Rating: 
Summary: Memorable.
Review: Memorable account of the end of the old order and the beginning of the modern world. Tolystoy-like, phrases "to die for." Also strangely inspirational as a covert plea for courage and clear sightedness when faced with the unpalatable
Rating:
Summary: Best account on the beginning of World War I
Review: A lively recollection of origins, decision makers and events
that led to World War I and a vivid development of the first
month of this war. Once you read it you will never forget Joffre, Galieni or von Kluck in the Marne battle or the battle
of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes which made Hindeburg the
national hero of the Germans.
Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading everywhere in the world
Review: Sadly, good books covering World War I are terribly hard to come by. You'd think that, by now, there would be scads of them, but the reality is that this book is truly a diamond in the rough. It is nothing short of amazing how Tuchman guides the reader through such an immense amount of detailed information about the war, and in such a relatively short volume. If it is true that we are doomed to repeat the past if we fail to understand it, then this is one book that everyone should read.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for those interested in World War I
Review: The Guns of August is a must read for those interested in World War I and modern European history. Barbara Tuchman's writing allows one to live the days again; and though the end is known the reader is lead through the intrigues, ineptness, and inabilities of the Axis and Allied leadership in dramatic fashion. I love history, and came across Barbara Tuchman by accident (I found a book of hers in a box of free books), and am now an avid reader of her works. She puts pithy comments throughout the book, (such as when she states that removing a German presence from Belgium was akin to trying to restore virginity, or that nothing was nore trying to the English crown than needing to make a quick decision) and easily transcends the many academic history books that are on the market. She does more than try to correctly decipher history; she wants to reader to live it.
As a young boy I lived next to an older gentleman, who had been a German soldier in World War I. He taught me how to count and cuss in German, and had an Iron Cross hanging in his bedroom. In reading the book I could picture his youth spent in stalemated war as his friends died around him. The events of The Guns of August- the first month of the war- forever changed his life, and eventually brought him to the United States. After reading the book I wish I had the opportunity to talk with him now, but he, like those days in August of 1914, has passed on. Thankfully, Tuchman brings those days, and his youth, alive again.
Rating:
Summary: A new understanding.
Review: I had a very lucky backdrop for reading this book. I brought it to read on a long hiking trip that took me from the Netherlands, across Belgium and into the north of France. Through a trick of synchronicity, I was entering Liege at the moment that I was beginning the chapter "Liege and Alsace"-- whose subject is the assault on Liege and the German Army of the Meuse.
While such a reading experience greatly enhanced my understanding of the book, I do not think that the potential reader would need to be in Belgium to appreciate it. The complexity of the European political situation at the time and the tangle of alliances make World War I one of the most difficult modern events to really grasp. Tuchman builds a framework which assesses the probable root causes of the war. She also uses diagrams and clear writing to make the movement of the armies visible at an overview level.
I found Guns of August to be very fair-handed and believable in its assessment of political origins of the conflict and its assignment of responsibility. Even if you do not accept all of her ideas, I believe that you will still find that the framework works well to contextualize and elucidate the events of the outbreak.
The bibliography is annotated, which is very useful for choosing further reading. Additionally, this edition is bound with a foreword by Robert Massie which introduces the reader to Tuchman as a writer.
Rating:
Summary: breathtaking
Review: This book reflects the decline of European leadership in world affairs. It's about the beginning of the very avoidable World War I, fully showing the stupidity & weakness of some European leaders -- exercising their powers almost uncontrolled in antique state-structures.
Their incompetences are reflected in the breathtaking development of the fighting in August 1914. Barbara Tuchman tells this story that fascinating, that you should almost forget World War I lasted on for four more terrible years to come.
As I said, this war really started the shift of world power from Europe to the USA. It also sowed the seeds for an even more terrible conflict, twenty years later: the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler.
Rating:
Summary: A well written tragic history that has become a classic
Review: Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August is a superb achievement. I would strongly recommend it to historians and those curious about the initiation and maintenance of a war of epic foolishness and wasted human life.
Tuchman points out that the origins of the war were numerous but that considerable evidence exists that the military planning and deployment process on all sides over-ran and dominated the policical diplomatic statemanship of all parties involved. Once military deployment began, weak and ineffective statemanship could not stop the thunder roll of young men willing to die for this senseless misunderstanding. This is a view similar to Henry Kissinger in his book Diplomacy. Kissinger and Tuchman's analyses have much in common. Kissinger reveals that Bismarch was able to build a modern strong German state that was wasted in a senseless war after his death. Both Tuchman and Kissinger point out that convoluted alliances between Germany and Austria, blindlessly followed upon the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sofia, created a domino effect. Germany responded with horror that a Slavic revolutionists would assassinate a Germanic Prince and even though Bosnia agreed to all conditions prior to invasion, the Austrians decided to invade to recover pride. This act was viewed with contempt by the Russians who wished to come to the aide of their Slavic brothers and their entry pulled France, then England, and finally the United States into the vortex. If anything, Guns of August would warn all nations not to rush into war.
Both Kissinger and Tuchman point out that the American Civil War was the first modern war in which amazing technical fire power totally over-powered those that used the machine gun technology and those that fell under it's aweful power. There is very little evidence that any of the European military leadership studied the American Civil War and the tremendous loss of human life to the machine gun technology, a technology that they would implement without new strategies for infantry in the face of these killing machines.
Remember that John Kennedy at the time of Cuban missle crisis had Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August as a warning at his bedside. There is a reason this book is a text book at West Point. Every President should read this book and analyze the very slippery slope of public sentiment, prejudice and misplaced patriotism, and our amazing ability to fool ourselves and underestimate our enemy.
In Robert Grave's Good Bye to All That, we see that this war destroyed the rigid class system in Europe, as aristocracy drove first the peasants and then their own sons into the mouth of death. The aristocracy of the European nations were immediately made officers and the serf and farmers were enlisted men who had to follow the orders of the upper class inexperienced fools. Tolkein honors this patterns in the character of Sam in The Lord of the Rings, the loyal helper and valet who stands beside his better, Mr. Frodo.
At the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, I saw the Mercedes Limo that drove Kaiser Wilhelm around Amsterdamn after the fall of Germany and his forced abdication. I wondered if he ever knew the tremendous loss of human experience that resulted due to his poor statemanship, oversized ego and paranoia.
The war centers around the Western Front and the German effort to sweep around the front, through Belgium, and onward to a quick victory in Paris. It is the invasion of Belgium that pulls the English into the struggle. But we must also not forget the terrible war crimes committed by the German troops upon the common citizens of Belgium and northern France. I found myself repeatedly angry at the military and national leadership on all sides, for they seemed caught in quicksand. Before they came to their senses, an entire generation of young men were destroyed.
But if anger is what you need to read, try Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. In the end Tuchman recognizes that human insight is extremely limited and the ability to see several steps of consequences is beyond most human comprehension. This is particularly true if military rank is a result of class rather than ability.
England and France remained politically intact after the war, but German began the steps into dark Nazism while Russia began her steps toward Bolshevism. The Czar and his family were killed, the Austrian emperor was forced to abdicate as did Germany's Kaiser.
Tuchman would not support Lenin's assertion that World War I was a result of capitalistic societies at war over trade and profits.
The war began August 4th and by August 29th there were 260,000 French deaths.At Waterloo an infantry soldier couldifre twice a minute. The machine gun fired six hundred rounds a minute. The Wesern Front stretched for 475 miles with 10,000 soldiers per mile. The front consisted of 3 trenches sometimes separated fromt eh other side by less than 10 yards. The trench system, defended by machine guns in trenches could only be overcome by assault, a horrible stategy. Artillery was suppose to open up the path through the trenches but was dismal at this task. In the summery of 1916 more thatn 50,000 British troops died walking into German fire, without advancing the front by a single foot. I am so sad when I think of 8 million young men, ages 17-20, dying in the blood and mud, because of diplomatic entangled miscalculations, erroneous intelligence, and manipulated nationalistic patriotism.
I can not recommend a better book on World War I than Tuchman's Guns of August. No doubt there were multiple contributions to this tragedy, but man's lesser nature and cognitive limitations certainly carry the lion share of causation.
Rating:
Summary: Facinating in-depth look at the begining of WW I
Review: Ms.Tuchman, in exhaustive detail gives a very detailed description of the chain of events that preceded the start of the War,followed by a thorough account of the first month and a half of it, culminating in the famous "Battle of the Marne". She intertwines the description of events with riveting comments of the military and political leaders of the times, focusing on the main protagonists, France, Germany, Russia and England. She is incisive, opinionated and sometimes quite a judge of character but seems to have conducted extensive research judging from the vast bibliography and footnotes. History is made by human beings, called to make decisions so monumental in scope and so dire in their consequences that when we read of them we can't help but ponder about the world we live in. It is a very good book which helps gain tremendous insight on a tragedy that was to mark the world for the next 90 years.
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Summary: Anti-German bias? Laughable!
Review: ...
The book lays out the facts.
The Germans murdered thousands of Belgian and French civilians, 99.99999% for no reason other than to "inspire" the fear that the doctrine of terrorism the "Grosser Generalstab" had inculcated into its commanders and troops.
The exposes the dithering stupidity of much of the British cabinet--how can that be "pro" British in the sense of bias? Of course, it can't.
It also demonstrates the tragic stupidity--there's no other word for it--of French politics and military planning during the Third Republic (1871-1940) and shows quite clearly that had the "offensive a l'outrance" had been abandoned for trench systems along the entire French border from Switzerland to the Channel, the Germans would have been stopped cold in Belgium and the French and British would have been fighting from the high ground--rather than the other way around.
For anyone to call stating the cold, hard facts about the crimes of the Imperial German Army, is an insult to the thousands they murdered and to the only thing this book is about: the truth!
So, neo-Nazis be gone! This book is about the truth, something you're not interested in.
Germany was clearly, completely and totally at fault. Nothing in her strategic posture demanded hooking the "Reich's" fate to the tottering, imminent collapse of the Austrian Empire. Bismarck regarded the idea with horror and did all he could to distance Germany from creaking, bellicose Austria and her sociopathic commander-in-chief Conrad von Hoetzendorff.
And yes, Mrs. Tuchman is pro democracy and pro-freedom--ideals few of Germany's pre-1914 elite held dear. And, yes, she is against shooting 6 month old babies in the head as the Germans did in Belgium.
As Sir John Keegan points out, in his excellent "the First World War" (despite the bizarre and irrelevant criticism of this book by obviously weakly informed reviewer, is fantastic and MUST be on every student's shelf), everywhere the Germans went in France and Belgium, villages and towns were burned--sometimes cities, e.g Louvain--women, children, babies and old men were systematically shot--not by special death squads, but by members of some of the premiere regiments of the German Army (e.g. The Prussian Foot Guards, the "Big Red One" of the German Army).
In almost every town in Belgium and the northern 1/4 of France occupied by them you can find grave stones with the inscription...
"fusillie par les Allemands"
"Shot dead by the Germans."
And, next to those whose death are marked 1914 is entirely new and much larger contention of graves with the very same words, only the date, 1940, changes.
You see, in both wars, the Germans engaged in systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It took the destruction of their cities and the deaths of 9 million German men from 1914-1945 to convince our Teutonic cousins that they would never be allowed to conquer the planet.
Mrs. Tuchman presents this with calm, studied prose that diminished none of the horror nor conceals the deeply moral center that drove this woman's life and work.
Criticism is either revisionism or foolishness. This book is for the ages.
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Summary: 30 days that changed the world...
Review: Barbara Tuchman's account of the outbreak of the First World War is the definitive book on the subject. From the political crises and entangling alliances that characterized Europe in 1914 to the "damn fool thing in the Balkans" that set the war machines in motion, Tuchman provides insight and clarity to a complex situation. Tuchman goes beyond the superfluous details of the alliances and actions which brought the war about to bring about a deeper understanding of the prevailing attitudes in each country. She explains the German approach through the expansionist philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche, along with the ideas of Clausewitz on how to fight a war and deal with conquered enemies. Also the political culture in France (where government was rapidly changing, especially with regards to mandatory military service), and the English policy of sending only volunteers abroad, and only when enough replacements could be brought back from remote outposts all over the world. These and many other meticulously resarched details provide a fascinating depth to the story. Also very interesting are the studies in character of the main players in the drama of August 1914. Joffre, French, von Kluck, and the German Kaiser (among many others) are studied in detail, in an effort to understand the decisions each made through the first month of the war. To her credit, Tuchman doesn't place thoughts in anyone's head; reasons for action are given in the individual's own words (as recorded in journals or official histories), or when the reason is not clear, Tuchman gives a number of possible answers puctuated by the fact that we can't be sure exactly what anyone was thinking. This is a brilliant book. Thorough from the battles on the western front to the well-intentioned if ill-conceived Russian offensive at Tannenberg, along with an interesting subplot with the German battle cruiser Goeben, the intricate detail, along with Tuchman's reader-friendly writing style, make for some great reading.
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