Dreadnought

Rating:
Summary: Highly readable popular history
Review: Folks who would like history to be an impersonal sweep of Great Movements and Significant Trends will doubtless dislike Massie's treatise on the Anglo-German naval arms race and the coming of the Great War. In contrast, for those of us who believe that history has a face (and often a street address) this is a fascinating and highly informative discussion of a critical period in world history. Massie stresses the very personal nature of power politics in pre-war Europe -something that I suspect modern readers (and reviewers)born into an age of "focus groups" and party politics may tend to discount. Before 1918 much of the power in Europe (and by extension the rest of the world) was wielded by a handful of individuals, many of whom were closely related. Victoria's children and grandchildren were alas NOT one big happy family, and Massie shows us how suspected slights and jealousies propelled whole governments towards foolish decisions. The creation of the German High Seas Fleet was largely the product of the Kaiser's feeling that he was being snubbed by his Uncle (Edward VII). Any pretence that this fleet was NOT aimed at contesting Britain in the North Sea is disproved by the decision to emphasize armor and internl compartmentalization within the German capital ships at the cost of cramped quarters and limited fuel storage that made the ships unlivable (and un-navigable) for more than a few days. As Massie shows, Wilhelm's decision to build a massive short-range fleet was opposed by many of his own ministers and ultimately ensured that Britain and Germany would come to blows. It would have been interesting if Massie had chosen to give us more of a "postscript" -what actually happened to this enormous expenditure of capital and energy- rather than ending things with the outbreak of war, but for that one need only look at the many books analyzing the battle of Jutland etc.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Biography as History, but Not for Everyone
Review: At over 1,000 oversize pages, this book is not for everyone. But if you enjoy biography (especially) and the history of sea power, politics and the Great War (here, its long run-up), this book is for you. If Carlyle was right that history is the "essence of innumerable biographies," Massie has caught the essence grandly with his sweeping Dreadnought. The title is misleading: one expects a dry tome about the British Dreadnought class. The massive turbine-powered war ships were to dominate navies until World War II, making coal irrelevant, and are expounded along with British naval politics and history, at length. But here Massie uses the Dreadnought as metaphor -- of sea power, arms race and ineluctable Armageddon.

German and British players brilliantly counterpoise. Here is Emperor William II, grandson to Victoria, a man who walked with "the stiff stride of a Prussian officer; if he laughs, he will laugh with absolute abandonment...small, handsome, with clear blue eyes...a brushy upturned mustache... and withered left arm". Here is Edward VII, the Kaiser's Uncle Bertie, "tum tum" in his circle (but never to his face), the son of Victoria and the sainted Albert. It was the wonderfully bizarre Jacky Fisher, father of the Dreadnought, "greatest Admiral since Nelson" who had the King's ear. Massie implicitly raises questions of whether French entente would have happened if Bertie had not so insisted on his regular visits to Paris and Biarritz or if the Dreadnoughts, had they not Edward's exuberant approval, would have impelled the deadly race.

The "lesser" characters in this drama serve their turns well. The "Blood and Iron" Chancellor Bismarck, a massive but dwindling figure, is deposed by the Kaiser, who disastrously takes the reins of the foreign ministry ("I am the foreign policy of Germany...May your government never forget that..." to Edward). The slippery Chancellor von Bulow who with the fork-bearded von Tirpitz, authors the Weltmacht (world power) policy. Lord Salisbury, three times Prime Minister, 6 feet 4, with his "huge head and slitted eyes," the author of the discarded dream of "Splendid Isolation", telling the German ambassador in 1888, "Nous sommes des poissons" (we are fish). After the crest of victory in the brutal Boer War, the ancient Queen finally dead, "so little - and so light" is gently lifted by the new King and the Kaiser into her coffin. Fisher does his job as First Sea Lord, surprisingly, under successive Liberal governments, including that of the brilliant, adulterous Asquith and the indispensable Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty: "for consider these ships (the superdreadnoughts)...so easily lost to sight on the surface of the waters....On them, as we conceived, floated the might, majesty, dominion and power of the British Empire." Each character and his role in the drama is brilliantly realized by Massie's incise mini-biographies.

The final elegaic and compelling chapters dwell on the pathos between Berlin and London: of a Kaiser gone slightly mad in Berlin, while thousands cheer in London; Asquith bound to France "by honor if not obligation", the tragic Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey to Commons: "Today it is clear that the peace of Europe cannot be preserved." The unpoetic Grey, looking down at dusk at the lamps being lit in St. James's Park, uttered the lines that define what was to come: "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." This is almost as fine a biography qua history as we have. Read it with Tuchman's Guns of August and your pick of Great War histories.

Rating:
Summary: Information overload
Review: I learned more about world history by reading this book than I think I ever did in High School. This book was a plethora of knowledge. Every chapter reveled the life of a new person and player in the world of politics at the turn of the century. The dynamics of the European stage and tangled web, which led to war, was made clear. Although I was exhausted at the end of each chapter from all the info and had to take some time to digest it I believe Mr. Massie definitely did his homework. This book is a must for History buffs.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining History Enjoyed by a Non-Historian
Review: I purchased this book for three reasons: my interest in ships, my desire to learn more about WW1, and my enjoyment of Massie's writing style, having read his Peter the Great. The book exceeded expectations and provided me with many insights into the driving dynamics that culminated in World War I.

The book's title is deceiving: it is less about naval affairs than it is about the personalities and events that for 30 years led up to the first world war, of which the navy is only part. Massie delves into the politics, family relationships (even through childhood), national interests, and personal insecurities and ambitions that drove policy in the UK and Europe.

I highly recommend this book for several reasons. First, it provided me with much more insight into the forces that resulted in this war. Before this, the explanations I read did not quite add up (more symptoms than root causality). This book applies a balanced approach to explaining history, incorporating personalities, national interest, culture, economics, and politics into a much clearer picture of the competing forces shaping Europe at that time.

Second, Massie acts as a sort of tour guide through this interesting period of history, pointing out many other interesting historical tangents for further reading (I picked up Winston Churchill's The River War as a result).

Finally, Massie writes his books with a structure similar to that of a novel. It makes this very substantial and well-researched read quite entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: How did he do it?!?
Review: I recieved this book as a birthday gift from a friend of mine whose taste I trust when it comes to history. However, I had my doubts about the entertainment value of a subject as dry as the pre-WWI naval buildup between Britian and Germany.

Nonetheless, Massie's ability to take the reader inside the halls of power and to introduce an intimate portrait of the major players makes this read as fascinating as any Clancy novel.

Rating:
Summary: Unputdownable!
Review: Everyone has their favorite writers, I suppose, and Massie is one of mine. He is ontologically incapable of writing a dull sentence. His narrative propulsion over a thousand pages never flags or fails (to steal a line from one of the historical characters we meet in these pages); the energy, the verve and the drama are just as palpable on Massie's final page as on his first. The set pieces are magnificent, the conflict and drama in the run up to WWI are brilliantly evoked, and as always the biographical portraits are vivid and irresistable---Jackie Fischer, Churchill, and the infantile Kaiser being just three that stand out. I have long suspected that as long as the art of narrative is esteemed, the works of Robert Massie will be read and re-read for the sheer joy and pleasure of the experience.

Rating:
Summary: Massie's Masterpiece (refers to hardcover edition)
Review: This is one of finest works of non-fiction ever written! Anyone who would like a fundamental understanding of pre-World War I Europe and the political intrigue that went along with it, should read this fine work. One empire was firmly entrenched on the world stage, one nation wanted an empire and two other empires were crumbling. It is long but there is never a dull moment. Massie clearly lays out in fine detail, the naval arms between Great Britain and Germany. His research alone must have been quite an undertaking. The author also described in a very understandble way, the technological innovations that made these new battleships state of the art. But most importantly, he lays out his argument, that fundamentally Kaiser Wilhelm is responsible for World War I. This becomes clearer near the end of the book when Massie describes the final days of peace and how those events spun out of control. Those pages alone make the book worth reading. I disagree with a previous reviewer that the book was Anglo-centric. I think the Germans and the Brits come off as they really were. The Prussians were very belligerent. A united Germany was still a young "upstart" nation. Germany was a nation of immense cultural and technological richness, but a nation that always has seemed to make bad choices. The Kaiser had we would call today "an attitude" or a chip on his shoulder. I also had very little knowledge of the pre-war Balkans. Especailly enlightening was learning of the Balkan War of 1912. Massie has created a masterpiece that any student of history should read.

Rating:
Summary: Edward the Caresser Meets the Hun
Review: An excellent read. Very well written as we might expect from Robert Massie. I enjoyed it very much and lost countless hours reading late into the night.

A warning: this book is extremely anglo-centric. Those who are looking for a balanced handling of these matters should keep this in mind. The only way to get a balanced accounting of the genesis of WW1 in English is to read widely including the revisionist texts that are heavily discounted by most British and American scholars. This is quite a large task.

Massie tells the story of the run up to the war largely through the device of using narrative accounts of the major political and diplomatic events in Britain and Germany, mostly presented through biographical sketches of their politicians, diplomats and admirals. This makes for fun reading. The book reads like a novel and you get a good idea of the characters of the main players. It's Massie's unabashed admiration of King Edward VII that skews the book however. Edward was not as wise and insightful as the author makes him and Wilhelm was not as flightly and spiteful or motivated by feelings of inferiority.

Dreadnought almost completely ignores economic and social history. There is nothing at all about the working class movements in either country. This is a major weakness. I suppose his desire to tell the tale strictly in a narrative fashion limits the usefulness of statistical data and scholarly exposition. A book I mentioned above, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War can be of great service in filling in some of these gaps.

Part two describes British politics and foreign policy up to 1905. I found this the most interesting section of the book - but I'm a political junkie. Again Massie uses sketches of politicians such as Salisbury, Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain and Landsdowne, accompanied by accounts of the "Khaki election" and the dispute over Imperial preference which split the Unionist government. Massie highlights the diplomatic ruptures with Germany - over the Jameson raid and the Krueger telegram, Samoa, and the Boer war. All of this culminates in the breakdown of Chamberlain's tentative Anglo-German alliance negotiations, and leads to the creation of the Anglo-French entente (despite the dispute over Fashoda), and its first test during the Morocco crisis.

Navalists and battleship buffs who might be attracted to this book by its title, will find part three much to their interest. Unfortunately they have to wade through a whole lot of biography to get there. Again this part of the book suffers from its anglo-centric point of view. Very little information about the German fleet is provided (for example, while the problems with inadequate armour on the British battle cruisers are mentioned, the far superior ability of German ships to withstand damage is not). The primary focus is still biographical, with Fisher and, to a lesser extent, his rival Lord Beresford claiming most of the stage.

Parts four and five continue the story up to the outbreak of war. Massie goes into much detail telling the story of the rise of the Liberals, and the Reform Bill and the emasculating of the House of Lords by use of crude threats by Asquith. Churchill and more importantly, Sir Edward Grey come into their own in this section of the book. I thought Massie's handling of Grey's failure to keep the British cabinet informed of European developments, even though he was monitoring continental communiques, was well done. Even so, in Massie's hands it is still hard to see Grey for what he really is - a villain no less than Austrian foreign minister Count Berchtold and France's man in Saint Petersburg, Ambassador Paleologue.

The book ends with Grey's famous coda on his age, 'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.' This is only fitting because Sir Edward had much to do with the extinguishing of those lamps. All in all a fine but flawed book and I enjoyed it very much with certain reservations.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book on Pre 1914 Europe
Review: This book details many aspects of pre 1914 Europe that have previously gone unnoticed and unresearched. The focus is the governments of England and Germany and specifically the naval arms race between the two. The name, Dreadnought, refers to the new class of battleships that evoke the modern warship, abandoning the iron clad models and ships of sail. These new floating gun platforms were designed by both England and Germany and by 1914 the Germans(a landed power) were within striking distance of defeating the English navy.

The book looks at such famous characters as Winston Chruchil, Kaiser II, and Bismark. The author details the rise of Germany, its unification and wars against its neighboors and its quest for world supremacy through colonies and military power.

The insights into naval technology, and prewar politics is interesting. The focus on England and Germany as the main rivals and also the important focus on Bismark as leader of the German states is of great interest to someone who knows little about the extraordinary birth of modern germany.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Very rarely does a work take on such magnitude, depth, and superb understanding of one of history's greatest enigmas.