Sunday, January 17, 2010

By Reviewed by Joel Blair

"World War One:

A Short History"

by Norman Stone

Basic Books, $26

Who needs another history of World War I? Well, as it turned out, I did.

At a very basic level, the problem with our understanding of that war is that we think only of the Western Front. (The same distortion of history occurs in our thinking about World War II, where the Western Front always played a very secondary role to that in the East. Russia, with the U.S. money and Studebaker trucks, won that war and lost 20 million people in the process.) Norman Stone, the author of "World War One: A Short History," earlier wrote the standard history of the Eastern Front of that war and is therefore well prepared to correct the historiography.

The motive, Stone notes, of all participants in the war was to expand their empires. They wanted to cut and gobble up Poland, or Turkey, or Africa, or China, or Southeast Asia -- anything to get an acre or make a buck. Think how bizarre that motive seems now, with Russia, perhaps, the only large power that still holds to that old ideal of empire. (The idea of the United States as a growing empire would require a book in itself.)

"In four years, the world went from 1870 to 1940" -- the beginning statement of Stone's second chapter -- is extremely provocative. The U.S. Civil War ended five years earlier in 1865; the slaughter of World War II was just beginning in l940. The first thing one thinks of is the replacement of European stability for world chaos. The second might be the pride of power being replaced by the uncertainty of survival.

In fact, Stone doesn't make explicit the grand changes of peoples and nations during that period but focuses on military hardware: fortresses and guns. Fortresses, which had been expensive military focal points, became a deadly trap because large guns could now fire and hit them from 10 miles away.

Three weapons became functional that would become in World War II of paramount significance: planes, tanks and submarines. If Hitler had quickly doubled his U-boat force, we could now possibly be speaking German; Britain could not have survived the early years of that war. Churchill named it as the weapon he most feared.

The other machine that almost gave the first war to Germany was the railroad. The German system was fast and effective, which meant troops could be moved quickly. The British were stuck in northern France and Belgium. The French and British were stalemated in trenches for the entire war.

The principal movements of the war involved troops of two decaying empires: the Russian and the Austria-Hungarian (whose national anthem was sung in 15 languages). Neither survived. So the dynamics of the war were played out in the East. Germany was close enough to keep the Austrian Empire together until the end; in a separate armistice, the Russians surrendered in 1918. But both empires were weak and already doomed to failure.

The geographical limits of the action allow Stone to divide his history by the four years of the war's duration, bracketed by an "Outbreak" and "Aftermath." Those limits also resulted in very few generals having the opportunity to shine. A few German leaders gained distinction in the East; neither side had heroes in the West. (Field Marshall Douglas Haig was declared a great Scottish general because he killed so many English soldiers; his name lives as a cheap brand of Scotch.)

In both the Balkans and in Italy -- like everything else about the two areas during the 20th century -- everything began (and ended) in a muddle. Serbia's defeat allowed the "first direct train from Berlin" to arrive in Istanbul on Jan. 1, 1916. Also in l916, Russia reluctantly helped rescue Romanians after they had lost on two fronts. In Italy, Capt. Rommel distinguished himself by knocking out five regiments in steep mountain battles. And the Italians were effectively out of the fighting by 1917. Turkey lost its empire during the war but survived as a functioning nation.

With an unused German navy, its leaders desperately sailed in 1918 "in the direction of the Thames Estuary." Not interested in suicide, the sailors mutinied. Fearing a Bolshevik revolution, the German military leaders forced the Kaiser to resign. Germany then sought armistice.

Aptly, Stone ends his "Afterward" by quoting Hitler on his "indignation and disgrace" as Germany admitted defeat. Truly, the chief effect of World War I on Germany was Hitler and World War II.

The principal results on the world of that first war were Stalin and Hitler. These two men transformed the Victorian dream of progress and light into the most barbarous century in recorded time.

No; another history of World War I is not superfluous.