Product Description

This book attempts to shatter one of the most popular myths of our time: that the catastrophic loss of life on the Western Front in 1914-1918 was entirely due to incompetent leadership. In fact, as the author shows, a host of other, more decisive factors played a part. Why was Britain so unprepared for a European War in 1914? What contribution did Britain's allies really make on the battlefield? Did anyone at the time understand the implications of trench warfare? #FDEAbove all, why was Britain's political machine so paralyzed and indecisive throughout the tragedy?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #519112 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 559 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
On the basis of the evidence … it is surely not possible for any reasonable, fair- minded person to sustain the accusation that the British generals, as a group, were entirely to blame for the tragic losses on the Western Front. Neillands' premise, whichever way you look at it, is indisputable--they can't all have been incompetent. After all, they did end up on the winning side. There were mistakes, certainly, he concedes, but why isn't this surprising in the least? Because he is, once again, stating the blindingly obvious. And you get the impression reading the book that it was the sheer bloody-minded crassness of the accusations, the very unshakability of the popular belief propagating their reputation for ineptitude, that inspired him to write his own appraisal of the British generals' wartime actions.

From the outset it is clear that Neillands' verdict is to be, by and large, Not guilty. Restricting his field of enquiry to the Western Front, he constructs a most circumspect, thorough and systematic analysis of the major battlefield encounters of the British in the First World War. His attitude is understanding and forgiving: blame is redirected (though it is certainly not his purpose to condemn anyone), mainly to the Government, though by extension, also to the electorate who brought the politicians to power with a remit for lower taxes (and thus a smaller army). Britain lacked the infrastructure for such a war; its standing army and reserves were dwarfed by those of the mainland powers, and its officers and soldiers lacked experience, most of their recent operations having been on open plains of southern Africa, a far cry from the sodden trenches of Europe.

On top of this, the British Expeditionary Force's autonomy was severely restricted for much of the time, as it was under political orders to act subordinately to the French generals. Nor was it true that the generals lived in the relative lap of luxury, in French chateaux far behind enemy lines and well out of danger--the number of casualties of the highest rank was so great it suggests that a more valid criticism might be that they weren't careful enough with their own lives!

Their main problem, though, was that this was an altogether new type of warfare--the marriage of the tactics of 19th-century warfare with the increasingly sophisticated and destructive weapons of the 20th century, made for very messy, high-casualty fighting. The point is that under these exceedingly testing circumstances, fighting against a fearsome army that was possibly the best-equipped, most well-drilled and dedicated to take the field up till that point in history, the British army successfully adapted and eventually prevailed. This was no mean feat and the British generals should not be robbed of their fair (and considerable) share of the credit for this. His self-appointed task is not that of apologist, nor is it to demean anyone else involved in this great effort. Rather, it is, with a real sense of injustice, to right the wrongs inflicted by history on the generals. This is popular history to explode popular myths, though one suspects that, despite all his hard work and the accessible manner in which he presents his findings, it will be many more years before the popular imagination judges the generals with his even- handedness. --Alisdair Bowles

Customer Reviews

Should be prescribed reading for any course on WW1
As through some trait of national masochism the "Bloody Fool" image of British command in the Great War continues to be foisted on the British public, and regrettably, on a younger generation, by media and would-be educationalists. This might be construed as a posthumous victory for proponents of the "Stab in the Back" theory to explain the final German collapse in 1918. The high casualties, the horror of trench warfare and the inability to achieve a conclusive breakthrough for much of the war have been allowed to obscure the fact that it was the British Army, supported by resurgent French forces and by the growing, though still relatively limited, significance of American power, that achieved a decisive victory over Imperial Germany in late 1918. The commanders responsible for this outright victory, the greatest single achievement in history of British arms, were the same who had directed operations and somehow maintained morale, fighting spirit and confidence in ultimate triumph though the heartbreak of the preceding years. The strength of Mr.Neilland's book is that he brings the reader through the entire war on the Western Front, on a month by month - and at critical junctures a day by day - basis and details the choices, dilemmas and decisions confronting the commanders in the context of the limitations that organisation, resources, technology and political control forced upon them. He starts from the fact that prior to 1914 Britain had never envisaged having an army capable of playing a decisive role in a major European war, and that no political party would have supported such a development - despite which a series of "military conversations" with the French had virtually made it inevitable that such a commitment would be made once a war started. The sacrifice of Britain's professional army in 1914/15, to buy time while the new volunteer armies were in formation and while industry was put on a war footing, is therefore a major theme. Of equal importance is the rate of technological change and the requirement for commanders brought up in the school of colonial warfare to adopt their tactics to suit. Their success in doing so is in itself enough to give the lie to the hoary accusation of them being donkeys leading lions. The final victory of 1918 is the ultimate evidence of their ability not only to incorporate the revolutionary into their thinking but to weld an army composed of recent civilians into a force capable of implementing it. The single area where significant technological breakthrough was not achieved - provision of mobile battlefield radio communication - proved crippling however, and Mr.Neillands rightly identifies it as perhaps the single greatest factor leading to high casualties. Hardly less important were the political considerations that led to expensive offensives for political reasons - which in most cases meant acceding to pressure from the French. Mr.Neillands is excellent in his treatment of the Lloyd George's pressures on Sir Douglas Haig, and of the bizarre intrigues instigated by Sir Henry Wilson, these starting even before the war began. There is no attempt here to varnish the facts, so that the strengths and weaknesses of each of the main players are dealt with frankly. The pen-pictures that introduce them are thorough and relevant to what follows. The overall impression is of a group of decent, valiant, conscientious and highly intelligent men, faced with unprecedented challenges and coming up a very steep learning curve in circumstances where anything short of perfection inevitably meant horrendous losses. Mr.Neillands reminds us that the only way to avoid casualties is to avoid war - and that is the task of the politicians. The commanders who carried the burden when the politicians failed are well served by this excellent history which goes far to lay pernicious myths to rest. It should be prescribed reading in any educational course on the Great War.

(Readers who enjoy this book will find Alan Palmer's recent "Victory 1918" equally absorbing).

Every student of WW1 should be made to read this!
This book is absolutely excellent. I cannot overstate just how good it is. Anybody studying the Great War, from GCSE students to seasoned old hacks should get their hands on this. It cuts through the myth and half-truths that have been spread by recent generations of "historians" and sets out a genuinely sympathetic, but unbiased account of what the situation was really like. One of it's strengths is that it sets out it's arguments in terms of the military reality, as opposed to many historians who are content to judge it in sociological terms and force on the scenario modern morals and social standards, while displaying very little grasp of how the army works or how wars are fought and military operations conducted. Another bonus for me is the author's criticism of Lloyd George, a figure who, in my opinion, has for too long been held up as a flawless and heroic war time leader when the truth is very different. If you are interested in military history then read this book and spare a thought for the likes of Earl Haig. If you have been a critic of our Great War generals be prepared to feel not a small amount of guilt.

Failed attempt to restore Haig's reputation
The object of the book - i.e. were the Britsh generals as a group callous and incompetent and can therefore be held responsible for the appaling casualties in WWI - certainly is worthwile. However, the book suffers from numerous shortcomings and in the end comes down to nothing more than a biased attempt to restore the reputation of Field Marshal Douglas Haig as Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France.

While the concentration on Haig is understandable - since he not only bore ultimate responsibility for the actions of his subordinate commanders in his time as CiC, but as subordinate commander to his predecessor as CiC, Sir John French, was directly responsible for some of the worst slaughters so far - other mistakes of this books are simply annoying. On a formal level the author firstly omitts any coherent definition of incompetence of his own. Instead,he supplies Liddel-Harts definition of criminal behaviour by officers by which to judge the events under scrutiny. No doubt criminal behaviour is a much more serious charge than mere incompetence, and to prove that the generals weren't criminal (which by Liddel-Harts' definition some decisions ot the British generalship certainly were!) doesn't disprove the charge of incompetence. Secondly, the reader is inundated in biographical details irrespective of whether they contribute anything to elucidate the issue under discussion. Thirdly, somewhere midway Neillands rather abruptly loses the focus of his discussion and offers a lengthy refute of the alleged inferior fighting qualitity of British divisions in comparison to Commonwealth troops. Finally, contrary to his stated intentions Neillands enters into lengthy descriptions of the separate battles down to the level of individual actions. Finally, to argue that the generals couldn't have been utterly incompetent because victory over Germany in the end was achieved by these very same generals is preposterous. If one looks at the advantages of the Entente in numbers and production capacities, the question surely must be why it took them so long and brought them so close to defeat.

On the level of the discussion proper Neillands is equally unconvincing. The sheer volume of the description of the fighting prevents him from asking the right questions. For example, we get a thorough description of the events surrounding the disastrous battles of 1917 commonly known as Passchendaele, followed by an equally thorough description of the immediately following tank offensive at Cambrai, the success of which surprised the British staff to such an extent that any exploitation of the breakthrough was out of the question due to an utter lack of preparation. Doesn't this point to some sort of rather poor judgement and incompetent military leadership? But Neilland refuses to give an in depth analysis just why Douglas Haig chose the best fortified and most unpassable section of the Western Front for his main offensive when Cambrai showed that success indeed would have been possible on other sectors. Time and again Neillands contends that under both French and Haig British troops were wasted in strategically (and most of the time tactically) utterly useless offensives because politicians insisted on action for overriding political reasons. But never he goes into the question if military leaders with a sense of responsibility should have refused to execute orders like these.The only time Haig considered stepping down was when British Prime Minister Lloyd George after the massacres of Passchendaele refused to send him more troops for use in offensives.

Neillands argues that the appalling losses throughout the war resulted from poor battlefield communications that prevented effective command and control of battles. As a consequence, offensives that had run out of steam were kept up with the single effect to add to the casualties. From a technical point of view this argument is valid, but the relevant question here is if the numerous failures shouldn't have taught the general and especially the CiC responsible for overall strategy to take this fact into proper account. At least there were some subordinates to Haig who argued for limited and controllable bite-and-hold operations instead of complex large scale operations aiming at a decisive breakthrough. Even Neillands has to admit that the pushing on with offensives was a mistake. However, he exculpates Haig by an astonishing twist of thought. Haig did his best to win the war, and the mistakes and blunders he made were not attributable to his incompetence, but to his character. He was only pushing on and squandering lives because he was such an optimist that he thought that just one more push might bring the decision. Any definition of competence or incompetence without doubt would encompass something like an individual's capacity to draw the proper conclusion from information available to him at a given time. For a judgement on competence or incompetence the reasons why an individual failed to draw the right conclusion is quite irrelevant, since competence is a factual and not a moral quality. Just to try to do one's best simply isn't enough if hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake. Without saying so, Neillands by his twisted argument delivers the judgement Haig deserves: incompetent.

Books on World War I I'd rather recommend are Alan Clarke (still!), The Donkeys, and Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War.