Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1229369 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Review
A compelling and novel reassessment of WWI military history. It is said that truth is the first casualty of war, and Mosier makes it clear that this aphorism is a tragic understatement when applied to WWI. Historians have repeatedly attempted explicate the primary mystery of the conflict-namely, why the Allied commanders saw fit to transform the fields of Belgium and France into human abattoirs with their repeated and quixotic attacks against entrenched German positions. In the battle of the Somme, for example, the British suffered 60,000 dead and wounded in the course of two hours-in exchange for a few meters of strategically worthless ground. The author's answer to this mystery is simple, but abundantly supported: The French and British commands operated under the delusion that German casualties far outstripped their own, and that the next big offensive would knock Germany out of the war. In fact, German losses, although horrendous in their own right, never approached the militarily unsupportable levels endured by the French and the British. Mosier analyzes the major battles of the Western Front from the Marne to Belleau Wood and persuasively argues that the superiority of the Germans' heavy guns, combined with a greater tactical sophistication on the part of their commanders, kept their casualties lower than the Allies and brought them battlefield successes that eluded the French and British. The standard perception of WWI as a stalemate that ended because the Germans became exhausted first is thus overturned; Mosier firmly believes that slowly but surely Germany was winning the war and that the Allies were saved only by America's entry on the Allied side. This last claim is likely to be the most controversial, as many historians still tend to downplay the American contribution, but historians who disagree will be compelled at the very least to come to terms with his argument. A necessary addition to any serious collection of military or WWI history. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Selective and warped
As pointed out elsewhere this book does offer some much needed coverage of the French Army's contribution to the Western Front. But the trouble for me is that I cannot trust it, because when I read the parts relating to the British Army I find them so riddled with errors and distortions that I have to doubt the rest of the book. Other reviews have pointed up some of these errors and distortions.
Example: Mosier states that the Germans captured Ypres in 1914; Ypres was NEVER captured throughout the entire war.
Example: Mosier considers that the battle of Amiens in August 1918 wasn't a 'real' victory for the BEF because the Germans were already withdrawing. Well actually no they weren't, that is why the Germans lost 450 guns and 27,000 men in a day and Ludendorff called it "a black day for the German Army". But these facts don't fit Mosier's theory that the BEF was totally inept so they are ignored

The major tenet of the book is that the American Army was much more effective than the French and British and destroyed the German one. The problem with this is that Mosier actually glosses over the events of 1918 and offers little to support his case. In fact in the last 4 months of the war the American army only took about 50,000 prisoners whilst the British and French took about 330,000. Does Mosier mention this? Of course not.

The other tenet is that is that German casualties were so much less than the Allies. Early estimates by all sides were wildly inaccurate and calculated on different basis but there has been much work over the past 50 years to cross check and reconcile the differences. Every sides estimates of the casualties that they inflicted on the enemy have long been discounted. But once again Mosier chooses to ignore most of this work claiming that only he can reveal the truth.

Overall this reads like Mosier has formed a theory and then gone round selecting (very limited) sources to support it, whilst ignoring everything else. It is unbalanced and often just plain wrong. If you want a book about the Western Front in general try 'The Western Front' by Richard Holmes. If you want something about the relative effectiveness of the armies and their battle systems try 'the Forgotten Victory' by Gary Sheffield.

Oh and by the way, with reference to the previous review, Belgium, Italy and Greece were never knocked out of the war by Germany. Perhaps the reviewer should buy a good overall book on WW1 like that by Huw Strachan and learn some basic facts about the conflict.

How the war was won revision
Far from destroying any myths about WW1 Professor Mosier seems to be trying to create a few of his own. Here are just a few of the things that he gets wrong.

(1) The author has harsh words for the British in their encounters with the massive German right wing wheeling through Belgium in the opening attack of 1914...

A rout is a disorderly retreat of defeated troops. The BEF was not routed. After a short delaying action at Mons that lasted half a day against vastly superior numbers it retired in good order. The German First Army next encountered the British at Le Cateau where it forced the British II Corps, about half the British force, to make a stand; 50,000 British faced about 150,000 Germans.

Von Kluck, the German commander, thought he had been engaging the entire British Force such was the resistance he encountered. II Corps held up von Kluck's Army for a whole day and retired again in good order. The German causalities were in excess of the 7500 suffered by II Corps.

John Keegan makes the same reference to casualties and Waterloo in his recent history of WW I but not to mock the British but to emphasise the hugely greater size of armies in 1914 compared with Napoleonic times.

(2) Mosier portrays the 1914 German retreat after the Battle of the Marne as a well thought out alternative plan. He criticises the French for the name they gave to the battle... The French really had no right to claim victory when they were on the verge of defeat until the Germans withdrew is the view taken by the author.

But withdraw they did. The Germans manoeuvred themselves into a dangerous position and the French took advantage of it. Joffre gave orders for all the Allied armies to turn and advance along that 200 km front. There was heavy fighting and each side suffered about 250,000 causalities.

Calling it the "Battle of the Marne" was geographical convenience, and it is trivial to complain about it. That he makes such points casts some doubt over the author's judgement of what is and what isn't important.

The unusual nature of the battle is no revelation, either. The British historian Basil Liddell Hart in his WWI history published in 1930 calls the relevant chapter "The battle that was not yet turned the tide". He says, "The controversy has at least served to show that the Marne was a psychological rather than a physical victory".

Mosier says there is no evidence that von Moltke suffered a mental collapse. On the contrary, there is ample evidence from numerous military colleagues close to von Moltke and from his wife.

[For a good recent account see "Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War" by Annika Mombauer.]

(3) The idea that the winner is the side that loses the fewest soldiers is essential to Mosier's arguments. He makes the point at every opportunity sometimes with suspect figures. The figure given for British casualties at Passchendaele is the highest I have ever seen. He doesn't recognise that sides can win for other reasons; staying power, for example. How many Russian soldiers were lost to win their battle in WWII?

(4) Based on his "fewest losses" theory Mosier believes the Allies were beaten by the Germans and the Americans played the decisive part in winning the war.

Any objective person would agree the arrival of a million fresh American troops on the Allied side would swing the war in the Allies favour. But other events had just as great an impact and were equally decisive. The British and French defeat of the German's last great efforts in the first half of 1918 to win the war before the Americans arrived, for example.

The author is woefully (or wilfully) ignorant of what happened in 1918...

The failure of these German offensives was the turning point of the war. It was decisive and it took place before the American presence in the battle line was big enough to make a difference.

[For an excellent and up-to-date account of 1918 see Martin Kitchen's book "The German Offensives of 1918" based on mainly German sources.]

(5) The author writes and the book is promoted as if he is producing new information and making fresh revelations. But there is nothing new in the book of any substance. Mosier ignores or brushes aside vast amounts of WW1 history much of it highly critical of the Allied generals but also much more balanced and better supported with facts...

Useful in Parts but fundamentally warped
There is some interesting material in here on the Franco-German War (the French bearing the brunt of the fighting in the West for the first two years).
However, the book is marred by a nasty anti-British tone which gets in the way of his objectivity. It is not correct that the British were "routed" at Mons, or that the Somme was an attack "from a swamp into an urban area" (was there anywhere on the Western Front that was easy to attack?). BEF casualties in 1916-18 (when Britain had taken over the brunt of the fighting) were far less severe than those of the French in the first half of the war, and by 1918 the BEF were using tactics essentially similar to those of the German stormtroopers (see the writings of Paddy Griffith, which Mosier dismisses with a sneering footnote - one suspects he hasn't read or understood them). One of the key things to grasp about the 1918 fighting is that the BEF were engaging and driving back the main mass of the German Army - Mosier omits to mention this, while sneering at the high casualties suffered by the BEF in 1918!
Only a fool would deny that the financial and morale effect of American entry helped the Allies to victory. But to claim that the war was won by the Americans routing the Germans in the Argonne (engaging about 35 German divisions when the BEF were engaging 90-odd) is fanciful. So is his praise for Pershing, whose clumsy tactics and excessive faith in the rifle (as bad as Douglas Haig two years earlier) are a matter of record.
There is much less argument about casualty figures than he seems to think (a little more research would have told him how Churchill and others obtained such overestimates of British losses for particular battles), although it is true that Allied intelligence wildly exaggerated German losses at the time. The antique figures which he quotes for German deaths are almost certainly underestimates.