The Guns of August

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The Guns of August
TheGunsOfAugust.jpg
First edition cover
Author Barbara W. Tuchman
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Military history, narrative history
Published1962 (Macmillan)
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages511
OCLC 30087894
940.4/144 20
LC Class D530 .T8 1994

The Guns of August (published in the UK as August 1914) is a 1962 book centered on the first month of World War I written by Barbara W. Tuchman. After introductory chapters, Tuchman describes in great detail the opening events of the conflict. The book's focus then becomes a military history of the contestants, chiefly the great powers.

Contents

The Guns of August provides a narrative of the earliest stages of World War I, from the decisions to go to war up until the start of the Franco-British offensive that stopped the German advance into France. The result was four years of trench warfare. In the course of her narrative Tuchman includes discussion of the plans, strategies, world events, and international sentiments before and during the war.

The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for publication year 1963, [1] and proved very popular. Tuchman later returned to the subject of the social attitudes and issues that existed before World War I in a collection of eight essays published in 1966 as The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914. [2]

Summary

The funeral of King Edward VII in May 1910 introduces Kaiser Wilhelm II and his relationship with the British monarchy, pivotal elements in the looming conflict. The remaining twenty one chapters of the book are grouped in three parts. The first one, titled "Plans", delves into the prewar military strategies of the four major European powers: Germany, France, Britain, and Russia. The subsequent concise section, "Outbreak", meticulously chronicles the events that led Europe into war, hour by hour, between August 1 and 4, 1914. The main body of the book, "Battle", extensively details the three military fronts of August 1914: the Western, the Eastern, and the Mediterranean. In the afterwords, Tuchman solidifies her thesis: August 1914 set the course for the military and political events that culminated in World War I.

Ch. 1 - A Funeral

On May 20, 1910, of the nine kings who led the funeral of King Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm II held conflicted views on his deceased uncle. In public, he was the gravest and most attentionate mourner. In private, he scorned Edward’s personal diplomacy which supported Britain’s shift from isolation to alliances with former foes France and Russia, calling his uncle “Satan” for plotting to encircle Germany. Wilhelm’s inner tension reflected a wider polarisation around the question of Germany’s rise, illustrated by two influential books. In “The Great Illusion” Norman Angell demonstrated that any war between large states was impossible because of its exorbitant cost whereas General von Bernhardi argued in “Germany and the Next War” that his nation had to either attack and annihilate France, or accept its downfall. On that May morning of 1910 “the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.” [3]

Plans

Ch. 2 - “Let the Last Man on the Right Brush the Channel with His Sleeve”

To avert a two-front war, Schlieffen saw it as a “military necessity” to attack France via Belgium, whose perpetual neutrality was guaranteed internationally since 1839. If Germany threw seven-eighths of its 1.5 million soldiers against France, it could beat it in six weeks before turning to Russia. Influenced by Clausewitz and the recent decisive victories over Austria and France, Schlieffen’s plan aimed to march 34 active and 20 reserve divisions through Belgium. Such a strong right wing would envelop the French armies and rake in the BEF. Schlieffen presumed Belgium would merely protest but the Kaiser, who wanted more assurance, unsuccessfully attempted to bribe King Leopold II by promising him French territories and money. Moltke, who succeeded Schlieffen in 1906, weakened the right wing at each new iteration of the war plan. His version of June 1914 saw Paris capitulate 39 days after mobilisation but assumed delusionally that every possible contingency could be planned for.

Ch. 3 - The Shadow of Sedan

The humiliating defeat at Sedan set France on the defensive for forty years. Sixteen war plans were produced, each defensive. But her direction changed a few years to 1914 after it gradually regained confidence in itself as a nation and General Foch planted the seed of the mystique of the will in the military doctrine. The War Council, pressed by the War Minister Messimy, replaced in 1911 the defensive General Michel with General Joffre, who developed Plan XVII, the first offensive war plan adopted by the War Council in May 1913 and ready for distribution to generals in February 1914. Its bold goal - go to Berlin via Mainz - was not supported by a detailed operational war plan like Schlieffen’s but instead emphasised the army’s imperative - Attack! - and laid out war options that generals could implement depending on circumstances.

Ch. 4 - “A Single British Soldier …”

Russia’s defeat to Japan in 1905 precipitated Germany in probing France in Morocco and Britain in developing military arrangements with France after Campbell-Bannerman authorised Wilson to open informal works with his French counterpart. But this embryonic military cooperation waned after the first Moroccan crisis subsided. It re-emerged in 1910 when Wilson used his new position of Director of Military Operations and his friendship with Foch to reinvigorate joint war plans, just in time for the second Moroccan crisis of 1911, whose aftermath was a shake up of the Royal Navy’s top brass, a naval agreement between Britain and France and a non-binding mutual support of their armies. Wilson delivered “Plan W” by the spring of 1914. Britain’s military was ready to deploy the BEF and 145,000 men to France but the British political leaders were not: only the few involved in the CID were aware of these military commitments.

Ch. 5 - The Russian steamroller

Notwithstanding its defeats (Crimea in 1856, Manchuria in 1905) and defects, Russia's imposing 6.5 million men army unsettled Germany and reassured France and Britain, its Triple Entente allies. After the defeat to Japan, Grand Duke Nicholas, as chair of the Council of National Defence, initiated military reforms but these were thwarted in 1908 when the conservatives dissolved it. The same year, [Notes 1] Sukhomlinov became Minister of War. Corrupt and inefficient, he froze the modernisation of the army and changed Chief of Staff six times by 1914. Still, despite these weaknesses, Russia planned to invade Eastern Prussia with two armies totalling 800,000 men. But Germany was determined to retain this vital territory. Max Hoffmann, anticipating that the Russian army would have to split around the Masurian lakes, considered two reactive tactics: a retreat or a frontal assault on either flank.

Outbreak

"Outbreak" starts with a short introduction, which briefly mentions the event that triggered World War I. On June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, assassinated the heir apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. European-wide diplomacy and military preparations during July are then referenced.

Chapters 6 to 9 commence with August 1914. Discussed and probed are maneuvers by leading politicians, diplomatic affairs, and actions undertaken by various armies, during the opening days of the war, August 1 to August 4. Covered are the Kaiser's hesitation, the struggle by Russia to ensure that its ally, France, would join in the war (ch. 6), France's attempts to win a guarantee from Britain of her involvement (ch. 7), Germany's ultimatum to Belgium (ch. 8) and an hour by hour account of the events that took place between August 2nd and 4th in Berlin, London and Paris, closing with Moltke's ominous words to Conrad von Hötzendorf upon "the struggle that will decide the course of history for the next hundred years" [4] (ch. 9).

Battle

The bulk of the remainder of the book, chapters 10 to 22, is essentially devoted to the battles and tactical planning on three fronts:

Ch. 10 "Goeben ... An Enemy Then Flying"

Tuchman starts the "Battle" section by covering the search by Allied naval forces for the German battlecruiser Goeben in the Mediterranean (chapter 10). The Goeben finally took refuge in the Dardanelles, waters of the then neutral Ottoman Empire. Such naval actions set off diplomatic maneuvers, but the event precipitated Turkey's entry into the war on the side of Germany. The development worked to block Russian import/export via its year-round ports on the Black Sea. That, in turn, led to the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign.

Ch. 11 - Liège and Alsace

As they crossed the Belgian frontier, the German armies were engaged by the Belgian army in front of Liège, five French armies in the east of France and four British divisions (known as the British Expeditionary Force) in the south of Belgium. The French were said to be labouring under the delusion that Gallic élan would be crucial in countering German attacks while the British fought hard at the Battle of Mons. In August, each side deployed its armed forces in order to effect its own strategies developed in advance of the war (discussed in "Plans").

Ch. 12 - BEF to the Continent

Tuchman describes the arrival in France of the British Expeditionary Force.

Ch. 13 - Sambre et Meuse

Although delayed by Belgian resistance, the German armies advance through Belgium and prepare their right wing for the outflanking manoeuvre. The French get ready for their main offensive in the Ardennes. The BEF advances towards the left flank of the French armies. The Germans enter Brussels on August 20th.

Ch. 14 - Debacle: Lorraine, Ardennes, Charleroi, Mons

The French High Command had made incomplete allowances for dealing with the large massed attack by the German army, which now came quickly bearing down on them. It was perhaps through the decisions of Charles Lanrezac, the French Fifth Army commander, who acted in a timely fashion before getting permission from Joseph Joffre, that the entire French line was eventually saved from envelopment and general collapse. Although his pleas were ignored, Lanrezac withdrew his forces at Charleroi from an untenable position and probable destruction, and he redeployed them more favorably. He was later relieved of command.

Ch. 15 "The Cossacks Are Coming"

Chapter 15 centers on the Russian invasion of East Prussia.

Ch. 16 Tannenberg

Chapter 16 presents Germany's reaction to the invasion which culminates at the Battle of Tannenberg, where the Russian advance is stopped, decisively. Tuchman covers the series of errors, faulty plans, poor communications, and poor logistics, which, among other things, decidedly helped the French in the west. For example, the Germans mistakenly transferred, from the west, two corps to defend against what the book refers to as the 'Russian Steam Roller'. The great misery that developed on the Eastern Front is noted.

Ch. 17 The Flames of Louvain

Woven into the text about the battles in Belgium are threads of fact that Allied governments would employ in the formation of the West's eventual opinion that Germany had been the aggressor nation against Belgium. Such facts and conclusions would be repeated for the duration of the war and greatly affect the future involvement of the United States.

Also here in chapter 17 The Flames of Louvain, Tuchman places a selection of German views from a variety of sources as to the aims and desires of Germany. She cites Thomas Mann as saying the goal was "the establishment of the German idea in history, the enthronement of Kultur, the fulfillment of Germany's historical mission". She then conveys American reporter Irvin S. Cobb's account of an interview with a 'German scientist': "Germany [is] for progress. German Kultur will enlighten the world and after this war there will never be another." Yet further, a 'German businessman' opines that the war will give Europe "a new map, and Germany will be at the center of it" (aims similar to the Septemberprogramm). [5] Such outspoken menace worked to solidify opposition to Germany, caused George Bernard Shaw to become "fed up" at Prussian Militarism, and H.G. Wells to condemn the German "war god" and hope for an end to all armed conflict.

Chapter 17's main focus is the German army's atrocities in Belgium, in particular against the historic university city of Louvain. Tuchman frames her remarks by describing the Schrecklichkeit, the German military's "theory of terror". Accordingly, in a failed attempt to suppress the "illegal" franc-tireur (civilians shooting at German troops), hundreds of nearby citizens at several Belgium towns had been executed. Her accounts of the ferocity of such German army reprisals against the general population and of the willful burning of Louvain, such as its university library make it obvious why the Western Allies might feel themselves justified to condemn Germany and Germans wholesale.

Ch. 18 Blue Water, Blockade and the Great Neutral

Chapter 18 describes the British fear that since their island nation was dependent on overseas imports, the German navy could manage to disrupt their international trade. Although Britain's navy was superior in ships and experience, perhaps the German navy's "best opportunity for a successful battle was in the first two or three weeks of the war." However, the German High Seas Fleet remained in port and was ordered not to challenge the British warships watching the North Sea. Thus, a substantial control over the world's seaways was then exerted by the British Royal Navy.

Surrounding the neutral role of the United States, diplomatic politicking quickly intensified. On August 6, Washington formally requested the Europeans to agree to follow the 1908 Declaration of London , which "favored the neutrals' right to trade as against the belligerents' right to blockade." Germany agreed. Britain "said Yes and meant No" and supplemented an Order of Council on August 20 (the 100th anniversary of Britain's burning of Washington). Despite the equitable intent of international law, Britain sought to receive supplies from America while its naval blockade of Germany denied the supplies to Germany. Woodrow Wilson had already advised Americans on August 18 to be "neutral in fact as well as in name, impartial in thought as well as in action" so that America might become the "impartial mediator" that could then bring "standards of righteousness and humanity" to the belligerents in order to negotiate "a peace without victory" in Europe. Both wartime paper profits from a nearly fourfold increase in trade with Britain and France and "German folly" eventually would later work to cause American entry into World War I.

Ch. 21 Von Kluck's Turn

The French and British forces, united at last, fell on Alexander von Kluck's exposed right flank in what would be the first successful offensive by the Allies. In the subsequent attack, the Germans were forced back north, with both sides suffering terrible losses.

Ch. 22 "Gentlemen, We Will Fight on the Marne"

While Paris had been saved, the war took on a new cast, with both sides settling into a defensive trench system, which cut across France and Belgium from the Channel to Switzerland. That became known as the Western Front, and over the next four years, it would consume a generation of young men.

Afterword

Tuchman briefly offers reflections on the First Battle of the Marne and on the war in general. The war's opening "produced deadlock on the Western Front. Sucking up lives at the rate of 5,000 and sometimes 50,000 a day, absorbing munitions, energy, money, brains, and trained men," [6] it ate up its contestants. "The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit." [7]

The Battle of the Frontiers was brutal. The Belgian army was rushed against the German army, but the Allies were forced to retreat slowly under the German onslaught until the Germans were within 40 miles (64 km) of Paris. The city was saved through the courage and verve of a semiretired territorial general, Joseph Gallieni, who marshalled his limited resources and saved the day. The city was preparing for siege and possible complete destruction, and the government had fled south, when two divisions of reserves suddenly arrived and were rushed to the front by the city's fleet of 600 taxi cabs.

Tuchman cynically notes that Joffre later took complete credit for saving Paris and the French army after having the commander who ordered the tactical retreat, Lanrezac, relieved of duty and the old commander and his former superior, Gallieni, pushed back into obscurity.

Tuchman is also careful to point out that although many of Joffre's actions were shameful, when he was finally pushed into action, he showed great skill in guiding the hastily improvised counterblow that crashed into the invader's flank. The Germans greatly contributed to their own undoing by outrunning their supply lines, pushing their infantry to the point of physical collapse and deviating from the original invasion plan, which called for the right flank to be protected from counterattack. At that stage of its offensive, the German army lacked the troops used by the siege of the fortress of Antwerp, held by the Belgian army. Both sides were plagued by poor communication and general staffs that were heavily invested with politics and sycophancy. Dire warnings from commanders in the field were ignored when they did not fit preconceived notions of quick victory at low cost.

With time, such a war would become intolerable. "Men could not sustain a war of such magnitude and pain without hope–the hope that its very enormity would ensure that it could never happen again." [7]

Style / Genre

Robert K. Massie, author of the 1994 foreword to the book, attributes its “enormous reputation” to four qualities: “a wealth of vivid detail which keeps the reader immersed in events almost as an eyewitness; a prose style which is transparently clear, intelligent, controlled and witty; a cool detachment of moral judgement - Mrs. Tuchman is never preachy or reproachful: she draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human villainy as amused and saddened by human folly. These first three qualities are present in all of Barbara Tuchman’s work, but in the The Guns of August, there is a fourth, which makes the book, once taken up, almost impossible to set aside. Remarkably, she persuades the reader to suspend any foreknowledge of what is about to happen[;] so great is Mrs. Tuchman’s skill that the reader forgets what he knows. [...] Mrs. Tuchman’s triumph is that she makes the events of August 1914 as suspenseful on the page as they were to the people living through them." [8]

Tuchman knows to find and express "the vivid specific fact which would imprint on the reader's mind the essential nature of the man or event." [9] Some examples follow.

Key players

Tuchman references almost four hundred actors in The Guns of August, General Joffre being cited the most on 125 different pages. Thirty of them receive a development of their characteristics or background. [Notes 3]

The four excerpts below illustrate Robert K. Massie’s remark that Tuchman can “imprint the essential natural of the man”: [9]

Aside these four men, Tuchman characterises or gives the background of twenty-seven actors:

It is worth noting those actors Tuchman cites often but does not characterise, if only with a few well chosen words:

Key events

The introductory paragraph of A funeral, the first chapter of The Guns of August, took Barbara Tuchman "eight hours to complete and became the most famous passage in all her work". [17] The Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan “was gripped from her wonderful first sentence": [18]

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.

— Barbara W. Tuchman

One of the key events took place on August 1. "In Berlin just after five o'clock a telephone rang in the Foreign Office. [...] "Moltke wants to know whether things can start." At that moment, [...] a telegram, from Prince Lichnowsky, ambassador in London, reported an English offer, as Lichnowsky understood it, "that in case we did not attack France, England would remain neutral and would guarantee France's neutrality." [...] The Kaiser clutched at Lichnowsky's passport to a one-front war. Minutes counted. Already mobilization was rolling inexorably toward the French frontier. The first hostile act [...] was scheduled within an hour. It must be stopped, stopped at once. But how? Where was Moltke? Moltke had left the palace. An aide was sent off with siren screaming, to intercept him. He was brought back. The Kaiser was himself again, the All-Highest, the War Lord, blazing with a new idea, planning, proposing, disposing. He read Moltke the telegram and said in a triumph: "Now we can go to war against Russia only. We simply march the whole of our Army to the East!" Aghast at the thought of his marvelous machinery of mobilization wrenched into reverse, Moltke refused point-blank. For the past ten years, first as assistant to Schlieffen, then as his successor, Moltke's job had been planning for this day. The Day, Der Tag, for which all Germany's energies were gathered, on which the march to final mastery of Europe would begin. It weighed upon him with an oppressive, almost unbearable responsibility. [...] "Your Majesty," Moltke told him now, "it cannot be done. The deployment of millions cannot be improvised. [...] Those arrangements took a whole year of intricate labor to complete" - and Moltke closed upon that rigid phrase, the basis for every major German mistake, the phrase that launched the invasion of Belgium and the submarine war against the United States, the inevitable phrase when military plans dictate policy - "and once settled it cannot be altered." [19]

Analysis

Miscalculations leading to war

Throughout the aforementioned narrative, Tuchman constantly brings up a theme: the numerous misconceptions, miscalculations, and mistakes that she believed resulted in the tragedy of trench warfare, such as:

Overall, Tuchman argues that while some of the war's major combatants looked forward to a war, specifically Germany and Austria-Hungary, all of them expected it to be a short one, and none of them desired or anticipated a prolonged war. Likewise, she argues that even successes, such as the First Battle of the Marne, a French victory, were to some extent accidental victories that were won despite, and not because of, military leadership or strategy.

Development, publication and reception

Development

The Guns of August is Tuchman’s third book, after Bible and Sword, published in 1956, and the Zimmermann Telegram, in 1958, [Notes 4] and by her own account “the genesis of this book lies in [these] two earlier books I wrote, of which the First World War was the focal point of both. […] I had always thought that 1914 was the hour when the clock struck, so to speak, the date that ended the nineteenth century and began our own age, “the Terrible Twentieth” as Churchill called it. I felt that 1914 was it. But I did not know what should be the gateway or the framework." [20] She was approached by Cecil Scott of MacMillan who asked her to write a book on 1914, particularly on the battle of Mons and on “how had the BEF thrown back the Germans [and whether] they [had] really seen the vision of an angel over the battlefield." [21] But Tuchman was more interested in writing a book on the escape of the German cruiser Goeben from Royal Navy’s Gloucester, an event that would precipitate the Ottoman Empire into the war and for which she had personal affinity since she was present, although aged only two, with her parents on a small steamer from which they witnessed this naval pursuit. But Mr Scott was not interested in that episode. In the end, “I formed the plan of keeping to the war’s first month, which contained all the roots, including the Goeben and Battle of Mons, to make us both happy." [21]

Tuchman had a personal connection to the Goeben episode since she was present, as a child aged two, on a small boat nearby the pursuit: "That morning [August 10, 1914] there arrived in Constantinople the small Italian passenger steamer which had witnessed the Gloucester's action against Goeben and Breslau. Among its passengers were the daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren of the American ambassador Mr. Henry Morgenthau." [22] Being the grandchild of Henry Morgenthau, she is referring to herself as she confirmed in 1981 in her book Practicing History, [23] in which she tells the story of her father, Maurice Wertheim, who was traveling from Constantinople to Jerusalem on August 29, 1914, to deliver funds to the Jewish community there. This connection, and her initial desire to write a book on the episode, might explain why two academic reviewers found this chapter "long and somewhat awkward" [24] and "out of context". [25]

Tuchman creates by combining the standard method of academic history, which is to read authentic, original material with activities more readily associated with journalism, such as field trips. Thus, to write the Guns of August, she read “letters, telegrams, diaries, memoirs, cabinet documents, battle orders, secret codes, and billets-doux [found in] the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the British Library and Public Record Office, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Sterling Library at Yale and the Widener Library at Harvard, [and] rented a small Renault and toured the battlefield of Belgium and France .” [26]

Publication

The first edition was published by MacMillan the last week of January 1962 [27] and it stayed on the best seller list for more than forty weeks. [28] A second edition came out in 1988, for the seventieth anniversary of the armistice, with the author's preface. In 1994, a third edition was published for the eightieth anniversary of the start of the war; Robert K. Massie wrote the foreword; it was published in the USA by Random House and in Great Britain by Penguin Books.

Reception

In 1988, in her preface to the twenty-sixth anniversary of the book’s second edition, Tuchman recounts how positive the reviews were when the book was published in 1962. Since she was “hardly known to the critics […] with no reputation for them to enjoy smashing, the book received instead the warmest reception." [29] One review in particular brought her to tears because it “elicit[ed] perfect comprehension”: Clifton Fadiman’s critic in the Book-of-the-Month Club Bulletin. He wrote that The Guns of August had “a fair chance [to] turn to be a historical classic” by displaying “almost Thucydidean virtues: intelligence, concision, weight, detachment. […] It is [Tuchman’s] conviction that the deadlock of the terrible month of August determined the future course of the war and the terms of the peace, the shape of the inter-war period and the conditions of the Second Round. […] [O]ne of the marks of the superior historian is the ability to project human beings as well as events.” [29] In 1962, Publishers Weekly predicted the book “will be the biggest new nonfiction seller in your winter season”, which greatly surprised Tuchman but “as it turned out, they were right.” [30]

Translation

By April 2024, The Guns of August has been translated in (at least) 19 languages: Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. [31]

Legacy

Cultural impact

The book was an immediate bestseller and was on the bestseller list of The New York Times for 42 consecutive weeks. [32] The Pulitzer Prize nomination committee was unable to award it the prize for outstanding history because Joseph Pulitzer's will specifically stated that the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History must be a book on American history. Instead, Tuchman was given the prize for general nonfiction.

According to the cover notes of an audio version of The Guns of August, "[President John F. Kennedy] was so impressed by the book, he gave copies to his cabinet and principal military advisers, and commanded them to read it." [33] In his book One Minute to Midnight about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Michael Dobbs notes the deep impression Guns had on Kennedy. He often quoted from it and wanted "every officer in the Army" to read it as well. Subsequently, "[t]he secretary of the Army sent copies to every U.S. military base in the world. [32] Kennedy drew from The Guns of August to help in dealing with the crisis in Cuba, including the profound and unpredictable implications a rapid escalation of the situation could have. [34] [35] Robert S. McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense during Kennedy's presidency, recalled that "[e]arly in his administration, President Kennedy asked his cabinet officials and members of the National Security Council" to read The Guns of August. [36] McNamara related that Kennedy said The Guns of August graphically portrayed how Europe's leaders had bungled into the debacle of World War I, and that Kennedy told later his cabinet officials that "We are not going to bungle into war." [36]

The British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who had served on the Western Front during the First World War, was also profoundly affected by the book. [37] In his diary for Monday, 22 October 1962, he wrote:

Washington, in a rather panicky way, have been urging a NATO 'alert' with all that this implies (in our case, a Royal Proclamation and the call up of Reservists). I told him that we do not repeat not agree at this stage. N. [ General Norstad ] agreed with this and said he thought NATO powers would take the same view. I said that 'mobilization' had sometimes caused war. Here it was absurd since the additional forces made available by 'Alert' had no military significance.

Graham Allison, a political scientist who covered the Cuban Missile Crisis in Essence of Decision , noted the effect of Tuchman's book on Kennedy, but also its implications for the proper study of decision-making and warfare. Allison created an entire model of decision-making, which he called the Organizational Process Model, based on such issues as those covered by Tuchman, a model that directly countered game theory and other rationalistic means of explaining events.

Film adaptation

The book was the basis for a 1964 documentary film, also titled The Guns of August. [38] The 99-minute film, which premiered in New York City on December 24, 1964, was produced and directed by Nathan Kroll and narrated by Fritz Weaver, with the narration written by Arthur B. Tourtellot. It used film footage found in government archives in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin, and Washington, DC. [39] [40] [41]

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Joseph Simon Gallieni was a French military officer, active for most of his career as a military commander and administrator in the French colonies where he wrote several books on colonial affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of the Frontiers</span> Series of battles; part of the Western Front of World War I

The Battle of the Frontiers comprised battles fought along the eastern frontier of France and in southern Belgium, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The battles resolved the military strategies of the French Chief of Staff General Joseph Joffre with Plan XVII and an offensive adaptation of the German Aufmarsch II deployment plan by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. The German concentration on the right (northern) flank, was to wheel through Belgium and attack the French in the rear.

Pursuit of <i>Goeben</i> and <i>Breslau</i>

The pursuit of Goeben and Breslau was a naval action that occurred in the Mediterranean Sea at the outbreak of the First World War when elements of the British Mediterranean Fleet attempted to intercept the German Mittelmeerdivision consisting of the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the light cruiser SMS Breslau. The German ships evaded the British fleet and passed through the Dardanelles to reach Constantinople, where they were eventually handed over to the Ottoman Empire. Renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli, the former Goeben and Breslau were ordered by their German commander to attack Russian positions, in doing so bringing the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Mulhouse</span> 1914 battle on the Western Front of World War I

The Battle of Mulhouse, also called the Battle of Alsace, which began on 7 August 1914, was the opening attack of the First World War by the French Army against the German Empire. The battle was part of a French attempt to recover the province of Alsace, which France had ceded to the new empire following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The French occupied Mulhouse on 8 August and were then forced out by German counter-attacks on 10 August. The French retired to Belfort, where General Louis Bonneau, the VII Corps commander, was sacked, along with the commander of the 8th Cavalry Division. Events further north led to the German XIV and XV corps being moved away from Belfort and a second French offensive by the French VII Corps, reinforced and renamed the French Army of Alsace, began on 14 August.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Lorraine</span> Battle of World War I

The Battle of Lorraine was a battle on the Western Front during the First World War. The armies of France and Germany had completed their mobilisation, the French with Plan XVII, to conduct an offensive through Lorraine and Alsace into Germany and the Germans with Aufmarsch II West, for an offensive in the north through Luxembourg and Belgium into France, supplemented with attacks in the south to prevent the French from transferring troops to the greater threat in the north.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Lanrezac</span>

Charles Lanrezac was a French general, formerly a distinguished staff college lecturer, who commanded the French Fifth Army at the outbreak of the First World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Loyzeau de Grandmaison</span>

Louis Loyzeau de Grandmaison was a French military theorist who, in an atmosphere of revanchism, linked the humiliating defeat of the Franco-Prussian War to the French having ceased utilizing Napoleonic methods. De Grandmaison argued for rapid maneuvers by large formations engaging in swift attacks. The school of thought he subscribed to dominated French army thinking by 1914, but in a modified form which combined the contemporaneous philosophy of Élan vital. In the end, such theories proved inadequate against modern weapons and tactics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Mathias Berthelot</span> French WWI general (1861-1931)

Henri Mathias Berthelot was a French general during World War I. He held an important staff position under Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, at the First Battle of the Marne, before later commanding a corps in the front line. In 1917 he helped to rebuild the Romanian Army following its disastrous defeat the previous autumn, then in summer 1918 he commanded French Fifth Army at the Second Battle of the Marne, with some British and Italian troops under his command. In the final days of the war he again returned to Romania, helping fight the Hungarians during the Hungarian–Romanian War and then briefly commanded French intervention forces in southern Russia in the Russian Civil War, fighting the Bolsheviks in Bessarabia (1918).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adolphe Messimy</span> French politician and general

Adolphe Marie Messimy was a French politician and general. He served as Minister of War in 1911–12 and then again for a few months during the outbreak of and first three weeks of the First World War. Having begun his career as an army officer, he returned to the Army and successfully commanded a brigade at the Battle of the Somme, and later a division. Defeated for re-election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1919, he served as an influential senator from 1923 until his death in 1935.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor-Constant Michel</span>

Général Victor-Constant Michel was a French General officer. He led the French Army in 1911, but following his opposition to the French strategy for war with Germany was replaced by General Joseph Joffre in July 1911. In August 1914, he was the Military Governor of Paris, but was replaced later that month by General Joseph Gallieni.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of the Trouée de Charmes</span>

The Battle of the Trouée de Charmes or Battle of the Mortagne was fought at the beginning of the First World War, between 24 and 26 August 1914 by the French Second Army and the German 6th Army, after the big German victory at the Battle of the Frontiers, earlier in August.

References

Informational notes

  1. ↑ Page 71, Tuchman writes, referring to Sukhomlinov: “This was the man who was Minister of War from 1908 to 1914.” In reality, he was appointed Minister of War on March 11, 1919.
  2. ↑ Tuchman ignores the war fought between Austria and Russia and between Austria and Serbia, except as it touches on the Mediterranean. In her Author's Note, she explains that the "inexhaustible problems of the Balkans" would necessitate a "tiresome length," which fortunately can be omitted without sacrificing the "unity" of the book. Hostile relations between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Kingdom of Serbia thus fail to merit further mention.
  3. ↑ From a count of the number of surnames in the index of the book..
  4. ↑ If one counts The Lost British Policy, published in 1938, the Guns of August is actually Tuchman’s fourth published work. However, Tuchman herself did not mention it.

Citations

  1. ↑ 1963 Winners, The Pulitzer Prizes.
  2. ↑ Yardley, Jonathan (March 16, 2009). "Jonathan Yardley Reviews 'The Proud Tower,' by Barbara Tuchman". The Washington Post .
  3. ↑ Tuchman, Barbara W. (2014) [First published 1962], The Guns of August, London: Penguin Books, p. 3
  4. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 146.
  5. ↑ See below at "Critical analysis".
  6. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 482.
  7. 1 2 Tuchman 2014, p. 483.
  8. ↑ Massie 1994, p. viii.
  9. 1 2 Massie 1994, p. xi.
  10. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 44.
  11. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 45-46.
  12. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 215-216.
  13. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 68-69.
  14. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 87.
  15. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 21.
  16. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 4.
  17. ↑ Massie 1994, p. xv.
  18. ↑ MacMillan, Margaret. "The Guns of August showed me how history could bring the past to life". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
  19. ↑ Tuchman 2014, p. 85-88.
  20. ↑ Tuchman, Barbara (1988). Preface to The Guns of August (2014 ed.). London: Penguin Books. pp. xvii–xviii. ISBN   978-0-241-96821-5.
  21. 1 2 Tuchman 1988, p. xix.
  22. ↑ Tuchman, Barbara W. (1962). The Guns of August . New York: The Macmillan Company. ISBN   9780026203104.
  23. ↑ Tuchman, Barbara W. (1981). Practicing History . New York: Albert A. Knopf. ISBN   0-394-52086-6.
  24. ↑ Williamson, Samuel R. JR (2013). "Fifty years: The Guns of August, Always Popular, Always Flawed". The Sewanee Review. 121, N°1 (Winter): 163. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
  25. ↑ Hale, Oron J. (1962). "In a place called Armageddon". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 38, N°3 (Summer): 523. Retrieved 6 April 2024.
  26. ↑ Massie, Robert K. (1994). Foreword to The Guns of August (2014 ed.). London: Penguin Books. p. x. ISBN   978-0-241-96821-5.
  27. ↑ Massie 1994, p. vii.
  28. ↑ Williamson 2013, p. 164.
  29. 1 2 Tuchman 1988, p. xx.
  30. ↑ Tuchman 1988, p. xxi.
  31. ↑ "The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, 1962: Editions". Good Reads. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  32. 1 2 Dobbs, Michael (2008). One Minute to Midnight. pp. 226–227. The President was so impressed by the book that he often quoted from it, and insisted his aides read it. He wanted 'every officer in the Army' to read it as well. The secretary of the Army sent copies to every U.S. military base in the world.
  33. ↑ Tuchman, Barbara W. (2008) [1962]. The Guns of August. Stewart, Ian (narrator) (Playaway Audiobook ed.). Recorded Books/Playaway. back cover. ISBN   978-1-4361-7732-0. Winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1963 established The Guns of August on the literary landscape, but Tuchman's best publicity came from her most devoted fan, President John F. Kennedy. He was so impressed by the book, he gave copies to his cabinet and principal military advisers, and commanded them to read it.
  34. ↑ "Vietnam and the Presidency: Interview with Jimmy Carter" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
  35. ↑ Blight, James G.; Nye, Joseph S. Jr. & Welch, David A. (Fall 1987). "The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited". Foreign Affairs. 66 (1): 170–188. doi:10.2307/20043297. JSTOR   20043297. Excerpt online.
  36. 1 2 McNamara, Robert S. (1995). In Retrospect. Vintage Books. p. 96.
  37. ↑ Hennessey, Peter (2000). The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945. Penguin Books.
  38. ↑ Bart, Peter (February 22, 1965) "Reign of Comedy as King in Hollywood Nears End" The New York Times
  39. ↑ "The Guns of August (1964 documentary film)". IMDb (Internet Movie Database) .
  40. ↑ The Guns of August at the American Film Institute Catalog
  41. ↑ "The Guns of August (1964 documentary film, 1h 40min)". YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-22.
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