Is this rather large book worth the reading? I’ve read ACD on the Boer War, and it was pretty good (I believe it was what earned him his knighthood.)
Is his history of WWI a good one? Or has it been made obsolete by later scholarship? Does he succumb to historical myopia, or to British chauvinism, or does he pretty much tell it straight?
It looks to be a very BIG book, and I don’t want to invest all that much time in reading it if it turns out to be a less worthy account.
I have read Tuchman’s “Guns of August,” a work which is hugely praised for scholarship and for just plain being a darn good read. Is ACD even in her league?
I can’t say, not having read it, but it is worth noting that the British at the start of the War immediately co-opted famous authors to do their bit for the war effort; Doyle, Kipling, Buchan, A. A. Milne and Chesterton were among the 25 initially summoned to Wellington House to join the War Propaganda Bureau. Even Ford Madox Ford, who under the exigencies of war changed his name from Hueffer to Ford ( much as the Battenberg Guelphs changed to Windsor ). Ian Hay and Buchan were both appointed to different(?) Information Bureaux as paid officials part way through the war.
Several of these produced on-going histories, especially Buchan, Hay and Belloc, the latter’s being especially risible due to his French connection. I’d take them all with the same pinch of salt as any work produced at that fevered time. Plus we British lie a lot.
I didn’t take much to Miss Tuchman either.
I was worrying that the history might have been written too soon after the war, so that the memories might still be too fresh, and much later historical research would not yet have been done.
I’ve read J.F.C. Fuller’s “Military History of the Western World,” which, alas, was written too soon after WWII, and was written in the heat of the Cold War. Fuller argued that the D-Day invasion should have been in Greece, in order to cut the Soviets off from Berlin. In Cold War terms, this might make sense, but in WWII terms, it would have been insane.
I just wondered if ACD had some of the same problems.
Claverhouse: What didn’t you like about Tuchman? Yours is, I think, the only opinion I’ve ever read that didn’t give her the highest possible marks.
(“That can only mean one thing… And I don’t know what it is.”)
I’m reading John Mosier’s Lost History of Verdun and he makes the claim that the Western Allies (especially the French, but the English as well) were routinely lying about the Western Front and how the Germans were losing the war of attrition. He spends a little time about HG Wells, Doyle, and the other authors who were essentially ‘co-opted’ to parrot the party line.
I’m not sure how persuasive he has been so far, but I would, if you choose to read Sir Arthur’s account, remember that allegation when you evaluate the book.
Say, that looks good! How are you finding it? Should I ditch Doyle and read this’n instead?
P.S. I learned most of my history through wargames. I was an old Avalon Hill “grognard” – old enough to know that you have to say “The Avalon Hill Game Company” – and went on to be an SPI game addict for a good many years.
One of my big gripes about tv military history is the appalling lack of maps. How the devil can you do military history without maps? Gack!
You have to watch out with Fuller. He was highly competent in his specialty - military science - but outside of that he was often way out on the lunatic fringe.
Ford Madox Heuffer didn’t change his name to Ford Madox Ford until 1919–after the initial anti-German hysteria. Also after he’d completed his wartime service; over forty & out of shape, he’d left a safe life in London for the Western Front in 1916. One reason for the name change: a notorious pre-War legal case brought by his estranged wife when his mistress insisted on calling herself “Mrs Ford Madox Heuffer.” By 1919 he’d found a new love & wanted a change. His great Parade’s End novels include a description of London socializing between the artistes & the politicos.
It’s not where I would start. For the size, the “balance” problem–and because the War involved more than the trenches of the Western Front. You could do worse than The First World War–a Very Short Introduction–from a valuable Oxford series. Then continue–with the upcoming Centennial, there’s no shortage of books. (I’m currently vacationing in the American Revolution before throwing myself back into the bloody mess of the Great War. With a side order of Ireland.)
Watch this thread for recommendations from other Dopers…
A quick look at Wikipedia says AC Doyle was rather pro-war even before the war. He liked the literary quality of his history, but it didn’t sell well during the war (people don’t want history DURING the war - they want today’s news). At after the war, everyone would rather forget. As to veracity, it was mentioned that Doyle pretty much believed what the British military told him. You may make the deduction, Holmes!
FMF was gassed in the war, and had bad breath for the rest of his life. HG Wells, OTOH, had good oral hygiene, which contributed to his success with women.
I’ve read that one, and enjoyed it (well, you know, to the degree that a book about that war could be “enjoyed.”) Admired it, perhaps is better to say. Learned much from it. If a history book is educational, it’s done half the job; it you find entertainment or pleasure in reading it, that’s the other half.
Now that the OP has been addrerssed and the discussion has broadened out a bit, can I ask if anyone has reading recommendations concerning what was actually happening on the eastern front after the Brest-Litovsk treaty in March 1918 when Russia ceded vast areas to the Central Powers (which lasted for seven months until the surrender of Germany in November).
As I understand it, all sorts of principalities, etc. were going to be set up, with various aristocrats as rulers but very little went beyond the planning stage because of the chaos resulting from the war and the ongoing Russian Revolution
I know there’s heaps on what was happening in Russia itself at the time but it’s the ceded territory I’m curous about at the moment.
Fiction suggestions would be good, too - I recently read The White Guard by Mikail Bulgakov, set in Kiev in late 1918, which I enjoyed…