Cataclysm: The First World War As Political Tragedy

Rating:
Summary: An excellent history of the First World War
Review: David Stevenson has written a superb history of the First World War that describes how and why the war lasted for over four years. The first factor according to Stevenson was the unreal war goals of both of the combatants. Another factor was that all of the great powers were able to keep large armies on the field for an indefinite amount of time due to advances in medicine. Military technology impeded further advances on the front since railways could transport troops to threatend sectors of the front and thereby making any future breathroughs by either side impossible. The final factors was the support of elites and the ability of the governments to alleviate economic hardships on the homefront due to stipends to farmers and wives of servicemen. The Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian, and later German empires fell because they lacked public mobilization and were unable to tend to the hardships of their citizens.In the end the allies won beacuse they were able to out produce the Germans and had better tactics that allowed sustainable advances by the British and French forces. Stevenson concludes his book by stating that the Peace Treaty of Versailles failed not because of harsh penalites, but because the Russians and the Americans were left out of any postwar security arrangements. The main weakness of the book is that it tends to be somewhat dry and academic and probably will not appear to readers of popular history.Another failing of this book is that the author does not fully described the faults of Russian munition makers as written in Jonathan Grant's work about the Puitilov factory. Otherwise, I would highly reccomend this book to those who are serious students of European and military history.

Rating:
Summary: Cataclysm
Review: I wanted to give this book the highest rating, because the author is so obviously well-versed in his subject, but there were just too many flaws. First of all I liked the book and I recommend it, but the layout is rather cumbersome at times. For example, the chapters in Part II are perhaps the most well organized and concise, but the chapters of Parts III and IV are convoluted at best.

The book begins with a basic overview but then author David Stevenson quickly shows how global the war became. I enjoyed his theories and conculsions, particularly how he illustrates that generals and statesmen did not want the war to end as if they were on a collective ego trip at the expense of the common soldier. This trip lasted until Germany lost the will to continue in November, 1918. I also liked Stevenson's conclusion regarding Austria, that it actually won all of its major objectives (with German help) by Spring, 1918, but then was shackled to the German war effort and subsequently lost more than it had won.

My problems with the book are 1.) it's length-it belabors many points ad nauseum, 2.) his post-war chapters do not do the subject equal justice compared to how much effort he put into the war years, and 3.) by the end of the book he loses sight of all participants but France, Untied States, and Great Britain, with a seemingly over abundance of British references. He gets into historiography of the war but this doesn't seem to flow with his summary of the geopolitical landscape after Versailles. He conveniently cuts off his historiography without offering critiques of his contemporaries (Herwig, Gilbert, Strachan, and Ferguson). This is probably by design, but if he insisted on going down this path he would have served his purpose well to reflect on the recent (last 10 years) flurry of WWI studies.

Overall, this is a good book that any student of WWI should not overlook. There is a good bit of new theories and revelations. It just takes a long time to plow through it.

Rating:
Summary: Comments in The Atlantic
Review: It is worth noting that the July-August Atlantic magazine had this to say about Cataclysm: "Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, by David Stevenson (Basic), by far the best title of this lot (in fact, the best single-volume history of the war ever published),...."

Rating:
Summary: for beginners good, for ww1 buffs bad
Review: the book first of all is laden with editorial gaffs. the maps are the same we've been seeing over the years elsewhere without showing anything new. real politics is given short shirf. episodes requiring a chapter are summarized in a paragraph.
as a starter book it does well or to those just wanting the most succinct synopsis of ww1 all over again. i was very dissappointed. hew strachen's, to arms is the most definitive we have on this subject.

Rating:
Summary: excellent history of a misunderstood war
Review: This is a great history. For a couple generations marxists
and liberals have used false accounts of WWI in an attempt
to discredit the very idea of war and the nobility of war.

The book shows that contrary to the lies, the first world war
was a noble and necessary struggle against total evil. It also
shows conclusively that the peace terms given to germany were
not harsh....they were not harsh enough. Hilter was not
a new force after the war, he and his war were a continuation
of the historic evils of germanism on display in WWI.

This book shows us all very clearly that wars are not a bad
thing. They are necessary part of human existance. Evil
must be confronted by good and the only way to defeat it
is to kill it.

The writer also sheds light on the generals who led the war.
Contrary to the myths that they were butchers, he shows that
they were great men who fought the war with the army they had.
They didn't the casulaties anymore than anyone else did, but
the war had to be fought because the alternative was surrender
to evil.

For the past 80 years, liberals and socialists have attemped to
prevent wars and promote false peace with the holocaust and
9/11 and millions killed by communists as a result.

Thank God for this book. It speaks to a generation who knows
(after 9/11) that wars are necessary, that evil must be defeated
by whatever means needed and that fake peace is nothing but
surrender to evil.

Democracies like America and Britain fight wars to bring
freedom. The first world war brought freedom to parts of europe.
The mistake was in not finishing the war by driving out the
communists from russia and forcing the germans to adopt a new
culture.

Rating:
Summary: Old wine, new bottle
Review: This volume, despite its hefty count of pages, is light on insights and revelations, and is most likely an attempt to profit from the credulous public's thirst to understand the modern world's first tragedy.

Coming from the same line of revisionist british historians like John Terraine, Philip Warner, Gary Sheffield, the author tries, without very much convincing anyone remotedly familiar with the Great War, that Britain was the single most important factor in defeating the Central Powers, conveniently forgetting the bumbling British Army on the verge of defeat in 1917/1918, the contribution of the Dominion troops in the final stages (when the British Army had all but kept out of the frontline) and the fact that the Germans lost because of panic/defeatism in the OHL, rather than any military defeats sustained in the battlefield.

If you are British, you will love the book for its ego boosting, for other people, it's just a load of rubbish.

Rating:
Summary: Understand the 21st century
Review: To understand the world politics of the 21st century, you have to understand the 20th century. To do that you have to understand the seminal event of that century, the First World War.

This book is a superb one-volume treatment of this subject. It leads to a clear appreciation of the root causes, the motivations of the belligerants, and the aftermaths, which even today are critical to world politics.

Rating:
Summary: Walter is a weirdo
Review: When you read Walter Smith's review make sure you read all of the reviews by Walter Smith. He reviewed the book Grant Goes East and came to the conclusion that "Its ironic that its taken us nearly 150 years to even begin to restore America to the virtues of the pre-war south" Oh yeah, if we could only get slavery back we would be sooooo morally superior.