Dreadnought

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Summary: Before the Great War...
Review: At first, it would seem impossible to cover, in one volume, the years from Queen Victoria's coronation to the beginning of the Great War, without skipping lots of information. Massie's book, which emphasizes England and Germany during those years, does just that. It mixes military and political history, and has biographies of all of the ministers and monarchs of both countries. It does all of this by combining good prose with good research, which, like Massie's other works, makes the reader feel as though they are actually present when Prince Albert dies, or when young Winston Churchill crosses the aisle to join the liberal party. However, this book does have its faults. It places much, if not all, of the blame for the Great War at Kaiser Wilhelm's feet, when, in fact, the British played as big of a role in "the world's first arms race" as the Germans. Despite this, it is a good read, and should be read before any study of the Great War.

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Summary: Biographical review of the loss of innocence
Review: Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War examines the first arms race of the twentieth century, that of the modern battleship. Robert Massie lays out the development of the Dreadnought-class battleship and its implications, beginning with Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne and ending with the declaration of World War I. The focus is on the monarchies and constitutional governments, and the book closes with the sequence of declarations of general European war in the summer of 1914.

Interestingly, the book does so from a biographical perspective. Virtually every word is focused on giving the reader a clear picture of the personalities involved, from the Queen herself to Kaiser Wilhelm (referred to unfailingly as William in the book), from Cecil Rhodes to Prince Bismarck. This makes the book somewhat more readable, but leaves the reader with the impression that the arms race (and thus the War) is entirely due to individual personalities. Very little time or attention is given to broader social developments, reducing the citizenry of each nation to little more than observers, often even less given the secrecy behind many of the developments.

Kaiser Wilhelm is especially closely considered, making it clear that, at least in part, his own inferiority complex and vacillation between Anglophilia and Anglophobia led to Germany's near-inexorable march towards war. At times, he desired nothing more than the acceptance and respect of his grandmother and uncle (Victoria and Edward VII); at others, he would repudiate any possible tempering influence they might have had. After Bismarck, one chancellor after another rotated through the government, serving at the Emperor's pleasure (due to Bismarck's design in the constitution). Still, the volatile Emperor was occasionally easily manipulated by experienced politicians without realizing it. In most cases, this maintained peace and allowed the danger of war to pass.

Particular attention is also given to Admiral Jacky Fisher, whose reforms in the British Navy at the close of its heyday are still seen in modern navies all over the world. During the great sail-to-steam conversion, it was his focus on gunnery and simulation of wartime situations that kept his Navy at the top of the game. Realizing the importance of speed in naval operations, he continued to push for steam vessels even when this was still controversial. The development of the modern battleship is due in large part to his driving force, constantly seeking to defend his island nation.

Dreadnought does a fine job of illustrating the developments, both military and political, that led to the declaration of one of the most important wars of the last century, little-discussed though it may be. While Dreadnought spends practically no time on the war itself, gaining familiarity with this era of history leads to a sense of sadness at the loss of the world's innocence nearly one hundred years ago.

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Summary: Propaganda As History.
Review: This is a deaply flawed book.It buys into and repeats all the old anti-German propaganda myths about the events leading up to WWI.This book,of course,blames everything on the Germans when in reality the naval rivalry was started by the British militarists such as Fisher,Churchill and Balfour as an excuse to build up the British fleet.In fact, the German fleet was never a threat to the British fleet,as the war showed,and it certainly was no threat to the combined fleets of England,France and Russia.The naval rivalry,largely imaginary to start out with,ended on Feb.7,1913 when Germany agreed to build only ten battleships for every 16 the British built,giving the British a permanent naval superiority.Unfortunately, this did nothing to prevent the war because England had already made the decision to destroy Germany.Of course, the book contains the obligitory anti-German bias all books like this always have.Most of the German figures are portrayed as monsters or lunatics of one sort or another while,of course,the war mongering British militarist like Fisher,Balfour and Churchill(who never met a war he didn't like) are all portrayed as heros.All in all,this book is little more than yet another replay of 90 year old anti-German propaganda.

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Summary: Bilge!
Review: I chose my review title as I looked at the photograph of "Dreadnought" on the front of my paperback edition. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in a book of "popular" history. Instead of popular history, Massie gives us history lite, though even that may be too kind. Much of the book is nothing more than high brow gossip. Is Massie trying to tell his readers that the personal peccadilloes of individuals in the British and German government somehow contributed to the coming of the Great War? I often got the feeling that Massie planned the book around the volume of gossip each figure generated. Did I laugh over Lord Beresford's antics and Count Huelsen-Haeseler's dance in the pink tutu? Sure I did, but it did not help me to understand how Europe was drawn (or let itself be drawn) into war. Massie is a terrific writer and it shows through in many parts of the work, especially his account of Sir Edward Grey. This was a good page-turner for airplane travel, but easy reading does not a serious work of history make. If Massie were truly serious, he would have written an epilogue instead of ending (poetically) with the tolling of Big Ben. It would be an easy case to make that personalities rather than movements were the primary force driving Europe to war. However, this does not mean that Asquith's extra-marital relationships had anything whatsoever to do with the coming of World War I. Take a look at Massie's bibliography - chock full of memoirs, nearly barren of standard scholarship. Maybe I shouldn't have had such high expectations. I still admire Massie as a writer, but this was a real letdown.

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Summary: Classic of International Relations
Review: Just when I thought Mr.Massie could not top Peter the Great,I discover this gem in my local bookstore. Dreadnought ranks with Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower as one of the finest studies of pre-war Europe. The genius of this book is that it is so much more. It is as easily accessible to a novice as to a Ph.d. Massie's gift lies in his ability to bring order to a vast array of information+make even the most minor characters shine. And what characters they are:Bombastic Kaiser Wilhelm,Foppish Earl Balfour,Slippery Prince von Bulow+a wonderful portrait of a young Winston Churchill. Hovering over the story is the larger than life figure of Lord Admiral Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher,whose revolutionary ship designs accelerated an arms race that lead to the cataclysm of 1914-1918. This is a fascinating book which reads as well as any novel+one of my personal favorites

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Summary: A long readable piece of popular history
Review: Around the turn of the century the British had a huge naval fleet. Britian at that time was the richest country in the world although Russia probably had the largest empire.

The dreadnought was a revolutionary battleship design which changed the balance of naval power. Basically the dreadnought was a steel ship with heavy plated armounr which mounted 12 inch guns and had coal fueled turbine engines. The dreadnought was so far ahead of other naval ships that it rendered them obsolete overnight. The British had thus made most of their own navy obsolete.

Germany saw this as a chance to develop a naval power which would challenge that of Britain. As a result they started the rapid construction of a fleet of their own Dreadnoughts. Britain countered by expanding their production to ensure they maintained naval superiority.

This arms race was seen as one of the pivotal causes of the first world war.

Other books have suggested other causes for the war. For instance "The arming of Europe and the making of the First World War" by Herrmann have suggested that the cause was related not to the naval balance but to the development of land armies. The thesis of that book was that by 1914 the prospect of Russian military reform meant that the central powers would be outnumbered by the Entente in a few years. This led to them adopting war as a means of resolving the dispute rather than negotiation.

Whilst Massies book may only present a narrow focus based on the naval arms race it is a fine piece of popular history writting with many portraits of figures of the time. It is well worth a read.

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Summary: Wonderful historic reading, Fun
Review: This a great book and a great subject. Puts together all of the relevant people, places and events of a wonderful time in our history

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Summary: Immensely informative and readable
Review: Dreadnought is not a book about battleships, at least not directly about battleships. Instead, it is a story about events that seem unreal to us today, yet occurred barely a century ago. This tale of the interactions between England and Germany before the First World War shows quite vividly how great tragedies can arise from misunderstanding, deceit, and arrogance. Massie does a wonderful job of showing both sides of the argument-not claiming to know which side was correct and which was not. The image he creates of the German character, however, definitely seems to be a negative one. The Germans are painted as being overly aggressive, and the Kaiser in particular is shown to be as immature as a child. There is criticism for the English side as well, but Massie is careful to point out that England was in a far more precarious position than Germany and therefore was more justified in pursuing a strong foreign policy. The central focus is of course on the race to build Dreadnoughts. This "first arms race of the twentieth century" is in many ways similar to the Cold War race in nuclear weapons-and equally ruinous. Though over 900 pages long, Massie never loses the reader's attention, and does such an incredible job of characterizing the protagonists that you find yourself almost talking to them at times. When finished, the reader truly feels as though he had lived through this period in time, and while they may not understand why things happened-no one will ever be able to rationalize that-they will know what happened and how terrible the results were.

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Summary: A Fine History of the Naval Arms Race
Review: Peter Massie's Dreadnought is a very fine history of the naval arms race that began with the ascension of Kaiser Wilhelm II to the throne of Germany, and ended with the battle of Jutland.

Massie's book includes wonderful details of the people involved, from the Kaiser and his strained relationship with his English mother and with his grandmother, Queen Victoria, to Prince (and then King) Edward's love affair with ships, to the great admirals who had the vision of what the modern battleship should look like, von Tirpitz for the Germans and Sir John ("Jacky") Fisher for the English. Massie gives excellent details of the ships' design and construction, and of the battles in each country to get them funded -- the German army begrudged the expenditure and saw the battleships as a dangerous adventure, and British politicians such as Lloyd George and Churchill, who were interested in social reform, regretted their expense (Churchill, however changed his mind when he saw the growing German naval threat, and as First Lord of the Admiralty, sped up the modernization of the fleet in time for the war.).

This is a good book to help understand the naval strategy of the times, and of the general atmosphere of Europe before the frist war.

My only complaint with the book is that it ends too soon -- I would love to see Massie give an account of Jutland, the major sea battle of World War I, in which the ideas of Fisher and von Tirpitz were tested in actual battle -- as the book is, we never see the great ships actually employed in battle. I would also have liked to see Massie's opinion on Fisher's return to the Admiralty during the war under Churchill, and his abandonment of Churchill when he could not face the potential destruction of the ships at the Dardanelles -- which was a cause of Churchill being driven from office. I would also have like to see Massie's opinion of whether Churchill or Fisher's judgment was the correct one.

But these are minor criticisms -- this is a very fine work of history, and is an excellent basius for understanding the naval arms race that was one of the proximate causes of the First World War.

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Summary: Spy Hole
Review: Massie offers the reader a spy hole into the minds of those who shaped the events leading to the Great War. It's a must read for those looking for a better understanding of what the hell happened!