The Marne, 1914
The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
For the first time in a generation, here is a bold new account of the Battle of the Marne, a cataclysmic encounter that prevented a quick German victory in World War I and changed the course of two wars and the world. With exclusive information based on newly unearthed documents, Holger H. Herwig re-creates the dramatic battle and reinterprets Germany’s aggressive “Schlieffen Plan” as a carefully crafted design to avoid a protracted war against superior coalitions. He paints a fresh portrait of the run-up to the Marne and puts in dazzling relief the Battle of the Marne itself: the French resolve to win, and the crucial lack of coordination between Germany’s First and Second Armies. Herwig also provides stunning cameos of all the important players, from Germany’s Chief of General Staff Helmuth von Moltke to his rival, France’s Joseph Joffre. Revelatory and riveting, this is the source on this seminal event.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Herwig's engrossing narrative of the first battle of the Marne in 1914, really a history of the first six weeks of fighting on the western front, treats the clash as a study in best-laid plans gone awry. The chaos and miscalculation that derailed both the German and French armies' meticulously wrought strategies owed much, Herwig shows, to a new and ghastly style of warfare in which machine guns and heavy artillery rendered courage irrelevant. But his account is also an analysis of generalship, pitting the German commander, Helmuth von Moltke, a weak leader who lost his grip on his armies in the midst of dazzling successes, and French Gen. Joseph Joffre, who imperturbably slapped together new defenses amid disastrous defeats. Herwig combines colorful evocations of the horrors of the fighting with a lucid operational history of the campaign. An immense bloodbath that was supposed to be climactic but proved only a prelude to worse carnage, the Marne becomes, in Herwig's telling, an apt microcosm of the war to end all wars. 16 pages of b&w photos; maps.
