Catastrophe 1914 Quotes

“As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe (Enhanced Edition): Europe Goes to War 1914

“Machiavelli observed that ‘wars begin when you will, but do not end when you please’.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe (Enhanced Edition): Europe Goes to War 1914

“The quirky little melodrama that unfolded in Bosnia on 28 June 1914 played the same role in the history of the world as might a wasp sting on a chronically ailing man who is maddened into abandoning a sickbed to devote his waning days to destroying the nest”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Germany’s highest commander succumbed to a disease common among senior soldiers of many nationalities and eras: he wished to demonstrate to his government and people that their vastly expensive armed forces could fulfil their fantasies.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Winston Churchill wrote afterwards: 'No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed. Nor was there any other period in the War when the general battle was waged on so great a scale, when the slaughter was so swift or the stakes so high. Moreover, in the beginning, our faculties of wonder, horror, or excitement had not been cauterized and deadened by the furnace fires of years.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“We are readying ourselves to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness (Andre Gide, 28 July 1914)”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Sir Edward Grey belongs to the class which, through heredity and tradition, expects to find a place on the magisterial bench to sit in judgement upon and above their fellow men, before they ever have any opportunity to make themselves acquainted with the tasks and trials of mankind.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“It is not only more bloody and more murderous than any previous wars but also more cruel, more relentless, more pitiless … It discards all the parameters to which we defer in times of peace and which we called the rights of man. It does not recognise the privileges of the wounded man or of the doctor and it does not distinguish between non-combatants and the fighting part of the population.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe (Enhanced Edition): Europe Goes to War 1914

“Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war)”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“All politicians find it hard to address with conviction more than one emergency at a time.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Here was a manifestation of a huge, historic British folly, repeated over many centuries including the twenty-first: the adoption of gesture strategy, committing small forces as an earnest of good intentions, heedless of their gross inadequacy for the military purpose at hand.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“The French were more tolerant of brothels than any other nation in Europe, though there was some dispute about whether this reflected enlightenment or depravity.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“The Germans suffered 800,000 casualties in the same period, including three times as many dead as during the entire Franco-Prussian War. This also represented a higher rate of loss than at any later period of the war. The British in August fought two actions, at Mons and Le Cateau, which entered their national legend. In October their small force was plunged into the three-week nightmare of the First Battle of Ypres. The line was narrowly held, with a larger French and Belgian contribution than chauvinists acknowledge, but much of the old British Army reposes forever in the region’s cemeteries: four times as many soldiers of the King perished in 1914 as during the three years of the Boer War. Meanwhile in the East, within weeks of abandoning their harvest fields, shops and lathes, newly mobilised Russian, Austrian and German soldiers met in huge clashes; tiny Serbia inflicted a succession of defeats on the Austrians which left the Hapsburg Empire reeling, having by Christmas suffered 1.27 million casualties at Serb and Russian hands, amounting to one in three of its soldiers mobilised.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Meanwhile in the East, within weeks of abandoning their harvest fields, shops and lathes, newly mobilised Russian, Austrian and German soldiers met in huge clashes; tiny Serbia inflicted a succession of defeats on the Austrians which left the Hapsburg Empire reeling, having by Christmas suffered 1.27 million casualties at Serb and Russian hands, amounting to one in three of its soldiers mobilised.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“German test pilot Ernst Canter noted in his logbook that while in 1910 he flew at a height of eighty feet, two years later he was ascending to almost 5,000.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914

“Between 20 and 23 August, 40,000 French soldiers died. By 29 August, total French casualties since the war began reached 260,000, including 75,000 dead.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914

“everything seemed strange, ominous and unreal, like the yellow glare which precedes a storm. There were moments when I felt as if I had died, and woken up in an unknown world. And so I had.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“The Götterdämmerung of the bourgeois world is approaching.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“The new financier, the new plutocrat, had little of that sense of responsibility which once had sanctioned the power of England’s landed classes. He was a purely international figure, or so it seemed, and money was his language … Where did the money come from? Nobody seemed to care. It was there to be spent, and to be spent in the most ostentatious manner possible; for its new masters set the fashion … Society in the last pre-war years grew wildly plutocratic; the middle classes became more complacent and dependent; only the workers seemed to be deprived of their share in prosperity … The middle classes … looked upon the producers of England with a jaundiced, a fearful and vindictive gaze.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Bethmann-Hollweg era davvero irremovibile non tanto sulle sue richieste territoriali – cercò, a un certo punto, di dissuadere il Kaiser dall’insistere sull’annessione del Belgio – quanto sull’intenzione di imporre una unione doganale sul continente: «è sottinteso che l’unione doganale dovrà rendere possibile il controllo della Germania sull’Europa»”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Potiorek was a bachelor who had devoted his life monastically to his profession, while remaining ignorant of every aspect of it that was either modern or important;”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“With the onset of successive days of high winds and snow blizzards, the battle of Ypres faded away, leaving both sides to hold their blood-soaked positions. The most significant territorial outcome was that the Germans had gained the high ground along the Messines ridge, and held it until June 1917. But they had suffered 80,000 casualties around Ypres, many regiments losing two-thirds of their strength or even more. A German wrote home: ‘I have been living through days that defy imagination. I should never have thought men could stand it … Our 1st battalion, which has fought with unparalleled bravery, is reduced from 1200 men to 194. God grant that I may see you again soon and that this horror may soon be over.’ The writer was fortunate enough to be taken prisoner soon afterwards.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“Aunque se absuelva a Alemania de seguir un plan que desencadenase una guerra europea general en 1914, sigue pareciendo que merece casi toda la culpa porque tuvo la capacidad de impedirla y no la utilizó.”
― Max Hastings, 1914: EL AÑO DE LA CATÁSTROFE

“It is incontrovertible that the First World War was a catastrophe for Europe. It remains hard to see, however, by what means its statesmen could have extracted themselves from the struggle once it began, in advance of a decision on the battlefield.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe (Enhanced Edition): Europe Goes to War 1914

“Some of Winston Churchill’s admirers and biographers have treated his Antwerp intervention indulgently, as a picaresque adventure, a colourful addition to a wondrous lifetime pageant. In truth, however, what took place represented shocking folly by a minister who abused his powers and betrayed his responsibilities. It is astonishing that the First Lord’s cabinet colleagues so readily forgave him for a lapse of judgement that would have destroyed most men’s careers.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

“It is a peculiarly British trait to find glory in retreats – to Corunna in 1809, from Kabul in 1842, to Dunkirk in 1940 – and from Mons in 1914.”
― Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War