How Europe Went to War in 1914

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im really looking forward to Sir Max Hastings new book 1914: Europe's Tragedy due for release before Christmas. Its had some terrific reviews and apparently is unfraid about not being politically correct. I hope so
 
So Authors like Christopher Clark, Sean McMeekin and Barbara Tuchman, which have given a very sophisticated and very deep researched view of the beginning of the World War I and didn't blame Germany alone for what happened, have written their books to be political correct?
Are they perhaps apologist?
 
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A classic. Unfortunately like many military history classics it isn't terribly accurate. You need archive data from eastern Europe to grasp the WWI big picture and most of those archives weren't available before Warsaw Pact broke up.

"Guns of August" doesn't even make good use of German and Belgium military records. As John Mosier (Myth of the Great War) notes concerning Liege forts "A surprising amount of confusion surrounds the fall of these forts; when Barbara Tuchman summarizes the action there she gets the particulars wrong for every fort."
 
parsifal said:
im really looking forward to Sir Max Hastings new book 1914: Europe's Tragedy due for release before Christmas. Its had some terrific reviews and apparently is unfraid about not being politically correct. I hope so
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Too many books, too little time in a man's life.
 
davebender said:
A classic. Unfortunately like many military history classics it isn't terribly accurate. You need archive data from eastern Europe to grasp the WWI big picture and most of those archives weren't available before Warsaw Pact broke up.
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This is a huge, huge issue for me these days. I'm at the point I always check the publication date - also any appendixes if they have content that I know could be wrong. Since I've become totally fascinated by the Eastern Front, God bless David Glantz!
 
I agree silence,

David Glantz has set a new level ever written about the German - UDSSR war from 1941-1945.

But I take up the cudgels for the Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, because it is a classic standard work and from the sources she had to hand, formidable.
To my opinion you have to read her book first and then you can read Clarks, McMeekin or whatever new book.

I have read Guns of August and The Sleepwarkers, but have already ordered both other mentioned books. But I had already heared a lot of July 1914 from Sean McMeekin and have followed the controversal discussion about his book.
 
Me too. My rule of thumb is not to trust anything written about central and Eastern Europe that was published before 1990.

IMO David Glantz is the gold standard for history of WWII Russian front.

Michael Reynolds does a fine job covering WWII Normandy and Ardennes. Like Glantz (and Terence Zuber for WWI) he provides a proper military analysis. Something sadly lacking from most popular military history books.

Rommel's Book "Infantry Attacks" does a pretty good job describing company and battalion level infantry combat during WWI.

There may be good accounts written in French or German but I'm not fluent enough in those languages to read them.
 
GrauGeist said:
Sure that wasn't really Borduria that sank Lithuania and tried to blame it on Syldavia?
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You sure it wasn't due to the actions of a Sicilian criminal mastermind (aided by a circus strongman and alcoholic swashbuckler) being paid by the Crown Prince of Florin to hijack the Lusitania and sink it in such a way that Guilder gets blamed, thus giving Florin the moral high ground in the war?
 
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