Pyrrhic Victory
French Strategy and Operations in the Great War
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- 33,99 €
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- 33,99 €
Publisher Description
As the driving force behind the Allied effort in World War I, France willingly shouldered the heaviest burden. In this masterful book, Robert Doughty explains how and why France assumed this role and offers new insights into French strategy and operational methods.
French leaders, favoring a multi-front strategy, believed the Allies could maintain pressure on several fronts around the periphery of the German, Austrian, and Ottoman empires and eventually break the enemy’s defenses. But France did not have sufficient resources to push the Germans back from the Western Front and attack elsewhere. The offensives they launched proved costly, and their tactical and operational methods ranged from remarkably effective to disastrously ineffective.
Using extensive archival research, Doughty explains why France pursued a multi-front strategy and why it launched numerous operations as part of that strategy. He also casts new light on France’s efforts to develop successful weapons and methods and the attempts to use them in operations.
An unparalleled work in French or English literature on the war, Pyrrhic Victory is destined to become the standard account of the French army in the Great War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This well-written, exhaustively researched history of France's role in WWI adds a French perspective not often found in English-language literature on these seminal military events. Explicating France's "grand strategy... waging a multifront war against the Central Powers," West Point history department head Doughty (Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940) convincingly debunks the clich of "France's war effort as a series of ill-conceived but energetically executed operations with no connection to a coherent strategy." Doughty sheds light on Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre's point of view on the "bloody failures in the Artois, Champagne, and St.-Mihiel offensives" (1915), Nivelle's disastrous 1917 offensive and P tain's salvation of the French army so that Allied Supreme Cmdr. Ferdinand Foch could lead it in the three-pronged 1917 Allied offensive, among other campaigns. Add his insight into military strategy to his portraits of lesser-known figures, such as Fifth Army commander Gen. Franchet d'Esperey, and the sum pro-French but not uncritically so is a valuable addition to WWI literature.