, but it also saw the most medical breakthroughs and research compared to any other time in the history of humanity, and many other good things came out of this war, but many bad things happened to, like the deaths of millions of men, the Russian Civil war and many other things.
I feel the book was overall a very successful book in most goals. It is very informative, it really hits that point good because it is very informative, I think the writing is pretty effective, but some of the language and the way it is worded is a little confusing, and the author, Martin Gilbert, is a very credible author with a degree in history from Oxford.
All and all, I really liked this book, and I thought it was very well crafted. I liked the format, details, and the wide picture. I would like to recommend to anyone who likes history and the interesting stories that come out of a terrible war. You would like this because it goes over the war, but it also goes over individuals and their stories.
-Mark L.
Mrs. D Smith
HLA Hour 3
9/26/2017
Book Review 1
The book I read was The First World War by Martin Gilbert. This book is about all of the technology, weapons, tactics, and battles of World War One.
This book goes day by day month by month year in a timeline of the war. It tells about significant things that happen during that time.
The point of this book is to inform and explain this war to more people about World War One which I believe is overshadowed in the U. S. by other wars such as World War Two and the American Civil war. I think the most important thing shown here is that this was a very interesting time filled with terrible violence, death, and destruction, but it also saw the most medical breakthroughs and research compared to any other time in the history of humanity, and many other good things came out of this war, but many bad things happened to, like the deaths of millions of men, the Russian Civil war and many other things.
I feel the book was overall a very successful book in most goals. It is very informative, it really hits that point good because it is very informative, I think the writing is pretty effective, but some of the language and the way it is worded is a little confusing, and the author, Martin Gilbert, is a very credible author with a degree in history from Oxford.
All and all, I really liked this book, and I thought it was very well crafted. I liked the format, details, and the wide picture. I would like to recommend to anyone who likes history and the interesting stories that come out of a terrible war. You would like this because it goes over the war, but it also goes over individuals and their stories.
-Mark L.
October 12, 2015
Sete meses para ler um livro é sinónimo de que não é interessante? Nada disso.
Esta obra de Martin Gilbert, tal como a referente à Segunda Guerra Mundial, dificilmente se pode considerar como leitura de mesa-de-cabeceira.
O tom é obviamente pesado pelo que o ritmo de leitura deve ser mais lento, intervalado qb. Aconselho como leitura simultânea com outros livros.
É um trabalho completíssimo de pesquisa e compilação que nos faz ter uma excelente ideia do que foi a guerra, do mundo no início do século e compreender muito do que se passa hoje em dia.
É eventualmente até demasiado completo, pelo que, em conjunto com o facto de não traduzir os poemas, não me mereça cinco estrelas.
Mas é uma obra que aconselho vivamente.
Sobre a guerra propriamente dita.
Penso que os seus contornos são relativamente desconhecidos da maioria das pessoas.
Em muitos aspectos foi muito pior do que a guerra que lhe sucedeu: exércitos impreparados, enviados para a morte certa por estratégias suicidas; a utilização maciça de gás; o massacre dos arménios pelos turcos; a guerra de trincheiras.
Morreram mais soldados em combate do que em qualquer outra guerra: 1,8 milhões de alemães, 1,7 milhões de russos, 1,4 milhões de franceses, 1,3 milhões de austríacos, 743 mil britânicos, 615 mil italianos, 335 mil romenos, 325 mil turcos, 90 mil búlgaros, 60 mil canadianos, 59 mil australianos, 49 mil indianos, 48 mil americanos, 45 mil sérvios, 44 mil belgas, 16 mil neozelandeses, 8 mil sul-africanos, 7 mil portugueses, 5 mil gregos, 3 mil montenegrinos. 5600 soldados por dia!
Portugal entrou na guerra no início de 1917, integrando os Aliados, por causa das possessões africanas (sempre África). A 12 de Setembro participou - quem diria - na maior batalha aérea da guerra, integrando um esquadrão de 1483 aviões de seis nações diferentes.
Tal como em tudo na vida, é preciso saber perder, mas também saber ganhar. E (alguns dos) Aliados não souberam. Para além de vencerem, quiseram culpar, humilhar e incapacitar os alemães. Resultado: 20 anos depois de acabar esta, começou a segunda grande guerra.
Esta obra de Martin Gilbert, tal como a referente à Segunda Guerra Mundial, dificilmente se pode considerar como leitura de mesa-de-cabeceira.
O tom é obviamente pesado pelo que o ritmo de leitura deve ser mais lento, intervalado qb. Aconselho como leitura simultânea com outros livros.
É um trabalho completíssimo de pesquisa e compilação que nos faz ter uma excelente ideia do que foi a guerra, do mundo no início do século e compreender muito do que se passa hoje em dia.
É eventualmente até demasiado completo, pelo que, em conjunto com o facto de não traduzir os poemas, não me mereça cinco estrelas.
Mas é uma obra que aconselho vivamente.
Sobre a guerra propriamente dita.
Penso que os seus contornos são relativamente desconhecidos da maioria das pessoas.
Em muitos aspectos foi muito pior do que a guerra que lhe sucedeu: exércitos impreparados, enviados para a morte certa por estratégias suicidas; a utilização maciça de gás; o massacre dos arménios pelos turcos; a guerra de trincheiras.
Morreram mais soldados em combate do que em qualquer outra guerra: 1,8 milhões de alemães, 1,7 milhões de russos, 1,4 milhões de franceses, 1,3 milhões de austríacos, 743 mil britânicos, 615 mil italianos, 335 mil romenos, 325 mil turcos, 90 mil búlgaros, 60 mil canadianos, 59 mil australianos, 49 mil indianos, 48 mil americanos, 45 mil sérvios, 44 mil belgas, 16 mil neozelandeses, 8 mil sul-africanos, 7 mil portugueses, 5 mil gregos, 3 mil montenegrinos. 5600 soldados por dia!
Portugal entrou na guerra no início de 1917, integrando os Aliados, por causa das possessões africanas (sempre África). A 12 de Setembro participou - quem diria - na maior batalha aérea da guerra, integrando um esquadrão de 1483 aviões de seis nações diferentes.
Tal como em tudo na vida, é preciso saber perder, mas também saber ganhar. E (alguns dos) Aliados não souberam. Para além de vencerem, quiseram culpar, humilhar e incapacitar os alemães. Resultado: 20 anos depois de acabar esta, começou a segunda grande guerra.
January 17, 2018
"All wars end up being reduced to statistics, strategies, debates about their origins and results. These debates about war are important, but not more important than the human story of those who fought in them."
These closing words sum up Martin Gilbert's masterpiece "The First World War" perfectly. This is not an easy book, nor is it a lightweight piece of reading. It doesn't shy away from violence. It gets down into the nitty-gritty of war correspondence, which can be a little dry sometimes.
But it's less about the war as a whole--spends less time on the strategy of attacks and such--than it is about the men who fought in the war. On nearly every page there is the story of an individual soldier from some country who fought in the battle. Who received a medal from his country for courage. Who was shot out of the sky. Whose body was blown to bits.
The men who fought in this war were brave, selfless, noble souls. The generals who led them? The politicians who forced them to go on fighting? Shameful. The thing that angered me the most in this whole account of the war was when the armistice negotiators had agreed that the war would end promptly at 11:00 AM on November 11th, 1918, told their men to go on firing until that point. Men died up until around 10:45. There was no reason for this waste. But it happened anyway.
"Never again," says the last chapter, and because human history is blotted out by sin, it is not true. But this is the sort of book I think everyone should have to read. Because it makes you never want to repeat war. "...until the word war is removed from the dictionary," a newspaper said of the German novel "All Quiet on the Western Front." As a Christian, I am thankful that there is hope of a future where there will be no more war. No violence. No death.
But until that day, we must continue to pray that war will end and not continue.
These closing words sum up Martin Gilbert's masterpiece "The First World War" perfectly. This is not an easy book, nor is it a lightweight piece of reading. It doesn't shy away from violence. It gets down into the nitty-gritty of war correspondence, which can be a little dry sometimes.
But it's less about the war as a whole--spends less time on the strategy of attacks and such--than it is about the men who fought in the war. On nearly every page there is the story of an individual soldier from some country who fought in the battle. Who received a medal from his country for courage. Who was shot out of the sky. Whose body was blown to bits.
The men who fought in this war were brave, selfless, noble souls. The generals who led them? The politicians who forced them to go on fighting? Shameful. The thing that angered me the most in this whole account of the war was when the armistice negotiators had agreed that the war would end promptly at 11:00 AM on November 11th, 1918, told their men to go on firing until that point. Men died up until around 10:45. There was no reason for this waste. But it happened anyway.
"Never again," says the last chapter, and because human history is blotted out by sin, it is not true. But this is the sort of book I think everyone should have to read. Because it makes you never want to repeat war. "...until the word war is removed from the dictionary," a newspaper said of the German novel "All Quiet on the Western Front." As a Christian, I am thankful that there is hope of a future where there will be no more war. No violence. No death.
But until that day, we must continue to pray that war will end and not continue.
October 18, 2008
A thorough, but dry-as-my-mother-in-law's-Thanksgiving-turkey review of the First World War. Only a Brit could deliver a bloodless account of the bloodiest of modern wars.
September 21, 2019
At the outset, Martin Gilbert claims there are essentially two wars which rarely intersect, one for the elite decision-makers and one for the people who actually fight. What integrates them is his attempt to tell a human story, employing first hand accounts and vignettes of individuals and their fates; the "big history" isn't eliminated, but it is backgrounded. Narrative movement in chronological order, usually a terrible idea when telling a story, is employed to great effect to capture the true experiences of the participants as they were buffeted by this then that event.
As one advances through the book, the detail becomes all but overwhelming. If you don't have the benefit of a concise overview, you'll likely become confused by the tangled web of campaigns, and then numbed by the constant descriptions of deaths in battle . But perhaps that's the point ...
I think the war can be characterized as follows, with emphasis on the Western Front. An initial German thrust through Belgium into France was checked, then both sides settled into a stalemate. The Central Powers maintained relative superiority for several years, despite Allied attempts to break out. The central question of the war was if the Western Allies could hold on in the fraught period when Russia was collapsing into revolution but the United States hadn't fully deployed yet. Other fronts were quite varied, characterized by feverish movement (e.g., the Eastern Front, Africa), a net stalemate (e.g., the Italy-Austria border, the Salonica Front), or equal parts of both (e.g., the Middle East).
Though technologically innovative, the Allies were marked by poor leadership and questionable decisions. The Gallipoli campaign and the Nivelle offensive were dismal failures, while the Russians were routinely outclassed by the Germans. All sides suffered horrific losses as vulnerable soldiers came up against machine guns, heavy artillery, and poison gas. Friendly fire, particularly during shelling, claimed many lives and trench conditions were infamous. Away from the front, the belligerents' civilians were menaced by the first aerial bombing campaigns and in risk of starvation from naval blockades and aggressive submarine warfare. By the latter years of the war, the Continental powers were at a breaking point, with French and German soldiers mutinying and Russia falling apart. World War I is a tale of how far whole societies can stretch before shattering.
I can't imagine the First World War can be examined without considering the Second World War, and this book is no exception. Martin Gilbert doesn't reduce the former to a mere cause of the latter, but he does make his opinions known in the last chapter. The punitive approach of the Allies, and their assigning blame for the entire war to Germany, set the stage for a future conflict. Given the mood of the Allied publics after the sacrifices of the conflict, it's hard to know if this could have been avoided. Meanwhile, Gilbert is unequivocal about the German "stabbed-in-the-back" myth: Allied military superiority, rather than domestic political intrigues, was responsible for the defeat of the Central Powers. Had the Allies pressed on and invaded Germany, this fact may have become more apparent, but at the cost of more lives.
Each author has his biases and Martin Gilbert certainly has his. As a British scholar, his focus is disproportionately on Britain, and one wonders if his implicit criticism of Germany for catalyzing the push to war and committing atrocities against civilians is somehow magnified. It's also interesting how this biographer of Churchill seems to exonerate that leader from some of the war's bad decisions, particularly Gallipoli. In any event, no one can claim this nearly 700 page history isn't comprehensive, and for all of its detail, it's surprisingly readable.
As one advances through the book, the detail becomes all but overwhelming. If you don't have the benefit of a concise overview, you'll likely become confused by the tangled web of campaigns, and then numbed by the constant descriptions of deaths in battle . But perhaps that's the point ...
I think the war can be characterized as follows, with emphasis on the Western Front. An initial German thrust through Belgium into France was checked, then both sides settled into a stalemate. The Central Powers maintained relative superiority for several years, despite Allied attempts to break out. The central question of the war was if the Western Allies could hold on in the fraught period when Russia was collapsing into revolution but the United States hadn't fully deployed yet. Other fronts were quite varied, characterized by feverish movement (e.g., the Eastern Front, Africa), a net stalemate (e.g., the Italy-Austria border, the Salonica Front), or equal parts of both (e.g., the Middle East).
Though technologically innovative, the Allies were marked by poor leadership and questionable decisions. The Gallipoli campaign and the Nivelle offensive were dismal failures, while the Russians were routinely outclassed by the Germans. All sides suffered horrific losses as vulnerable soldiers came up against machine guns, heavy artillery, and poison gas. Friendly fire, particularly during shelling, claimed many lives and trench conditions were infamous. Away from the front, the belligerents' civilians were menaced by the first aerial bombing campaigns and in risk of starvation from naval blockades and aggressive submarine warfare. By the latter years of the war, the Continental powers were at a breaking point, with French and German soldiers mutinying and Russia falling apart. World War I is a tale of how far whole societies can stretch before shattering.
I can't imagine the First World War can be examined without considering the Second World War, and this book is no exception. Martin Gilbert doesn't reduce the former to a mere cause of the latter, but he does make his opinions known in the last chapter. The punitive approach of the Allies, and their assigning blame for the entire war to Germany, set the stage for a future conflict. Given the mood of the Allied publics after the sacrifices of the conflict, it's hard to know if this could have been avoided. Meanwhile, Gilbert is unequivocal about the German "stabbed-in-the-back" myth: Allied military superiority, rather than domestic political intrigues, was responsible for the defeat of the Central Powers. Had the Allies pressed on and invaded Germany, this fact may have become more apparent, but at the cost of more lives.
Each author has his biases and Martin Gilbert certainly has his. As a British scholar, his focus is disproportionately on Britain, and one wonders if his implicit criticism of Germany for catalyzing the push to war and committing atrocities against civilians is somehow magnified. It's also interesting how this biographer of Churchill seems to exonerate that leader from some of the war's bad decisions, particularly Gallipoli. In any event, no one can claim this nearly 700 page history isn't comprehensive, and for all of its detail, it's surprisingly readable.
July 21, 2020
“More than nine million soldiers, sailors and airmen were killed in the First World War. A further five million civilians are estimated to have perished under occupation, bombardment, hunger and disease…” — The First World War: A Complete History, Introduction, Page xv
Of all major military conflicts in which the United States has participated, I was the least familiar with the story of World War I. That has now been rectified.
In The First World War: A Complete History, published in 1994, British historian and biographer Martin Gilbert provides a detailed, comprehensive, and meticulously researched look at World War I, also known as “The Great War” and “The War to End All Wars.”
Gilbert covers all aspects of the war, from events leading up to the declarations of war, to the progress of the war on all fronts (including the Western and Eastern Fronts, the Caucasus Front, the Persian Front, the southern Mesopotamian Front, the Salonica Front, the Italian Front, the East African Front, and the Sinai Front), to the armistices and treaties, and to remembrances of the war.
Among the many things I learned from Gilbert’s book, it was particularly astonishing for me to read that in the American Expeditionary Force, more soldiers died of influenza (62,000) during the pandemic of 1918 than were killed in battle (48,000) during the entire war.
Also particularly disturbing to me was the role that Germany played in fermenting and enabling the overthrow of the Tsar by Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Red Russians) in Russia and how dangerously close Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc.) came to falling under the control of the Bolsheviks (i.e., communism) at the end of the war. This might explain why Great Britain and France were more concerned with suppressing communism in their countries during the 1920s and 1930s while turning a blind eye toward the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain during this period.
In every respect, Gilbert’s The First World War: A Complete History is an outstanding book that will provide readers with a greater understanding of the causes, effects, and events of World War I. It should be cautioned, however, that the detailed nature of the book is geared toward the serious student of history and not to the reader who is interested only in an overall understanding of the war.
Footnote: Martin Gilbert (1936-2015), is also well known for his multi-volume official biography of Sir Winston Churchill, along with other excellent works of history including “The Holocaust,” and “The Second World War.”
Of all major military conflicts in which the United States has participated, I was the least familiar with the story of World War I. That has now been rectified.
In The First World War: A Complete History, published in 1994, British historian and biographer Martin Gilbert provides a detailed, comprehensive, and meticulously researched look at World War I, also known as “The Great War” and “The War to End All Wars.”
Gilbert covers all aspects of the war, from events leading up to the declarations of war, to the progress of the war on all fronts (including the Western and Eastern Fronts, the Caucasus Front, the Persian Front, the southern Mesopotamian Front, the Salonica Front, the Italian Front, the East African Front, and the Sinai Front), to the armistices and treaties, and to remembrances of the war.
Among the many things I learned from Gilbert’s book, it was particularly astonishing for me to read that in the American Expeditionary Force, more soldiers died of influenza (62,000) during the pandemic of 1918 than were killed in battle (48,000) during the entire war.
Also particularly disturbing to me was the role that Germany played in fermenting and enabling the overthrow of the Tsar by Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Red Russians) in Russia and how dangerously close Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc.) came to falling under the control of the Bolsheviks (i.e., communism) at the end of the war. This might explain why Great Britain and France were more concerned with suppressing communism in their countries during the 1920s and 1930s while turning a blind eye toward the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain during this period.
In every respect, Gilbert’s The First World War: A Complete History is an outstanding book that will provide readers with a greater understanding of the causes, effects, and events of World War I. It should be cautioned, however, that the detailed nature of the book is geared toward the serious student of history and not to the reader who is interested only in an overall understanding of the war.
Footnote: Martin Gilbert (1936-2015), is also well known for his multi-volume official biography of Sir Winston Churchill, along with other excellent works of history including “The Holocaust,” and “The Second World War.”
Displaying 1 - 30 of 235 reviews