Just Finished Reading: The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman (FP: 1962)

This has been on my radar for some time – being quite famous and all that – so when I saw it in a handy paperback size I jumped at it, especially as it helped me to fulfil another of the 2015 Book Challenges.

As with any book with a decade’s long reputation I approached it with some caution but was pleased to find it both very informative and very readable. The author certainly has a way of making sometimes complex sequences of events – often viewed from at least two different perspectives in turn – into not only a readily understandable format but does so in a frankly exciting way. There was a mention in the introduction that the author seemed to have the ability to build tension regarding the German advance across France (for example) regardless of the fact that we, the reader, already knew the outcome. As I read through this compact work I found that statement true again and again.

But, I did have a few problems with this book despite its pedigree. For one thing I thought that she didn’t really explain (or even attempt to explain actually) exactly why the war happened. The Serbian assassination was mentioned briefly as was the subsequent Austro-Hungarian invasion and the Russian reaction followed by the German reaction and so on. The diplomatic ties between the Central Powers and the Triple Alliance of France, Russia and Great Britain explained some of what happened but I felt that there was much more to this than she mentioned or even alluded to. She also seemed to spend much of her time speaking in stereotypes viewing the Russians as incompetent aristocratic fools, the British as aloof and arrogant bunglers but she saved her most savage stereotype for the Germans – very much her villain of the piece. Much of what she said might indeed be true. But I had a very strong feeling that her interpretation of history was heavily edited to reflect her personal prejudices. After all this book was published on 17 years after the Holocaust and resentment against the German people must still have been running high in the generation that lived through the war – or in the case of the author through both wars. A case in point is her repeated mention of German atrocities against the civilian populations of Belgium and France in the early months of the war. Hardly a section went by without mention of mayor’s being killed in retaliation for acts of resistance and whole towns being destroyed in reprisals for a single dead German soldier. This might indeed have been true. Yet she mentioned in passing (without comment or repeat) that Russian soldiers in East Prussia were doing exactly the same thing there – as if such a thing was to be expected by Russian peasants but not of German citizen soldiers. I couldn’t help but think that she definitely wore her prejudice on her sleeve and was proud to do so. I must say that it couldn’t help but taint my reading of the whole (otherwise very good) work.

Although well-paced (indeed it moved at a breathless pace in places) I did question the way she handled both the beginning and the end of the work. I felt that she spent a great deal of time discussing the run up to war over a period of years, covered the early battles (and the march through Belgium) in great detail and then, just as the final fully mobile contest of arms on the western front was about to be fought kind of… well, fizzled out. It did leave me with a feeling of significant anti-climax.

So, I find myself in two minds about this one. I think it was the product of its time and the personal prejudice of the author. I’ll see how her analysis of the early war stands up to other more modern and, presumably, less personally engaged authors who, also probably, had access to much more contemporary information than she did. I did find it very good in parts but very questionable in others. It’s certainly worth a read, that’s a given, but I think you’ll need to take her attitude into account and certainly try to contrast her views with others who will probably regard the Germans or the German people as somewhat less than evil incarnate. I’m taking the whole thing with a serious pinch of salt at this point until shown otherwise. Patchy but mostly very good.
    
[2015 Reading Challenge: A Pulitzer Prize winning book – COMPLETE (22/50)]